Hello! Welcome back (or just welcome) to Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2025! Today reveals the top 50 albums on the list. Yesterday unveiled numbers 100 through 51, so be sure to check those out as well if you haven’t yet.
See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist with all albums (Spotify link) (Tidal link)
50. Cootie Catcher – Shy at First
Release date: March 14th
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)
49. Joel Cusumano – Waxworld
Release date: October 24th
Record label: Dandy Boy
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Power pop fans who read this blog may have heard Oakland musician Joel Cusumano via his work as the guitarist in R.E. Seraphin, or maybe they’re familiar with him as the frontperson of Sob Stories, but it’s his first-ever solo album, Waxworld, that cements him as a key figure in the Bay Area indie pop scene. Cusumano can write jangle pop as well as his associates, but he’s a distinct bandleader who favors sprinkling mythology, art history, and religion throughout his writing. I see why Cusumano tapped the titular uncanny lifelike art form to represent Waxworld–it’s a good metaphor, but it’s also an entire medium beyond that, befitting of somebody alight with non-musical influences as well as the typical “college rock”. (Read more)
48. Good Flying Birds – Talulah’s Tape
Release date: January 2nd
Record label: Rotten Apple/Carpark/Smoking Room
Genre: Lo-fi pop, jangle pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Loosely speaking, Indianapolis’ Good Flying Birds fit into a new jangle pop movement somewhere alongside acts like the psychedelic freakbeat of The Smashing Times, the lo-fi mod revival of Sharp Pins, and their dreamy, hazier labelmates Living Dream. However, their debut release Talulah’s Tape is more…frantic than any of those bands. Perhaps appropriately for an act named after a Guided by Voices song, there’s a slapdash basement feel to these tracks: the most obvious pop hits on the record sound like the band recorded them as quickly as possible before the jangly inspiration faded, while the more full-on rockers demonstrate their ability to step on the gas pedal when they want to. (Read more)
47. Miscellaneous Owl – The Cloud Chamber
Release date: March 7th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Bedroom pop, synthpop, indie folk, lo-fi pop
Formats: Digital
This year’s Miscellaneous Owlbum is called The Cloud Chamber, and Madison, Wisconsin singer-songwriter Huan-Hua Chye promises something “folkier, quieter, and dreamier” this time around, as well as “1000% more theremin” than on her last record (You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow, one of my favorites of 2024). While the exact specifics of this description (other than the theremin part) are up for debate, I do agree that The Cloud Chamber displays a more thoughtful and subdued side to Chye’s writing. You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow ran out to greet us with early Magnetic Fields-worthy bright synthpop instrumentals, and while this new one has some such moments, on the whole it’s more of an album that one is “welcome to join in progress” than one that’s going out of its way to invite us inside. (Read more)
46. Pigeon Pit – Crazy Arms
Release date: January 17th
Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Folk punk, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
In the three years since their breakout album, 2022’s Feather River Canyon Blues, Olympia folk punk rockers Pigeon Pit have solidified into a six-piece “country/punk maximalist” group led by former sole member Lomes Oleander and featuring a bunch of Olympia-area ringers. Crazy Arms is both a culmination of “Pigeon Pit the Band” and a statement of their current power; Oleander is still a “folk punk” frontperson, yes, but her vocals and writing have evolved to also encapsulate the kind of world-reverent folk-y indie rock practiced by heroes like the Mountain Goats, The Weakerthans, and certain eras of Against Me!–and, of course, the band is key in helping her realize a more expansive sound for these songs, too. Pigeon Pit is always giving about 120 percent on Crazy Arms, even (perhaps especially) when Oleander is singing about being run-through and tired. (Read more)
