Rosy Overdrive’s Top 40 Albums of 2025 So Far (Part 2 of 2)

If you’re only just now joining us: this is part two of my list of my favorite forty albums of 2025 thus far, presented in reverse alphabetical order. Thanks for reading!

View part one of the list here.

Here are links to stream a playlist of these selections via Spotify and Tidal (Bandcamp links are provided below for all records).

Kinski – Stumbledown Terrace

Release date: March 7^th
Record label: Comedy Minus One
Genre: Post-rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Kinski are an experimental post-rock band from Seattle, forming at the tail end of the 1990s and spending this century steadily releasing albums on storied indie rock labels like Sub Pop and Kill Rock Stars. Stumbledown Terrace is the group’s tenth album, their first in nearly seven years, their first for Comedy Minus One, and their first as a power trio in over twenty-five years. Clearly this paring down hasn’t slowed Kinski, though–their latest LP is a nice, electric jolt of a reminder of how cool guitar music is. On Stumbledown Terrace, Kinski walk the tightrope between instrumental, sprawling post-rock and punchy rock and roll like the best of their influences and peers like Sonic Youth, Trans Am, and Oneida. It has a live feel to it, certainly–and this applies to the moments in between the most kinetic ones, too. (Read more)

Jason Isbell – Foxes in the Snow

Release date: March 7^th
Record label: Southeastern
Genre: Folk, country, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Foxes in the Snow is a tough one, the “divorce album” that Jason Isbell recorded entirely on his own with just his acoustic guitar partly so he could just get the songs out and not have to dwell on them. 2023’s Weathervanes was my favorite Isbell album in quite some time, and while Foxes in the Snow isn’t an LP to “throw on” frequently like that one is, I do get the sense that it’s built to stand beyond the circumstances of its creation. Isbell’s separation from his wife and former bandmate Amanda Shires colors these songs, certainly, although one would have to have one’s head in the clouds not to recognize Foxes in the Snow’s ability to glance beyond that just frequently enough.

Idle Ray – Even in the Spring

Release date: June 6^th
Record label: Life Like
Genre: Lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

This one might be a little premature, because I only heard it for the first time the day before I’m writing this. But this Idle Ray album is sounding really good to me right now, and I had to make some space for it here. When the self-titled first Idle Ray album came out back in 2021, the Michigan “band” was pretty much entirely a Fred Thomas solo project; in the four years since, they’ve become a solid power trio with bassist Devon Clausen and guitarist Frances Ma joining Thomas, and the new members even wrote a few of the songs on Even in the Spring. Ma and Clausen’s contributions fit right in with Thomas’ lo-fi power pop/indie rock style, and the three of them zip through ten songs in a mere twenty-four minutes on this one.

Gum Parker – The Brakes

Release date: April 11^th
Record label: Repeating Cloud
Genre: 90s indie rock, power pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

If you’re familiar with Galen Richmond’s previous band Lemon Pitch, then that’s roughly what his current one, Gum Parker, sounds like, but if you aren’t then they’re sneakily difficult to define. Richmond’s a 90s indie rock devote, but with Gum Parker he comes off as much more interested in simply making loud pop music than trying to directly emulate his influences. The Portland, Maine group’s debut album The Brakes is “power pop” without that genre’s defining reverence, “pop punk” without a trace of what that term traditionally evokes, “slacker rock” made by people with the perpetual nervousness. Oh, and Richmond, despite being the primary songwriter, only sings about half the songs–bassist Kate Sullivan-Jones sings lead on the rest of ’em. (Read more)

Good Flying Birds – Talulah’s Tape

Release date: January 2^nd
Record label: Rotten Apple
Genre: Lo-fi pop, jangle pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

NOTE: Well, it looks like Rotten Apple has un-released this album with a cryptic note hinting at a possible re-pressing or new version of it coming next month. Good for the Flying Birds, but I don’t want to put an album that you can’t hear except through an unofficial YouTube upload on this list (Read more)

Fust – Big Ugly

Release date: March 7^th
Record label: Dear Life
Genre: Alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

At this point, I’m ready to declare Aaron Dowdy’s Fust the best band making country-influenced indie rock in North Carolina (and yes, I’m aware of what kind of competition that description pits them against). I’ve loved everything that this band has done thus far, but it didn’t take long before it became clear to me that Big Ugly is the band’s masterpiece. In what I can only assume is directly pandering to the author of this blog, Big Ugly is an album-length journey to Dowdy’s roots in southern West Virginia, drawing its name and much of its imagery from the shadow of the Guyandotte River in Lincoln County. The record’s scenes of corner stores and cinderblock-propped-up cars are much more than cheap signifiers, and I don’t really have the space and time here to get into everything going on in it, but that just leaves more for you to discover. 

Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up

Release date: May 16^th
Record label: Merge
Genre: Alt-country, ambient country
Formats: LP, CD, digital

The more anthemic, immediately-gripping songs of Friendship’s 2022 triumph Love the Stranger are gone on Caveman Wakes Up, and the Philadelphia alt-country group have replaced them with more ambient, vibes-based music. I compared Love the Stranger to Lambchop, without properly appreciating the kind of range that “Lambchop-esque” would end up giving them. Perhaps the die was cast for how this album would be perceived when they released a song called “Free Association” as the lead single. Frontperson Dan Wriggins, who recently released his first book of poetry, does seem more “poetic” on Caveman Wakes Up than he’s been in the past, but he’s also quite direct in his own way. I didn’t need the press pack to infer that a breakup was involved in the composition of these songs, for instance. (Read more)

Fluung – Fluung

Release date: April 7^th
Record label: Setterwind/Den Tapes
Genre: 90s indie rock, punk rock, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Seattle trio Fluung have been keeping Pacific Northwest indie rock loud, electric, and catchy since the mid-2010s, but Fluung is pretty clearly the band’s best work yet. An ambitious rock record that nearly doubles their last one in length, the third Fluung album has enough time to spit out a handful of blissful, hook-laden lost 90s alt-rock classics and push further into feedback-heavy, exploratory, lumbering fuzz rock terrain, too. Like the region’s best rock bands, Fluung is a record that’s about the journey as much as anything else, and the band make sure to leave us with a memorable and complete one. Fluung aren’t the first group to stumble onto something as fulfilling as this album, but it never gets old hearing a band figure it out like this. (Read more)

First Rodeo – Rode Hard and Put Away Wet

Release date: May 16^th
Record label: Bud Tapes
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, folk rock
Formats: Cassette, digital

Tim Howe (Vista House) and Nathan Tucker (Cool Original) are accomplished artists in their own rights, but the 2022 album they made together as First Rodeo is some of the finest work by either of them, so I was pleased to hear about Rode Hard and Put Away Wet, the duo’s second album together. Their new label Bud Tapes boasts that First Rodeo have “moved beyond genre constraints to explore collaborative songwriting and arranging”, and there are certainly moments (like “Nothing”) that back this up, but Rode Hard and Put Away Wet isn’t a huge departure–it’s still grounded in the roots, country, and folk rock on which First Rodeo built their initial foundation. (Read more)

Craig Finn – Always Been

Release date: April 4^th
Record label: Tamarac/Thirty Tigers
Genre: Singer-songwriter, heartland rock, synthrock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

The music of Craig Finn (and his band, The Hold Steady) is already fairly…divisive for the fickle bunch known as indie rock fans, and even those who enjoy Finn’s most acclaimed works seem split on Always Been, his latest solo record. I, for one, am really into it–I’ve felt that Finn’s solo career has benefited from his attempts to grow his music palette (we already know he’s a great storyteller–what else you got?), and Always Been–produced by Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs and leaning further into shined-up, 80s synth-rock than ever before–certainly qualifies. As always, the narratives are dense and no amount of polished production will ever make it “easy listening”. But I still love Finn and Granduciel’s attempts to make it so. 

