Rosy Overdrive’s Top 25 EPs of 2025

EPs! My 25 favorites from this year, to be precise! A week after Rosy Overdrive wrapped its Top 100 Albums of 2025, the blog is sharing this smaller, (on average) more obscure, and all-around fun list. There’s a bunch of records in here that deserved way more attention this year than they ended up getting, and now’s the perfect time to start fixing that.

Here are links to the EPs on this list that are on streaming services: Spotify, Tidal. Look for a Best Compilations/Reissues of 2025 list and a couple more Pressing Concerns before the year’s out. To read about much more music beyond what’s on this list, check out the site directory, and if you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. Thank you for reading, and, last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

25. The Cindys – The Cindys

Release date: November 7^thRecord label: Ruination/Breakfast
Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

The Cindys are a band from Bristol, England founded by Jack Ogborne, an art rocker who wanted a project for making music inspired by 80s guitar pop (touchstones like C86 and Flying Nun have been thrown around). The Cindys is a pretty unimpeachable debut, a twenty-one-minute, seven-song record that’s nonetheless stocked with fully-fleshed-out ideas and confident pop performances. The majority of The Cindys may have been recorded on 8-track cassette in a basement, but it’s on the more polished, stately side of the “indie pop spectrum”. (Read more)

24. Marni – fml era

Release date: October 10^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Fuzz rock, shoegaze, alt-rock, slowcore, 90s indie rock
Formats: Digital

When I wrote about the band Marni briefly in 2023, they were the solo project of Palm Springs vocalist/guitarist Nicolas Lara, but they’re now a full Los Angeles-based band, settling in nicely with West Coast groups playing some mixture of slowcore, shoegaze, and fuzz-punk (they opened for Idaho last year, if that helps). Marni’s latest EP, fml era, is the best that they’ve sounded yet, even if (perhaps because) they’re still kind of hard to get a handle on: expect heavy alt-rock rippers and slowcore/alt-country meanderers both in these five songs. (Read more)

23. Left Tracks – LT2

Release date: September 26^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Art pop, indie pop, psychedelic pop, synthpop
Formats: Digital

Kabir Kumar (Sun Kin) and Phil Di Leo (DI LEO, Seemway) co-founded Left Tracks as a way to stay musically connected after the latter’s departure to SoCal from Oakland; the project’s second release, the appropriately-titled LT2, contains plenty of the vibrant, colorful indie pop that I’ve enjoyed via Sun Kin. LT2 is both more streamlined and weirder than Kumar’s solo project, somehow–I’m not sure how else to describe a record that quickly darts between minimal spoken word experimentation, bright, sunny pop-rock, and deconstructed dream folk (among other diversions). (Read more)

22. Lozenge – EP1

Release date: April 25^thRecord label: Candlepin
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, shoegaze, fuzz pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

After putting out a demo cassette on Pleasure Tapes last year, Los Angeles shoegaze group Lozenge linked up with blog favorite Candlepin Records to release their debut EP. EP1 is five songs of lo-fi melodies and fuzz, an impressively strong bid to enter the pantheon of modern “Guided by Voices-gaze” bands like Gaadge and Ex Pilots. Walls of amplifiers and distorted, tinny guitars course through EP1’s veins, but it’s not too hard to make out shimmery, jangly guitar pop music shining amidst the noise.

21. Cast of Thousands – Useful People

Release date: January 9^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, college rock
Formats: Cassette, digital

Hot on the heels of their 2024 debut album, Third House, Austin power pop insurgents Cast of Thousands kicked off 2025 with a rock-solid four-song EP called Useful People back in January. The chugging alt-rock/power pop/“heartland” rock anthem “Heads or Tails” (featuring, in a surprising twist, heavy AutoTune on bandleader Max Vandever’s vocals) is Cast of Thousands’ best song yet, but Useful People makes it onto this list thanks to a solid supporting cast too, from the breezy jangly college rock of the title track to the mid-tempo, measured “Serpo”.