45. Hallelujah the Hills – DECK
Release date: June 13th
Record label: Best Brother/Discrete Pageantry
Genre: 2000s indie rock, folk rock, heartland rock
Formats: Vinyl (Diamonds only), playing cards, digital
Boston’s Hallelujah the Hills burst onto the scene in the 2000s with a 90s-style lo-fi, quick-hook attitude combined with a largess and sincerity from a different world entirely, and their career has been marked by a focused consistency ever since. The Ryan H. Walsh-led band has spent the 2020s working on a project called DECK: four albums, fifty-two songs, with every track corresponding to a card in a traditional deck of playing cards. DECK is a pure reflection of what I interpret as the Hallelujah the Hills ethos–it’s highly collaborative, it’s incredibly earnest and adventurous in both its writing and arrangement, and it’s dream-like despite a very grounded execution from the players. (Read more)
44. Star 99 – Gaman
Release date: March 7th
Record label: Lauren
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
A year and a half after Bitch Unlimited (my second favorite album of 2023), San Jose power pop group Star 99 returned in 2025 with a fifth bandmember, a more wide-ranging sound, and a sophomore album called Gaman. I’d be despondent if Star 99 completely abandoned the sugary power-pop-punk that they’d mastered on their last album, and thankfully Gaman is not a reinvention so much as an expansion. Star 99 have once again put together a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it (twenty-five minutes, actually shorter this time around) collection of tour-de-force songs with plenty of knockout punches; they’ve merely diversified the way that they go about landing these blows, is all. (Read more)
43. Kinski – Stumbledown Terrace
Release date: March 7th
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)
42. Dick Texas – All That Fall
Release date: March 7th
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 LP, 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)
41. Rip Van Winkle – Blasphemy
Release date: July 11th
Record label: Splendid Research
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, post-punk, art rock, Guided by Voices
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Rip Van Winkle, made up of Robert Pollard and members of the band Joseph Airport, are the latest “weird” Guided by Voices offshoot. The lo-fi, clanging experimental EP The Grand Rapids introduced us to Rip Van Winkle last year with a brief but tantalizing offbeat teaser, and the project’s first album, Blasphemy, delivers on that promise. On the surface, Blasphemy has the same sloppy, surprising qualities of Pollard’s albums where he himself plays (nearly) everything–Vampire on Titus, Please Be Honest, his Teenage Guitar project–but despite this, there’s a secret polish to the playing of the rest of Rip Van Winkle that provides a link to Pollard’s more obviously pop-forward material. (Read more)
40. Saoirse Dream – Saoirse Dream
Release date: February 28th
Record label: Lauren
Genre: Hyperpop, synthpop, indie pop, bedroom pop, noise pop, chiptune, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Since the beginning of this decade, Catherine Egbert has been connected to “hyperpop” as a movement, both through her work as Saoirse Dream and as part of collectives like webcage and User-177606669. Her debut album for Lauren Records is indeed a charged mix of chiptune pop blasts, pop punk guitars, emo angst, and lo-fi bedroom pop intimacy. Saoirse Dream isn’t as sonically chaotic as a lot of hyperpop I’m familiar with–I could imagine more typical pop punk/indie pop versions of most of these songs (in fact, they might already be in there somewhere), but Egbert has such a handle on these extra touches and tools that they pretty much always feel like they add to the music. Saoirse Dream has a ton of ideas in any case, and most of these are executed in the context of sweeping pop music. (Read more)
39. Idle Ray – Even in the Spring
Release date: June 6th
Record label: Life Like
Genre: Lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
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. It’s a noisy but efficient and laser-focused pop record that suggests Thomas, as strong of a songwriter as he is, was right to open Idle Ray up for more collaboration.
