Unmissable - 2025

Each contributing editor picked a couple of titles, some that flew under the radar, others decidedly in the spotlight. Only one rule: albums not personally reviewed by us (because we don't like repeating ourselves). The result is a rundown that spans genres, proving that from rock to electronic music, from pop to experimental sounds, there's no shortage of room for surprises. In particular, the various picks in the "Rock and Beyond" area speak to the existence of dynamic scenes that favor exploring new sonic combinations over the reassuring reproduction of already-codified styles.

At the bottom of the page you'll find a playlist with one track for each chosen album. A direct way to get curious and start listening.

Rock and Beyond:

The Japanese group betcover!!, led by Jiro Yanase (voice and guitar), have reached their sixth album in eight years of activity, through a process of maturation that has ultimately led them to pay much closer attention to songwriting. Where previously their blend of alternative rock and jazz-rock with prog shadings occasionally risked losing the thread, with songs that mutated so much they lost compositional coherence, this time around that risk is avoided: the attempt succeeds partly thanks to a partial reclaiming of the so-called mood kayo, a local movement that between the late Fifties and early Sixties coined an elegant form of pop music with languid, intimate tones. The result is their best album yet and one of the high points of Japanese music in recent years. (Federico Romagnoli)

That Maruja were one of the most interesting and violent bands on the British scene had already become largely clear from the EPs the band has been scattering like a trail of breadcrumbs since 2016. Yet none of the aforementioned extended plays managed to give us enough clues as to what we'd find inside this first, long-awaited LP, "Pain To Power". Sure, the thunderous, leaden post-hardcore/punk/rock/everything-for-guitars-and-sax is still the core of the record, but the songs are rounder than ever and often reach anthemic status, thanks to the rap rock inspiration of Harry Wilkinson ("Bloodsport", "Look Down On Us") and the reinforced metal muscle of the instrumental arrangements ("Born To Die", "Trenches"). In several recent interviews, the Manchester band has revealed the origin of their mysterious name, apparently chosen by Wilkinson after spotting it printed on a dusty sign in southern Spain. So Maruja, unwittingly, really does mean something like spinster, gossipy old housewife... Then again, what's sharper and more destructive than a sharp tongue? (Michele Corrado)

Pulciperla – Tatekieto

Music is (also) joy! If you're not convinced, you absolutely have to hear this explosive, vividly colourful album, steeped in Latin flavours, jazz-rock and proudly contemporary, blending sounds and cultures together. Perfect for listeners who pay close attention and go hunting for quotes and references, but, surprisingly, also brilliant for livening up an eccentric party. A carnival that leaves you dazed and euphoric but — beware! — anything but saccharine: when it needs to, this Franco-Colombian septet can be powerful, gloriously rock, as in the guitars of "El Sol/L'Eclipse", which you can happily play to that friend who was obsessed with Rage Against The Machine. One of the hidden surprises of 2025. (Antonio Silvestri)

Turnstile – Never Enough

For anyone raised on rock and metal at the turn of the millennium, "Never Enough" is a nostalgic plunge into the past, filtered through a dreamlike lens. The thunderous guitars that were once so central to this music can now be heard behind ethereal melodies, right from the opening title track. Even the hardcore that Turnstile have practised since their debut is wrapped in this cloud of sweet, warm melancholy. Maybe it's because millennials love drowning in their memories, or maybe it's because the band nails a few choices that swerve away from the obvious — like the limping gait and fanfare of "Dreaming" — hitting hard without ever losing sight of the more evocative sides of this new incarnation: atmospheric drones, electronic textures, Eighties references, ghostly codas. By the time it closes with "Magic Man", the temptation is to start it all over again: just like you used to do with old compact discs, back in 2003 or thereabouts. (Antonio Silvestri)

Sharon Van Etten – & The Attachment Theory

A striking transformation for Sharon Van Etten, who for her 2025 album, released in early February, pulls off two significant artistic and aesthetic shifts, neither one negligible. The first is that she no longer writes and releases these new tracks solely under her own name, but instead takes on the role of leader of an actual band, The Attachment Theory. The result of a collective songwriting process, the ten songs (and here lies the second novelty) show a much rockier drive than usual, a rock with very strong gothic undertones, turning Van Etten into a captivating dark heroine not too far removed from the Siouxsie Sioux template. This aesthetic shift is confirmed by the band's live shows, acclaimed on the stages that hosted the lengthy promotional tour. An album with no weak tracks, preceded by the formidable single "Afterlife", which ranks among the peaks of Sharon's entire discography. But also keep an ear out for the emotional crescendo of "Live Forever", the engaging synthetic mood of "Idiot Box", the enveloping coils of "Trouble" and the surprisingly buoyant indie-rock stride of "Indio". Produced by Marta Salogni, a guarantee of quality in her own right. (Claudio Lancia)