FACS – Wish Defense

Release date: February 7^th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Noise rock, experimental rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Wish Defense was the last-ever album recorded by Steve Albini before his sudden passing last year, but its tragic circumstances do not obscure the fact that this LP is actually a rebirth and revitalization of FACS. The Chicago art rock trio welcome back original guitarist Jonathan Van Herik for the first time since their 2018 debut Negative Houses, now playing bass after founding bassist Brian Case moved over to guitar to replace him. 2023’s Still Life in Decay found FACS pushing and probing their sound to the outer margins of “rock music”, a direction seemingly necessary for the band to continue to sound inspired and forward-glancing. The reintroduction of Van Herik seems to have changed this calculus, allowing FACS to find heretofore undiscovered life in the realms of (relatively) brief bursts of power trio post-punk and noise rock. (Read more)

Ex-Vöid – In Love Again

Release date: January 17^th
Record label: Tapete
Genre: Power pop, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Yes, I know, we all love The Tubs, but have you been listening to their sibling band, Ex-Vöid? You know, the one that’s even better than The Tubs (although, to be fair, Cotton Crown is a gap-closer)? Lan McArdle and Owen Williams (who first debuted as members of Joanna Gruesome in the 2010s) singing together is one of the greatest sounds one can hear in all of indie pop/power pop/jangle pop/et cetera, and Ex-Vöid’s sophomore album In Love Again certainly delivers on that front. Perhaps a little less punchy and more refined than 2022’s Bigger Than Before, the latest from Ex-Vöid is as natural-feeling a guitar pop album as any of those to which its members have lent their talents.

Dick Texas – All That Fall

Release date: March 7^th
Record label: Life Like/Tortilla Flat
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, post-rock, slowcore, art rock, folk rock, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, digital

All That Fall, the first Dick Texas album, has been over a half-decade in the making, but it’s pretty believable that letting this music marinate for as long as it did helped make the album as special as it turned out to be. Loosely speaking, All That Fall is a country rock record–and “loose” is the right word to use here, as Dick Texas’ lost, woozy, incredibly slow playing style really does sound on the verge of falling apart more often than not. The songs–all seven of ‘em, that’s all we need–sprawl out in their self-contained desert worlds, and Valerie Salerno is the steady center with vocals that murmur along with the music’s psychedelic haze, declining to hog the spotlight but still leaving a distinct mark on Dick Texas’ landscapes. (Read more)

Cootie Catcher – Shy at First

Release date: March 14^th
Record label: Cooked Raw
Genre: Indie pop, twee, electronica, bedroom pop, experimental pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

As one might expect from a band with a “DJ scratcher” enlisted, Toronto’s Cootie Catcher have a foot in the world of electronic music (largely due to the wobbly, wavering synths that Sophia Chavez injects over top of more typical indie pop instrumentals). The group strike a balance between tweeish guitar pop and the aforementioned synth touches on their sophomore album, Shy at First–sometimes Cootie Catcher lean more into guitar pop, sometimes into the stranger electronic impulses, and sometimes both flare up notably in the same song. Shy at First has a ton of obvious “hits”, but even the more curious moments on the album are still “pop songs”, just presented in a somewhat hazier fashion. (Read more)

Club Night – Joy Coming Down

Release date: May 2^nd
Record label: Tiny Engines
Genre: Art rock, math rock, emo
Formats: Vinyl, digital

There were plenty of groups in the late 2010s making music that could be described as some combination of “math rock”, “indie rock”, and “emo”, but the way that Club Night do it–an overall hugeness, jittery art-punk instrumentation, strange but welcome synth-centric additions–just works better than the others. It was enough to keep the band regularly on my mind in the six-year gap between their first album, What Life, and Joy Coming Down, which picks up right where Club Night left off–not that a band like this can ever really be predictable, but their second album packs as much of what makes this group special as it can in its forty-two minutes. Club Night alternate between sounding like a real, rumbling live rock band and a bunch of artists frantically sculpting something in a gigantic studio throughout the album. Like a good math rock record, a lot of these change-ups in Joy Coming Down happen in the same song. (Read more)

Cheekface – Middle Spoon

Release date: February 25^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, indie pop, post-punk, Cheekface
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

For the better part of a decade now, Los Angeles trio Cheekface have been making an incredibly specific type of music, a proprietary blend of power pop, dance-punk, and Television combined with Greg Katz’s everyman talk-singing vocals mixed up in a way scientifically guaranteed to garner Cake comparisons. The orations of Katz, a state-of-the-union collection of one-liners and fake-outs from somebody who has incomplete knowledge of every subject, have always been the immediate draw, but the band behind him and their mastery of “groove” have been an increasingly potent weapon. This growth is present on the fifth Cheekface LP, Middle Spoon, featuring more big-chorus power pop slingers than ever before. You can still dance to it, of course, but somehow it’s a more cathartic hip-swaying. (Read more)