38. Tullycraft – Shoot the Point
Release date: August 22nd
Record label: HHBTM
Genre: Twee, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
I’m not sure I would’ve pegged Tullycraft as the 90s indie pop band to still be going strong in the year 2025, but here we are with Shoot the Point, a very solid collection of pop music that might be “mature” in some ways but that doesn’t involve “slowing down” in any. Bouncing power pop hooks, tambourine-shaking barebones 60s throwbacks, two wisened but still animated personalities at the reins–it’s hard to find any fault with where Tullycraft are at these days. There are just way too many big pop home-runs on Shoot the Point–lesser bands have built entire albums around mid-record stocking-stuffers like “Rhinestone Tease” and “Tarrytown”. So here’s to Tullycraft, a band thankfully eager to prove that they are, right now, at the top of their complicated game. (Read more)
37. Lùlù – Lùlù
Release date: June 6th
Record label: Howlin Banana/Taken by Surprise/Dangerhouse Skylab
Genre: Power pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
The self-titled debut album from Lyon/Marseille-based Lùlù is power pop in its most freewheeling, energetically fun form. Bandleader Luc Simone and his collaborators gleefully roll around in the histories of garage rock and punk rock to make ten massively hooky rock and roll knockout punches. Far removed from the refined, cosmopolitan sound that I associated with French indie pop, Lùlù has more in common with Australian garage-power-poppers like The Unknowns and Romero, American retro-pop groups like Sheer Mag and Free Energy, and, honestly, even a little bit of melodic lifer “orgcore” punk rock groups. (Read more)
36. Higher Selves Playdate – The New Apocalyptic
Release date: July 30th
Record label: Olly Olly
Genre: Psychedelic pop, indie pop, synthpop, power pop, new wave
Formats: Digital
Fairfax, Virginia’s Higher Selves Playdate have been around and steadily releasing singles since 2020, but, as far as I can tell, The New Apocalyptic is the duo’s first full-length album. The New Apocalyptic is a colorful and glitzy pop album, a glorious mess of glitter, danceable beats, and great pop smarts equally anchored by sparkling synthesizers, taut and rhythmic basslines, and delirious sugar-high tempos. The duo name Devo, Grace Jones, and the B-52s as some of their favorite acts, and while The New Apocalyptic doesn’t precisely sound like any of those artists, it’s an album made by people with a deep understanding of the freakier sides of dance music, the transformative power of new wave, and the rich inner mythologies suggested by those names. (Read more)
35. Abe Savas – 99 Songs (Plus One)
Release date: June 20th
Record label: Badgering the Witless
Genre: Power pop, bedroom pop, folk-pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
The album is called 99 Songs (Plus One), and that’s exactly what it offers us. 99 Songs (Plus One) fits its one-hundred tracks in seventy-eight minutes (enough for one CD)–you can do the math, but this means a lot of these songs are snippets a few seconds long, and even the more fully-developed tracks are almost all under two minutes in length. The songs range from incredibly goofy to surprisingly poignant, genre-wise hopping from power pop to acoustic folk to more side-excursions than I can count. There’s a lot of Elvis Costello in Abe Savas’ pop music instincts, and this chaotic collection will likely also appeal to fans of Tony Molina, They Might Be Giants, and maybe even Fountains of Wayne. There’s a ton of brilliant moments on 99 Songs (Plus One), and one may only need to wait a couple of seconds after one ends for another to begin. (Read more)
34. Robbie Fulks – Now Then
Release date: September 5th
Record label: Compass
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, singer-songwriter, bluegrass, country-folk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Oh, man. It’s so nice to have a new classic grab-bag Robbie Fulks album. Not that I disliked the forays into more traditional bluegrass and his collaborative record with Linda Gail Lewis, but the alt-country firebrand has long had an incredibly wide range of strengths, and Now Then puts a bunch of them on full display. Between the sprawling, gorgeous folk rock storytelling of songs like “That Was Juarez, This Is Alpine” and “There’s a Man”, the exhilarating country rocker “Now Now Now Now Now”, and the typically clever traditionalism of “Poor and Sharp-Witted”, it really does feel like the album the Let’s Kill Saturday Night guy would make a quarter-century later.
33. Alex Orange Drink – Victory Lap (#23)
Release date: May 9th
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.