20. Patches – A Three Legged Chair

Release date: February 3^rdRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Dream pop, post-punk, jangle pop, college rock
Formats: Digital

The bad news is that the remote-collaborating college rock/post-punk/jangle pop trio Patches broke up this year, but the good news is that Evan Seurkamp, Aaron Griffin, and Robin KC left us with one final release, a five-song EP of material that was “scrapped, passed over, or shared elsewhere”. There’s a Guided by Voices cover from a compilation I wrote about in 2023, an alternate version of a track from their 2022 debut album Tales We Heard from the Fields, and three previously-unheard tracks, two of which feature Robin’s sister (credited as “KRMT”) on lead vocals. It wasn’t really meant to, but A Three Legged Chair does hold its own against a couple of underrated but brilliant albums. (Read more)

19. Midwestern Medicine – Ripped Headline

Release date: February 21^stRecord label: Website
Genre: Garage rock, garage punk, 90s indie rock, post-punk
Formats: Digital

New England indie rock fixture Brock Ginther has honed a distinct style over the years (in his current band Midwestern Medicine as well as older bands like Lemon Pitch and King Pedestrian), marked by an ability to veer between polished, humble-sounding poppy 90s indie rock evoking Jason Lytle, Mark Linkous, and Stephen Malkmus to off-the-wall careening rockabilly rave-ups at the drop of a pin. The five-song Ripped Headlines EP finds Ginther and the rest of Midwestern Medicine hewing toward the more slapdash side of the spectrum–it’s a noisy, garage-y indie rock EP, but one that unmistakably bears the mark of its frontperson. (Read more)

18. Disaster Kid – Rare Bird

Release date: March 21^stRecord label: Semicircle
Genre: Alt-country, power pop, folk rock
Formats: Digital

Let it not be said that Seamus Kreitzer doesn’t put himself out there as a writer. Rare Bird is clearly a record in which its frontperson put a lot of thought into the lyrics and isn’t afraid to show it–any EP prominently featuring the line “Don’t apologize so much for nurturing an unknown beauty,” has to fall into this category to some degree. On the whole, Disaster Kid fits in well with Chicago’s modern folk rock/alt-country scene, but there’s a delicate side to Kreitzer’s writing that gives the EP a unique spin (and, on the flipside, Rare Bird as a whole is as good as it is because of the strong reading the rest of the band give to Kreitzer’s words and melodies). (Read more)

17. Sting Pain Index – The Revolution Somewhere Else

Release date: September 29^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Post-punk, noise rock, post-hardcore, garage punk, new wave, art rock
Formats: Digital

Sting Pain Index are a self-proclaimed “punk rock supergroup” with connections to Texas, Tennessee, and Maryland, and I suppose that their newest EP, The Revolution Somewhere Else, is punk rock–sometimes of a noisy, abrasive, and “post-” variety, and sometimes not like that at all. The first half of The Revolution Somewhere Else gives us garage-y noise punk and prowling post-punk, but things get pretty weird on Side B with a seven-minute 80s-style power ballad called “I Could Have Been Queen” and a shockingly faithful cover of Tears for Fears’ “Break It Down Again”. It all makes sense if you try to see it from Sting Pain Index’s perspective. (Read more)

16. Blue Zero – Confusion

Release date: October 29^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Fuzz rock, 90s indie rock, shoegaze, noise pop, post-punk
Formats: Cassette, digital

If there’s one thing about Oakland musician Chris Natividad I know, it’s that he loves playing in bands (see Marbled Eye, Public Interest, Aluminum, and Tanukichan)–so it’s not so surprising that his onetime solo project Blue Zero are a solid quartet on their newest record, Confusion. Blue Zero’s self-released cassette EP is a big step forward for the group, with the shoegaze-y fuzz pop of their debut album Colder Shade Blue exploding into an intense, focused, but still quite catchy brand of Sonic Youth-style indie rock. It’s a welcome check-in from a band on an upward trajectory. (Read more)