Pop Muzik:

Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso – Papota

Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso are two Argentine musicians who run a joint project alongside their respective solo careers. The former, though a solid singer and guitarist, leans heavily towards hip-hop, while the latter, despite not paying much attention to his own instrumental backing, has a more pronounced melodic streak and favours electronic dance music. Until now, their output had always given a sense of untapped potential, but with "Papota" things change: recorded partly in the studio and partly during a legendary Tiny Desk Concert (the most-viewed one since 2022), it's a hyperdynamic hybrid of synth-funk, acid jazz, rap, soul and Latin American music. Nine tracks in barely 27 minutes of exhilarating music. (Federico Romagnoli)

FKA Twigs – Eusexua

One of 2025's most successful marriages of electronic and urban-pop comes courtesy of FKA Twigs, released early in the year. "Eusexua" is the most accessible record of her career, and at the same time gathers some of the finest songs the English artist has ever written, chief among them the shifting, iridescent movements of the title track. A record that finds its perfect single in "Perfect Stranger" and its dancefloor calling in liberating tracks like "Girl Feels Good" and "Room Of Fools", with Madonna and Björk respectively serving as the main muses. "Drums Of Death" is a triumph of jagged edges and fragmentation, conceived together with Koreless, "Striptease" is the most enveloping moment, while "Sticky" and closer "Wanderlust" offer the most intimate, softer touches. And that's not all: after a tour that also takes her to the stages of some of the world's biggest music festivals, towards the end of the year comes its twin record, "Eusexua Afterglow", not a reissue of "Eusexua" but its natural completion. (Claudio Lancia)

Gen Hoshino – Gen

Musician, songwriter, performer, but also an actor much loved by Japanese audiences, Hoshino crafts a record that fully reflects his all-round artistic nature: curious, playful, able to weave together different worlds without ever losing his personal touch. "Gen" breathes like a modern pop mosaic: velvety R&B, smoothed-out jazz, splashes of electronics and a warm, pulsing funky soul that runs through the album with total naturalness, fuelled also by its international collaborations. Every track feels like a small scene from a film, and a delicacy emerges that never slips into sentimentality. The title evokes an idea of rebirth, of "genesis", as if Hoshino were shaping a new musical world: colourful, permeable, welcoming. "Gen" doesn't demand interpretation, but rather invites you to let it wash over you. It's a record that smiles, that moves with elasticity, and that confirms Hoshino as one of the most versatile talents in contemporary Japanese pop culture. (Francesco Inglima)

Electronic:

Darkside – Nothing

A wonderfully spiced electronic mélange: the third album from Nicolás Jaar and co.'s project is a melting pot of flavors and genres. A mix of delicacy and surprising juxtapositions (psychedelia and dub, jazz and cumbia, folktronica and kraut-rock), and above all of enveloping sensations: nine tracks that are indeed fully-formed songs, but that put flow and atmosphere first. With great attention to detail and a fascinating interplay of progressive layering, "Nothing" captivates the listener for 45 minutes, gently lifting them up, cradling them in its bubble of heightened perceptions, and setting them back down with subliminal grace. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Rochelle Jordan – Through The Wall

When someone has the hit factor, you feel it instantly. Rochelle Jordan had already fully demonstrated back in 2021 that she had access to a hybrid language, equally convincing in her tightest, most danceable moments and in those where her r&b soul shone through more strongly; with "Through The Wall" the fusion is complete. Master of a take-no-prisoners house'n'b vocabulary, on her third album the Canadian musician devises a mechanism of creeping sensuality, classic in form but endowed with all the personality needed to avoid becoming a victim of itself. Between the Balearic memories of "Ladida", the bare-bones nocturnal mood of "TTW", and the best version of Kaytranada on "The Boy", Jordan moves with elegance yet commands the floor like a true diva, never needing to raise her voice to be noticed. Pure class, which I can't wait to confirm live in Milan next February 22nd. (Vassilios Karagiannis)