32. Stay Inside – Lunger
Release date: October 3rd
Record label: Tiny Engines
Genre: Emo, art rock, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Stay Inside became one of the best emo bands currently active so naturally and quietly that I didn’t even notice until now. I enjoyed last year’s Ferried Away, but it now feels like it was a warm-up for Lunger, Stay Inside’s third and best LP. Lunger is fourteen songs of the New York quartet delivering blows informed by heavy-gravity groups like mewithouYou and The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, only chiseled down to punchy, poppy emo-rock songs. Stay Inside do their best to outrun a sense of decay through a smattering of sweeping rockers–really, just about every song on Lunger feels like it’s in motion in some form. Stay Inside’s progress had largely flown under the radar until now, but we all ought to be listening after Lunger. (Read more)
31. The Telephone Numbers – Scarecrow II
Release date: October 10th
Record label: Slumberland
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The Telephone Numbers’ Thomas Rubenstein is remarkable in how he manages to carve out his own signature style while giving so much of himself over to the towering jangle pop, college rock, and power pop that’s shaped the entire scene around him. The one-off singles and compilation appearances in the intervening four years only increased my anticipation for Scarecrow II, the second Telephone Numbers LP and the first one for Slumberland Records. Scarecrow II also happens to be the band’s first as a solid quartet, and it sounds like Rubenstein and his collaborators have long been ready to turn their intermittent brilliance into something larger-scale. (Read more)
30. Possible Humans – Standing Around Alive
Release date: October 9th
Record label: Hobbies Galore
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Possible Humans’ 2019 album Everybody Split (released in the United States by the recently-defunct and already-sorely-missed Trouble in Mind) was one of my favorite albums of that year, establishing the Melbourne-based group as one of the best garage-tinged jangle pop groups currently active. It took a half-dozen years to get another Possible Humans album, but Standing Around Alive sounds just like that band that grabbed me at the end of last decade. The second Possible Humans album marries that gloomy and motorik sides of post-punk with bittersweet, Kiwi-influenced jangly guitar pop in a sturdy way that only sounds better the more I listen to it.
29. Buddie – Glass
Release date: November 7th
Record label: Crafted Sounds/Placeholder
Genre: Power pop, fuzz pop, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Glass is the third Buddie album and the first recorded with the 90s indie rock/fuzz pop/power pop revival band’s new Vancouver-based lineup (lead guitarist Patrick Farrugia, drummer Natalie Glubb, and bassist Lindsay Partin). The eight-song, twenty-five minute LP sounds almost exactly like the previous, Philadelphia-stationed version of Buddie (and that’s a good thing); if there’s a difference between this one and their last LP, it’s a slightly more “rocking” record, probably due to the consistent lineup (only the four Buddie members, no guest musicians this time around) and the all-too-brief runtime. Despite the similarities, Glass feels like a distinct version of this band and, I suspect, will continue to assert itself in Buddie’s discography regardless of what the group do next. (Read more)
28. Dancer – More or Less
Release date: September 12th
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: Indie pop, post-punk, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
I’ve been clear enough on this blog that Glasgow’s Dancer is a special group, and they’ve continued their winning streak into 2025, as their sophomore album, More or Less, is their most substantial release yet at a dozen tracks and nearly forty minutes. It’s the band’s first album with new drummer Luke Moran, but despite the lineup change, More or Less has Dancer sounding more fluid and locked-in as a band than ever before. The jerky post-punk/offbeat indie pop structures are still part and parcel of More or Less, yes, but they’ve been more effectively ironed into a wider tapestry of expansive, exploratory art rock and (for Dancer, at least) more laid-back pursuits of pop music. Dancer may be taking their time a little more here, but they aren’t slowing down. (Read more)
27. Mekons – Horror
Release date: April 4th
Record label: Fire
Genre: Post-punk, art punk, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The Mekons are forty-nine years old this year. I’m not even going to try to figure out what number LP they’re on at this point. And yet here is Horror, an album that purports to “[look] at history and the legacies of British imperialism with mashed up lyrics” and that sounds a hell of a lot like the great Mekons records littered throughout history before it. Post-punk artsiness, alt-country rock-and-rolling, traditionalist folk instrumentation, reggae rhythms, and a good old communal feeling all permeate Horror, an album that keeps one foot in the past only to mainline all the power and humanity and bullshit that’s still ever-so-relevant today, always forging some kind of connection or another.
26. Califone – The Villager’s Companion
Release date: February 21st
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)
Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)
Rosy Overdrive 