15. The Pennys – The Pennys

Release date: May 1^stRecord label: Mt.St.Mtn.
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The Bay Area indie pop team-up that we didn’t know we needed, The Pennys are co-led by Michael Ramos (who makes slow-moving, unmoored, dreamy indie pop as Tony Jay) and Ray Seraphin (who embraces fuller and more grounded power pop/college rock as R.E. Seraphin). Busier than Tony Jay but more subdued than R.E. Seraphin, The Pennys hit the jangle pop sweet spot for six songs and sixteen minutes on their self-titled debut. Seraphin and Ramos roam in tandem from electric power pop to Velvets-y dream pop across The Pennys, spotlighting both the former’s lost-in-time power pop and the latter’s “prehistorical pop music slowed down and reverb-ed all up”. (Read more)

14. Time Thief – Time Thief

Release date: September 12^thRecord label: Musical Fanzine/Lost Sound Tapes
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, indie pop, 90s indie rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Time Thief are a new band from Providence, Rhode Island made up of two familiar faces in Zoë Wyner (Halfsour, Zowy) and James Walsh (Dump Him, Musical Fanzine Records). The first Time Thief release is a self-titled 10” record and cassette tape that introduces an even-keeled duo with a clear, wide-ranging love of lo-fi indie rock and pop music. Time Thief has a nice, full-band sound, but the instrumentals are hardly overly polished or showy. Over the course of fourteen minutes, Time Thief masters melancholic Pacific Northwestern indie rock, jangly indie pop, 60s-ish folk-rock, and choppy, bass-led, post-punk-influenced material. (Read more)

13. Bliss? – Keep Your Joy to Yourself

Release date: November 21^stRecord label: Psychic Spice
Genre: Garage rock, power pop, college rock, punk rock
Formats: Cassette, digital

Bliss?’s Pass Yr Pain Along was one of my favorite albums of this year: a punk band making a record of Elvis Costello-inspired college rock, power pop, and rough-around-the-edges mod-revival. As one might guess from the thematically similar title, Keep Your Joy to Yourself’s songs were written at the same time as those on Bliss?’s debut album, but they “weren’t ready to be recorded” until now. Bliss? dropped down from trio to duo in between the two records, but Keep Your Joy to Yourself isn’t any kind of major departure from what they’ve done so well so far –it certainly does sound like three songs that could’ve been on Pass Yr Pain Along. (Read more)

12. Perennial – Perennial ‘65

Release date: April 4^thRecord label: Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Art punk, garage rock, post-hardcore, experimental
Formats: Digital

Perennial ‘65 (named as a nod to the mid-career Beatles ‘65 compilation) gives the New England “modernist punk” trio a chance to try some things that they perhaps didn’t have time for in last year’s tight, twenty-one minute Art History while still sounding very much like the Perennial we’ve all come to know and love. We get one brand-new original Perennial rock and roll song (the title track), a ferocious garage rock cover of The Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night”, two remixes from Cody Votolato and Chris Walla, and a track that continues the band’s exploration into experimental noise and electronic terrain (“C is for Cubism”). (Read more)

11. The Croaks – Menagerie

Release date: July 11^thRecord label: Cretin
Genre: Folk rock, prog-folk, traditional folk
Formats: CD, digital

The Croaks are a prog-folk “wench rock” band from Boston who got on my radar with 2023’s Croakus Pocus; their follow-up release, Menagerie, is a bit shorter, but there’s still plenty of that increasingly-recognizable “Croaks sound” in these four songs and twelve minutes. Now a solid quartet, Anna Reidister, Haley Wood, Alli Fuchs, and Denver Nuckolls come armed with mandolins and violins through a brief whirlwind of frequently darkly humorous folk rock. All of Menagrie is informed by traditional folk music, but between the electric moments on “The Ballad of Tenderblood” and “Poppy” and an overall streamlined sound, The Croaks remain far removed from being “reenactors”.

