As always, we here at FTL are proud to ring in the New Year with a fantastic wrap up of some of the best music to come out in the past year. This year, like so many before, Greg Habeeb has compiled an excellent and eclectic mix of recommendations that truly captures the dynamic spirit of 2025.
Like so many fans of this masthead, I anxiously looked forward to this year’s blog, and, on my first reading, found myself nodding along in agreement: Getting Killed has been top-10 list bait since it dropped in September; Bleeds has been on heavy rotation for me and anyone else listening to 107.1 The Peak; and I truly believe that Hayley Williams’ Ego Death is going to be a defining album for aging millennials for the next decade.1
But while reading this list always engenders a warm and fuzzy feeling of companionship for our fellow man, all of this firm agreement is not what drives engagement here at For The Love. Instead, it is time to take part in the time-honored internet tradition of manufacturing beef to chase clout.
So, with that in mind, I, Pete Wheeler, the clear-headed, true lover of indie-rock, alt-country, and Americana/folk, do firmly and totally disavow and condemn Greg Habeeb, and all of his followers who enjoy a slightly different flavor of indie-rock, alt-country, and Americana/folk. You and all of your readers are splitters!
With that off my chest, I can now offer you the true top albums from 2025.
6. Jade Bird – Who Wants to Talk About Love
In her third full studio album, Jade Bird reminds us why we all stick around. After getting a little more experimental with her sound in her 2021 release, Different Kinds of Light, it feels like the new album is a return to form for Jade Bird. And what a return. Powerful vocals are in the driver’s seat for these tracks paired with fun and witty songwriting, guiding us through relationship woes, professional setbacks, and a classic quarter-life existential crisis in the California sun. The best of the bunch, songs like “Nobody” and “Dreams”, are packed to the brim with a full range of Jade Bird’s classic and scratchy belting, while “Avalanche” and “Wish You Well” show she’s still got the chops as a top-tier songwriter.
5. Christy Moore – A Terrible Beauty
How lucky are we to still be getting new music from Christy Moore in the year of our lord 2025? After about, I don’t know, a million albums over a career spanning seven (seven!) decades, last year Moore decided to get back in the studio and give us more. While the latest release doesn’t match the breadth of his last two live albums (Magic Nights (2019) and On the Road (2017)) clocking in at a monstrous hour and forty-one minutes and an hour and thirty-five minutes respectively) in A Terrible Beauty, Moore still manages to give us the full experience. The true GOAT of Irish folk provides a masterclass in building a track list – no one is better at pulling together a collection of original songs, old standards, and eclectic covers to give us an album both timely and classic. Christy has always ventured to take us beyond the smoky booths of public houses and the lustery green fields to provide a view of the Irish experience as something simultaneously insular and universal. Through these songs, he’s telling that story in all of its jagged moments, both big and small. A Sean-nós dirge about the conflict in Ukraine? A jangly ditty about Ireland’s National Women’s Soccer Team? Probably the saddest Christmas song you’ve heard (as also covered by the likes of Andrew Bird and Phoebe Bridgers)? Christy has thrown them all together for a delicious cosmic gumbo.
4. S.G. Goodman – Planting by the Signs
When I heard the first single off this album, “Fire Sign”, my first thought was “Damn, this chick is cool.” My initial findings were corroborated when I saw her perform at the Harbor Stage on the first day of the Newport Folk Festival. My wife took one look at S.G. on stage – black boots and jeans, a tangle of red hair and aviators – and turned to me and said “Damn, that chick is cool.” In her fourth album, Goodman blends soft-spoken, folksy vocals with thumping beats and tangly guitar riffs that puts you in a cross between a cabin deep in the woods of Appalachia or a basement show somewhere in Bushwick. And all while being just so cool about it – the vibes are truly unbeatable. Even when talking about, say, beating up some kids to protect local wildlife, or the embarrassing things that love makes us do, listening to Goodman makes you want to dust off your leather jacket and drive till the street lamps shut off.
3. I’m With Her – Wild and Clear and Blue
When it comes to musical supergroups, people are quick to jump to lazy stereotypes about dysfunction and cliches about chemistry: the brighter the candle, the quicker it burns; if you have two quarterbacks, you have none; don’t let Roy go to the bathroom alone. Thankfully, over the past few years, the pendulum seems to be swinging back. In 2023, Boygenius showed that you can make commercially successful and critically acclaimed music by following this one simple trick – play music with people you actually like. This year, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sarah Watkins, the three bluegrass singer-songwriters who make up I’m With Her, showed us just how easy it can be. In their second full length album, the three women – arguably at the peak of their powers – band together to completely conquer their musical niche (reminds me of… oh nevermind). These three have been playing with each other for over a decade, criss-crossing warm harmonies, fiddle tunes, and even Sabrina Carpenter covers along the way. This is the platonic ideal of a supergroup album, one where individual contributions are clear – like Watkin’s powerhouse vocals on “Sisters of the Night Watch” or O’Donovan’s masterful songwriting for the title track – while still being fully integrated in the sound of the group. The album is much more musically experimental than the group’s first album together in 2018, steering away from the safer territory of stripped-down, folksy arrangements. Their individual progression as musicians in that time has only made this album that much stronger. If we have to wait another eight years for their next album (please, no), it will likely be worth the wait.
2. Jesse Welles – Middle
Statistically, it would be difficult to not feature at least some of Jesse Welles’ work on this list. Middle is the second of six (six!) albums that Welles put out in the year 2025, not to mention side projects and singles with artists like Margo Price and the great Joan Baez. But if you know anything about Welles, it’s likely his prodigious output. I found Welles scrolling through my short-form video content platform of choice, and his nearly weekly videos are as timely as they are catchy. Welles was catapulted to fame last year with his song responding to the assasination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Johnson, and he hasn’t let up since. ICE raids, the Epstein list, the assault on Big Balls (remember him?): Welles has dutifully crafted a little folk song to capture the absurdity and gravity of our current moment in time, week in and week out. Middle is a bit of a departure for Welles, featuring a full band sound, and with songs that are less reflexive and more cerebral. This concerted effort bears fruit. Tracks like “Horses”, “Fear is the Mind Killer”, and “Wheel”, are all instant classics, destined to be broadcast at little indie radio stations for generations to come. The hype is real. Is he the second coming of Dylan? Hopefully not, but whatever 2026 holds I’m sure it’ll be electric.
Honorable Mentions
Before we reveal the top album of 2025 (the REAL top album of 2025), I thought it would be good to shout out some other excellent music and hand out some awards!
Winner of the “Pete’s 30 Years Late To The Party” Award: Chumbawumba – Showbusiness!
Happy 30th Anniversary to Chumbawumba’s 1995 live album Showbusiness! As a young millennial, I thought I had a pretty good handle on Chumbawumba. Their “Tubthumping” sits pretty comfortably in the pantheon of Songs We All Know (maybe not one of The Fuckin Songs™ but pretty close). You’ll hear it during a movie montage from the early 2000s of people getting drunk, or during a TV timeout at a football game – always there but never really that impressive. But “Tubthumping” is really a Trojan Horse. Yes, behind the smokescreen of the one-hit-wonder, Chumbawumba was actually an anarcho-punk, third-wave ska band that sings songs about Mexican revolutionaries and the Diggers. I caught onto a certain track from this album when it regained popularity online after a certain public incident sparked mixed responses from people across the country. On Showbusiness! Chumbawumba weaves together an amalgamation of sounds and styles that scream 1990s Yorkshire basement show, yet still feel as cutting edge cool as ever before.
Winner of the Hansel Memorial “I don’t really listen to it but the fact that he’s making it, I respect that” Award: Joseph – Closer to Happy
A decade ago, I stumbled across a video of the three sisters that make up Joseph singing a track off their debut album, Native Dreamer Kin. I’ve been absolutely hooked ever since. At turns powerful then dreamy, these women weave together harmonies that border on the revelatory. Over the course of ten years, Joseph put out four incredible studio albums, as well as a smattering of singles. In my humble opinion, their best work came when they pared down the production and let their voices do the talking. Sadly, last year, Allison announced she was leaving the band – but not without giving us this absolutely banging Cranberries cover. In 2025, the other two sisters, Meegan and Natalie, continued putting out music under the Joseph name, with a brand new album set to drop in January 2026. I’m not sure what it is – perhaps a resistance to accepting that things have, in fact, changed – but I did not listen to these new tracks when they dropped in 2025. But I do respect that Meegan and Natalie are still plugging away, and I will certainly be listening to Closer to Happy when it drops later this month.
Winner of the Best New Mandolin Orange Album: Watchhouse – Rituals
When Watchhouse, formerly Mandolin Orange, changed names in 2021, I was unsure about the move. Since 2011, Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz had been putting out some of the best easy-listening, fiddle-and-mandolin folk music two people could reasonably make. As the Hansel Memorial award winners can attest, I am wary of messing with a good thing. But, with the gift of hindsight, the change has been for the best. In their second album since the #rebrand, Watchhouse has continued to push their sound to new and exciting places. Songs like “Beyond Meaning” and “Rituals” still have that classic Mandolin Orange feeling, like an old pair of jeans, while tracks like “Sway/Endless Highway (Pt. 2)” let Marlin and Frantz explore the space. Whatever they call themselves, keep it coming. The only question is, do I finally have to buy the new hat?
#1. Esther Rose – Want
I’m a bit of a late-comer Esther Rose’s music, and I am kicking myself for all the time I have lost. Rose has been putting out solo albums since 2017, and the progression in her songwriting has been striking. While her first few albums were chock full of folksy goodness (The Yard Dance is an absolute BOP and I won’t hear anything else about it), her 2023 album Safe to Run was a major breakthrough for Rose’s work, with tracks like “Chet Baker” and “Safe to Run” letting her lyricism shine through. 2025’s Want is the best possible sign, showing Rose is getting more comfortable exploring meatier subject matter and creating a real sound that is all her own. In her fifth album, Rose tackles the contradictions of her life, struggles to make the right decisions, delights in doing the wrong thing, and tries to come to terms with the uncertainty of it all. Rose brings her indie-country, singer-songwriter sensibilities to the fore, letting catchy, unflashy guitar work balance her probing, insightful lyrics. It’s an album chock full of stuff to love. No skips, and I still want more.
- Editor’s Note: Honestly, how dare you . ↩︎
For The Love 