10 Zar – “Slip”
Premiere among London’s new crop of DJ’s for a focused devotion to expansive, original techno, Zar here crafts his magnum opus by way of thumping beats, busy, echoing synth and a whole bevy of texture. It’s the way this track thoughhas of wallowing in the concept of time and being both everlasting and hypnotic that really sells it.
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9 Shanon Wright – “Reservoir of Love”
Shannon Wright is so similar to Sharon Van Etten that it’s eerie — they almost have the exact same guttural but clear and beautiful voice and each seems to draw influence from a curious mix of R.E.M. and The Rolling Stones for a poignant, dark pop interface. Wright even sounds like Van Etten here if she were to make a come-on in lyrics, which, of course, she never really does, short of a couple of patronizing words to the “comeback kid,” as it were.
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8 Kedr Livanskiy – “Night Trains”
This is a woman, which I never would have guessed from the name — a DJ from Moscow, a metropolis from which I’ve never even heard of any music emanating, let alone cutting-edge, tense and rhythmic techno. The light, ambient samples are put to great, atmospheric here, with the high hat runs suggesting litheness and power without beating you over the head with anything too ham-handed.
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7 Sharon Van Etten – “Idiot Box”
2019’s DD albums champ is back this year with another full-bodied rock LP, something that strikes up much excitement and even a little intimidation in me. Well, this might be tempered by the first song, which I’m pretty sure is a bizarre attempt at throwing shade at Oasis, but by “Idiot Box”; she’s locked back in, issuing an absorptive groove toward a pop gem that seems as original and adaptive as it does gripping and hummable.
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6 Butcher Brown – “Seagulls”
As it happens, “Seagulls” is meant to be sort of the intro on Butcher Brown’s new album Letters from the Atlantic, but it just managed to foment up more artistic mood and rhythmic tension than the rest of the pack, so it takes the crown. These busy, frenetic beats seem to be a common thread in all my favorite electronica music so far this year, here bolstered by a perfectly dynamic, balanced synth arsenal.
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5 Dean Wareham – “Bourgeois Manque”
It’s funny: I could never really fully delve into Dean Wareham’s former band, Luna, but all of his solo stuff seems to hit the spot for me. The production is less clean, as on the stylistic, artistic centerpiece on That’s the Price of Loving Me, where sonic spareness of a modest chamber-rock unit carries us to indie rock Nirvana.
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4 Termanology & Bronze Nazareth – “Things I Seen”
This album was so promising until the song about the strip club — still, “Things I Seen” remains a dark, street-tough hip-hop rhapsody, on which Termanology details any number of gruesome details of his youth, coming to a head with the lines “Then I found hip-hop / My love I professed / My success is truly / What I manifested”.
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3 Panda Bear – “Anywhere but Here”
It is my opinion that Panda Bear, in 2025, have released the best album of their career, Sinister Grift. This comes, of course, in the wake of a slew of what I consider classic Animal Collective albums, and maybe, slightly, an overrated catalogue from PB. But on this new project, the hooks are concise, the vocals trippy and celestial, and every sound seeming to resonate with defiant originality, making for what I believe will be a permanent fixture in indie rock.
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2 clipping. – “Change the Channel”
Nu metal represent! I feel like it’s 1999 again and there’s nothing cooler than being white trash. In all seriousness, this LA trio, which, from what I understand it consists one rapper, Daveed Diggs, and two producers, leaves no stylistic stone unturned toward their quest for resurrecting MTV, on “Change the Channel”; letting bass synth and guitar pedal veer things dangerously close to angry-white-boy territory, on what’s otherwise a classic hip-hop album.
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1 clipping. – “Scams” feat. Tia Nomore
With the swagger and moxie of a Pharrell beat (think Clipse, in particular), “Scams” rolls along in all hip-hop cockiness, with female Oakland guest emcee Tia Nomore piping in like a more down-to-Earth Nicki Minaj reincarnation, with twice the flow and restrained dedication to the craft.
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