10. Living Dream – Absolute Devotion

Release date: April 18^thRecord label: Inscrutable
Genre: Psychedelic pop, jangle pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Living Dream are keeping the dream of hazy, dreamy guitar pop alive in none other than Indianapolis, Indiana. While their peers in Good Flying Birds got a bit of attention this year, Living Dream seems determined to continue to fly under the radar with their psychedelic, murky take on jangle pop, as heard on the very good Absolute Devotion EP. It’s perhaps a little more accessible than their 2023 self-titled debut album–regardless, no amount of fog and disorientation can stop “Mist (Surrounds Me)” and “Lift a Feather” from being excellent jangle pop tunes.

9. Whitney’s Playland – Long Rehearsal

Release date: June 20^thRecord label: Meritorio/Dandy Boy
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, psych pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

One of my favorite debuts of 2023 was Sunset Sea Breeze by Whitney’s Playland, which delivered several records’ worth of lo-fi power pop hooks. Their first new music since then, Long Rehearsal, is only three songs in about ten minutes, but this still gives the San Francisco quartet plenty of time to revisit and reaffirm their ability to hit all the high points they did on their last album: jangly, bubblegum-flavored guitar pop, electric and fuzzy power pop, and rainy, dreary, dreamy indie pop. A “brief hiatus” and the doubling of their membership from the founding duo haven’t caused Whitney’s Playland to deviate from their established talents for even a moment. (Read more)

8. Dazy – Bad Penny

Release date: October 21^stRecord label: Lame-O
Genre: Power pop, Madchester, alt-dance, fuzz pop, pop punk
Formats: Digital

Dazy’s James Goodson releases music on his own timeline, largely in the realms of surprise-releases, EPs, and outtake collections, so I don’t take for granted Bad Penny, a seven-song, twenty-two minute EP that’s the fuzz pop act’s most substantial release in over two years. Every time Dazy puts out something that sounds like Dazy, I’m once again forced to marvel at how obvious Goodson makes mixing power pop, pop punk, Madchester/alt-dance, Britpop, and fuzzed-out garage rock together seem. Who knew there was a huge vacancy right at the midpoint of Green Day and Primal Scream? (Read more)

7. Sam Woodring – Mechanical Bull

Release date: October 17^thRecord label: Pretzle
Genre: Singer-songwriter, folk
Formats: CD, digital

From 2018 to 2024, the artist formerly known as Sam Goblin made a unique mixture of post-hardcore, folk rock, and guitar pop under the “Mister Goblin” moniker, including two of my favorite albums of this decade so far. Mechanical Bull is the first record Sam Woodring has ever put out under his own name (well, first and middle name, apparently), and it’s certainly the furthest he’s wandered yet from his punk/math rock/Exploding in Sound-core roots. It’s five stark songs featuring nothing but Woodring’s voice and acoustic guitar, but gentle folk playing aside, Woodring is still the same remarkable songwriter in his “solo troubadour” era. (Read more)

6. Idle Ray – Airport

Release date: November 7^thRecord label: Salinas
Genre: Lo-fi pop, power pop, indie pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

It wasn’t enough for Idle Ray to put out a new album this year (June’s Even in the Spring, which appeared on Rosy Overdrive’s Top Albums of 2025); the Michigan trio had to get another four-song EP out before 2025 was over, too. The four songs on Airport were recorded for Even in the Spring but were deemed by the band to work better as a small unit; they’re louder and livelier than most of that album, and it’s probably no coincidence that these all feature Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings, Knowso) on drums. From the explosive guitars that introduce “Eternal Fade” to the brisk tempos of “Allison, Walking Away Yet Again” and the title track, Idle Ray are riding a strong power pop wave on Airport.