Oklou – Choke Enough

Like fog slowly clearing on the horizon: that's exactly what my relationship with "Choke Enough" has been like over the course of the year, the slow but steady rediscovery of a listen as subtle in its frequencies as it is complex in its emotions. Whispered vocals, foam-rubber keyboards and baroque melodies drawn from studies undertaken in her youth, the second album from Marylou Mayniel, aka Oklou, is as sad as tears on a jacket sleeve and then as warm as an embrace, quietly devastating in how it updates the electropop legacy of Imogen Heap for the digital age. She was also the star of a surprising episode of NPR's Tiny Desk, during which she reworked her own songs with disarming simplicity thanks to a choir's harmonies, revealing the structure underneath — and perhaps only Stina Nordenstam, before her, managed to hide steel beneath shyness with such results. (Damiano Pandolfini)

Antony Szmierek – Service Station At The End Of The Universe

There's not much to argue about: from where I stand, British hip-hop has an edge over its American counterpart. Maybe it's the accent, maybe it's that measured flow that trades arrogant swag for a lazy, almost careless gait. Maybe it's the beats, more taut and urban — or maybe just more European? Whatever the case, on "Service Station At The End Of The Universe" the first track kicks in and you immediately feel at home. Not that what Antony Szmierek does is exactly hip-hop, it's more spoken word — think Kae Tempest, basically: Kae Tempest over progressive house beats. Synth hooks, drum'n'bass bursts, stutter sequences that are all the rage right now and reek of Ibiza. Inventiveness abounds, time flies, and the album's twelve tracks make for a genuinely pleasurable ride. Because while Szmierek's voice may flaunt a certain lack of enthusiasm, there's no way he's letting the flow drop halfway through. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Songwriter:

Annahstasia – Tether

They tried to squeeze her into uncomfortable little r&b dresses, banking on her allure as a gorgeous model, but she said "no, no, no". With a voice as rough as gravel, guitar slung over her shoulder and a dusting of brass and strings in the background, this year Annahstasia set sail in search of a space where she could express her femininity free of outside pressure and the constraints of racial pigeonholing. Spiritually inspired by illustrious matriarchs like Tracy Chapman, Bobbie Gentry and Joni Mitchell, "Tether" was the folk revelation of my year, an album of immediate emotional impact, split between the stillness of spacious pastoral odes and deep gospel ecstasy. A precious listen from first note to last. Sadly it proved impossible to find a ticket for her shows, proof that, in the background of the independent scene, there are still plenty of people who feel the need to share small but important moments like this one. (Damiano Pandolfini)

Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up

David Berman, how we miss you. The ruthless poetry of Silver Jews, the tragic self-irony of Purple Mountains. But how many seeds you left along the way: because your spirit still hovers over the rebirth of American alt-country songwriting. And over Friendship, perhaps more than anyone: there's the austerity of Bill Callahan in the songs of "Caveman Wakes Up", there's the caustic gaze of Vic Chesnutt; but when Dan Wriggins' angular guitar and baritone timbre wind through the melody of "Betty Ford", it's the storyteller of "Random Rules" who immediately comes to mind. Fragments of lost conversations, snapshots of a frayed everyday life, a sense of reality that seems to crumble into dust. A bullet fired at an empty beer can and a dandelion seed suspended in the wind, all parts of the whole strung along the dotted line drawn by "All Over The World": ⟦Q1⟧. The voice of solitude, the voice of the connection of all things. (Gabriele Benzing)

Other Sounds:

Ko Shin Moon were formed in 2017 in Paris, when Axel Moon returned from India, where he had studied the local music, and joined forces with electronic producer Niko Shin. "Sîn" is their fourth album: its title evokes both an ancient Mesopotamian moon god and the concept of sin, a symbolic tension running through the whole project. Between acoustic openings, synthesizers, electropop pulses and suggestions drawn from Asia Minor and the Indian subcontinent, the tracklist grafts exotic traditions onto a vital, futuristic language. The lead single, "Perperişan", features the greatest Turkish songwriter working today, Mabel Matiz, and it earned him a complaint filed by his country's Interior Ministry on obscenity charges (the lyrics actually just describe a gay love affair). (Federico Romagnoli)

Zgarda – Zgarda

A compact yet intensely powerful journey through Ukrainian tradition reimagined with a contemporary sensibility. The collective Zgarda takes its name from an ornament typical of Carpathian folklore, bending acoustic instruments, polyphonic singing and ancestral rhythms into an essential, direct sound, free of any museum-like patina. The instrumentation is entirely acoustic: crystalline bandura, keening violin, cajón and djembe standing in for drums, upright bass alternating jazz pizzicato and drones, while Vitraniuk's white voice, dynamic and unpredictable, brings an almost pop freshness to the structures. The seven tracks swing between lively dances and dramatic laments. At a moment when Ukraine is urgently rediscovering its own roots, "Zgarda" emerges as one of the most intense folk works of the new millennium: essential, authentic, culturally necessary. (Francesco Inglima)

Italy:

La Niña – Furèsta

Traditional music and autotune, four-on-the-floor beats and odd time signatures: it may not be the progressive folk of Eugenio Bennato's Musicanova (that era is long gone), but the drive toward hybridization has little to be ashamed of. La Niña is Carola Moccia, a 34-year-old from Naples capable of making harpsichords collide with reggaeton flourishes, tammorre and urban beats, deep-rooted tradition and a vibrant voice that shapes, through the sounds of her local dialect, a second album that surprises and wins you over with its clarity of vision. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Joan Thiele – Joanita

And so the time came for Joan Thiele too to make an Italian-language record. Not that the switch to her mother tongue means anything more than an expressive need that also coincided with her debut at Sanremo, but “Joanita” is nonetheless, to date, the most solid record by the Lombard singer-songwriter, a melting-pot in which voice and guitar serve a vocabulary as varied as it is cohesive. From the Latin touches of “Veleno” to the cinematic attitude of “Dea” and “Occhi da gangster”, Thiele pairs a vibrant taste for sonic sophistication with a fully blossomed sense of melody, equally at ease in more hypnotic, elusive settings (“Bacio sulla fronte”) as in more straightforward territory (the Sanremo entry “Eco”) and urban structures (“XX L.A.”). A surprise? Not at all – simply the full flowering of an artist now fully aware of her own capabilities. (Vassilios Karagiannis)

Jazz:

Mary Halvorson – About Ghosts

Restless, tense, unpredictable. “About Ghosts” (Nonesuch Records) is the sixteenth album led by New York guitarist Mary Halvorson, one of today's most brilliant jazz instrumentalists and composers, as bandleader. The album blooms with lightning-fast timbral, melodic and harmonic ideas that look simultaneously in a thousand directions, from string jazz to tropicalia, from the Chicago Underground projects to the machines of Bebe Barron. Backed by a special band made up of equally talented contemporary jazz players – notably Tomas Fujiwara on drums, Patricia Brennan on vibraphone, Immanuel Wilkins on alto sax and Brian Settles on tenor sax – Halvorson's guitar leads us through electrifying jazzy flights with sudden choral openings (“Carved From”), reflective pauses caught between the modern (“Eventidal”) and the classic, smeared by the vibrato bar (“About Ghosts”), marches suspended between Tortoise and bebop (“Amaranthine”), and solos that meet electronics and orchestration at once (“Endmost”). Every track takes surprising turns and lands on unexpected endings. (Maria Teresa Soldani)

Makaya McCraven – Off The Record

The eagerness of too many specialized outlets to close out their year-end charts ahead of time keeps penalizing some excellent records released toward the tail end of the calendar. That's why you won't find Makaya McCraven's monumental new project on any 2025 best-of lists. A real shame, because with “Off The Record” the American drummer has made – in this writer's opinion – one of the best jazz-leaning albums of recent times. With McCraven we're talking about hyper-hybridized, unconventional jazz, steeped in influences and collaborations. Makaya initially rolled out the twenty tracks of “Off The Record” across four EPs released daily between October 28th and 31st, a breakdown that follows a chronological rather than stylistic logic, given that the recordings span a full decade, with live takes and studio sessions dating back to 2015, in which rhythm remains firmly at the heart of the project, amid red-hot grooves and improvisations that never fail to excite. Among the musicians involved, the names of Jeff Parker and Ben Lamar Gay stand out. Still looking ahead to the future of jazz. (Claudio Lancia)

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05/03/2026