Charm School – Debt Forever

Release date: January 24^th
Record label: Surprise Mind
Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, garage punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The 2023 Finite Jest EP introduced Louisville’s Charm School as devotees of Touch & Go Records-influenced post-punk, garage rock, and post-rock. On their first LP, Debt Forever, Charm School haven’t completely shaken up their sound, but they’re doing something a little different here. It’s somehow both looser and angrier; there’s still plenty of that modern Fall-influenced post-punk sound here, but there’s also some San Diego-style post-hardcore/garage rock and turn-of-the-century Washington, D.C. art punk in the mix, too. As the title hints at, Debt Forever spends a good deal of time focusing on financial anxiety and insecurity–whether the alternatively brooding and seething music drew this all-American fear out of frontperson Andrew Sellers or whether his preoccupations with such matters informed the music, there’s no denying the synergy here. (Read more)

Califone – The Villager’s Companion

Release date: February 21^st
Record label: Jealous Butcher
Genre: Folk rock, post-rock, art rock, blues rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

As the name implies, The Villager’s Companion is linked to the Califone record before it, 2023’s The Villagers: it was recorded around the same time and is augmented by a couple of covers that have been previously released over the past few years. Califone bandleader Tim Rutili referred to these songs as “misfit toys” when the album was announced, but The Villager’s Companion is just further confirmation that Califone thrives in a less formal environment. It gives Rutili and company a chance to both spin some simple blues-folk numbers and to journey beyond them right next to each other, to interpret other people’s songs and incorporate them into the Califone songbook like they’ve always belonged there. (Read more)

Bliss? – Pass Yr Pain Along

Release date: March 21^st
Record label: Psychic Spice
Genre: Lo-fi power pop, garage rock, jangle punk, mod revival
Formats: Cassette, digital

The debut from a new power trio straight out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bliss?’s Pass Yr Pain Along is a full exploration of the strains of guitar pop (“REM, power pop, and all varieties of jangly 80s college rock”) formative to the band–Josh Higdon’s vocals are incredibly Elvis Costello-reminiscent, while the band’s somewhat jangly post-Replacements pop rock and roll sounds like the Gin Blossoms as interpreted by basement punk musicians. It’s not a “punk” record per se, but it absolutely benefits from a little roughness–Higdon isn’t at all shy about putting the vocals up front, and the band are loose but clear in a way that puts the spotlight on a collection of songs that really could’ve been shipped straight from Homestead Records to your local college radio station circa 1989. (Read more)

The Bird Calls – Melody Trail

Release date: February 7^th
Record label: Ruination
Genre: Folk rock, soft rock, singer-songwriter, synthpop, sophisti-pop
Formats: CD, digital

2025’s album from Sam Sodomsky’s prolific project The Bird Calls has arrived already, and I’m pleased that the New York singer-songwriter (and music writer) has put together something a bit different this time with Melody Trail. The album was assembled entirely by Sodomsky and producer Ryan Weiner, and while these songs certainly sound like they were written and sung by the same artist who made last year’s casual country-folk Old Faithful, the duo give Melody Trail a more polished pop reading. It’s a path down which many of Sodomsky’s influences–Dan Bejar, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen–have wandered to rewarding ends, but Melody Trail retains the greatest strength of Sodomsky’s previous work: namely, that he’s able to evoke the art of such idiosyncratic, larger-than-life figures while coming off more or less as a regular guy. (Read more)

Alex Orange Drink – Victory Lap (#23)

Release date: May 9^th
Record label: Million Stars
Genre: Garage punk, power pop, folk punk, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Alex Zarou Levine didn’t choose to pigeonhole himself as the punk rock musician who writes about his experiences living with and battling various medical ailments; he’s just attempting to live his life, I think. 2021’s Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K. is about Levine’s long-term metabolic genetic disorder homocystinuria, and this year’s Victory Lap (#23) came about after the So So Glos frontperson was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma and subsequently went through intense chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Victory Lap (#23) is as defiant and fiery as one would hope from its title, an excellent collection of Levine’s signature New York City power pop rock, slapdash, garage-y punk, and folk punk-adjacent singalongs.

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