5. Retirement Party – Nothing to Hear Without a Sound

Release date: August 28^thRecord label: Rat Poison
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Digital

The “original lineup” of Chicago pop punk/power pop band Retirement Party may have broken up in 2022, but bandleader Avery Springer has kept the project alive with a four-song EP called Nothing to Hear Without a Sound. Springer plays everything other than drums on these songs, but that doesn’t stop Nothing to Hear Without a Sound from pursuing and acquiring a muscular, full band-evoking power pop sound. The combination of big melodic guitar lines and Springer’s earnest Midwestern vocals both help keep this iteration of Retirement Party among the best of punk/indie rock underground “guitar pop”. (Read more)

4. Outro – Broken Promise

Release date: February 14^thRecord label: Repeating Cloud
Genre: Art rock, post-punk, garage rock, psychedelic rock, Paisley Underground, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl (“Villages” and “New Home” only), digital

Northampton, Massachusetts quartet Outro put out an album of Paisley Underground-reminiscent indie rock in 2023 called The Current, and the band don’t stray too far from that sound on their latest record and first for Repeating Cloud. In addition to classic college rock, the band mentions Steve Albini as a recording influence for Broken Promise, and while the five-song EP isn’t precisely a “noise rock” record, it does capture the same energy of Electrical Audio-associated bands who make or made unflappable, unbothered indie rock (with shimmering, swirling guitarplay, careening post-punk tempos, and a peaceful electricity). (Read more)

3. Pohgoh / Samuel S.C. – Split

Release date: October 8^thRecord label: New Granada/Waterslide
Genre: Emo, punk rock, pop punk, 90s indie rock, twee-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

State College, Pennsylvania-originating emo band Samuel S.C. released three EPs and singles in the mid-90s, reunited in 2021, and put out an LP featuring new and “reimagined” old material in 2023. Tampa, Florida’s Pohgoh also made music combining Superchunk-esque indie-punk-rock with emo in the mid-1990s, and they also reunited over the past decade, putting out new albums in 2018 and 2022. A four-song split EP makes plenty of sense for the two bands, and both of them brought very good material (some of their best yet!) to the table for this one. Bands hiding their best songs on stopgap between-album split singles? It feels like the mid-90s all over again. (Read more)

2. Chronophage – Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship

Release date: July 11^thRecord label: Post Present Medium
Genre: Power pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Austin group Chronophage are undersung pop merchants of the greater garage/punk/whatever underground, and it’s good to see them still going strong after their underrated 2022 self-titled album. Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship is four songs of slapdash garage-y power pop, over too soon but not too soon for “We Must Be Evil” and “Anti-Miracle” (and the other two tracks, let’s be real) to sink their teeth in. Chronophage don’t have anything to prove to me in terms of guitar pop skill, but, nonetheless, I remain impressed that they’ve made their best work when backed into a corner (and by “corner”, I mean “the 7” format”).

1. Pacing – Songs

Release date: January 7^thRecord label: Asian Man
Genre: Anti-folk, indie pop, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter, indie folk, twee
Formats: CD, digital

San Jose anti-folk/bedroom pop act Pacing put out a big, exciting sophomore album called PL*NET F*TNESS this year, but that’s not what their first new music on their new label of Asian Man Records ended up being. That “new music” was Songs. Songs is twelve minutes long. It’s a “mini-album” if it has to be called anything, or maybe it’s just “songs” (for the purposes of this list, it’s now an EP). Most of these are written and played by entirely bandleader Katie McTigue herself. Only one of these songs is more than two minutes long. The naming conventions are aggressively low-key and casual. Maybe Songs was a hot dog-esque byproduct of the sessions for Pacing LP2, an album that did indeed live up to the high bar set here. It’s a throwaway release that’s too good to be a throwaway release, and instead just ends up being another reminder that McTigue is still one of the sharpest and most unique songwriters operating in the present. (Read more)

Honorable mentions: