10 artists we’d love to hear a new album from in 2025

Here at WXPN, we’re always on the lookout for fresh new music that we can share with our audience. There’s no shortage of new releases each week, new songs every day, and new artists around every corner. But every so often, an artist who absolutely wows us doesn’t offer up a new project for quite some time. Here are 10 artists we’d love to hear new projects from. 2025 has already given us exciting album announcements from XPN faves Car Seat Headrest, HAIM, Jade Bird, and Catbite…who else will be next?

The War on Drugs

Longtime Philly faves The War on Drugs have not shared a full-length project of new material since 2021’s I Don’t Live Here Anymore, but the band has been far from inactive during these four years. Just last year, they embarked on the Zen Diagram tour with The National and Lucius, while also releasing Live Drugs Again, their second live album. A quick scan through the band’s Instagram page will tell you that they have been fully immersed in show business over the past few years, now five studio albums (and one ambient project) deep into their career. A recent post stands out though, as members can be seen amongst recording gear holding guitars and cables.

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Solange Knowles

Since 2002, Solange has been making a name for herself as more than just Beyoncé’s younger sister. Her album output has been notably sporadic throughout her career, with only four full-length projects over the past 20+ years. She stunned in the late 2010’s with the back-to-back releases of A Seat at the Table (2016) and When I Get Home (2019), but she has only appeared on features since then. She has been far from “off-the-grid” though, appearing in many shoots as a model while also recently launching the multimedia design gallery Saint Heron.

LCD Soundsystem

This beloved dance-rock band has become notorious for spacing out their album releases, especially since their short-lived breakup in the early 2010s. They teased a new project last year with the release of the single “x-ray eyes,” and reportedly sent out a press release with verbiage that led to rumors of a new album circulating the Internet. Similarly to The War on Drugs, LCD has been heavily touring over the past few years. They recently headlined the innovative Re:SET traveling concert series in 2023. It has now been nearly eight years since the band’s last studio album american dream was released in 2017, and their self-titled debut officially turned 20 in January. Could their 2024 single and the newly-announced June residency at O2 Academy Brixton in London, and the September residency at the Hollywood Bowl with Pulp, mean something bigger is on the way?

Adia Victoria

In contrast to the last entry, Adia Victoria has been very quiet since her last album A Southern Gothic dropped in 2021. The gothic country singer shared two singles via Atlantic in the spring of 2022. However, these are the last pieces of music she has released, aside from a feature on the big-time collab single “Fight To Make It” alongside Margo Price and Mavis Staples in 2022. In October 2024, performed at the Carolina Daze festival. So far, a set at the Biscuits and Banjos festival in Durham, NC this April is the only musical info she has shared for 2025.

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Mac DeMarco

Mac DeMarco has been a lovable industry oddball since he broke onto the scene with his tape-y dream pop in the early 2010s. However, he ruffled some feathers with his fanbase in 2023 when his “comeback album” Five Easy Hot Dogs turned out to be an instrumental beat-tape of sorts that was recorded during a road trip. He proceeded to dump his entire hard drive onto streaming platforms with the 199-track One Wayne G later that year, and has since shifted most of his attention to his newest endeavor, Mac’s Record Label. Recently, the label revealed plans for a Mac DeMarco tour and album this summer, giving zero details on the project itself. His last “conventional” album was 2019’s Here Comes the Cowboy; it is hard to tell if he will ever return to the common ways of the music industry, as it seems that he has outgrown his past “cigarettes-and-beer” image.

Kyle Craft

In one of the more mysterious cases here, showy Sub Pop signee Kyle Craft seems to have completely disappeared off the Internet since his 2019 album Showboat Honey. Craft had actually announced an album titled Sugar Water in August 2020. Its leadoff single “Rising Sign” now sits alone on his Bandcamp; a final musical statement.

Your Smith

Caroline Smith’s indie rock project Your Smith was on our radar as the 2020s began, but since her 2019 EP Wild Wild Woman, Smith’s musical output had reduced to only two features, and an acoustic re-release. You may be familiar with her debut single “The Spot,” a track we’ve been spinning since its 2018 release. Last year, Smith spoke with The Current, revealing that she had “stepped away from music” to raise a child with her husband and open a restaurant called Howard’s Bar in Stillwater, MN. To kick off 2025, Smith initiated her comeback with a new single “Change of Heart,” which was followed by “Peaches” in February. Could this be the year she releases her long awaited debut album?

Tame Impala

In the realm of 2010s indie rock, it’s impossible to overlook Kevin Parker’s success with his famously “only one guy” solo project Tame Impala. While his album output has not been that frequent (just four projects since his 2008 debut EP), it’s a bit shocking that The Slow Rush is now five years into the past. Parker has not stopped working, though; last year he co-produced Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism, featured twice on Justice’s Hyperdrama, and even collaborated on a clothing collection with luxury brand A.P.C. While there aren’t any real leads on the next Tame Impala album coming this year, there aren’t many reasons to discourage the idea.

Phoebe Bridgers

As of right now, both Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker have released new albums for spring 2025. Will peer pressure from her boygenius bandmates be enough to make Phoebe Bridgers return with her third studio album? Possibly, but recent news could make this theory slightly less believable. Multiple outlets have reported that Bridgers is on set for the A24 movie Primetime, alongside Robert Pattinson. Ok…but maybe the album is already done. It has been five years since her mainstream breakthrough album Punisher, and her Instagram is currently blank. Luckily, fans can delve into projects from Dacus and Baker if nothing materializes this year.

Hop Along (& Frances Quinlan)

It has been nearly seven years since these Philly indie rock favorites released their last album Bark Your Head Off, Dog via Saddle Creek. Aside from the re-release of frontperson Frances Quinlan’s 2005 college project freshman year — which hit streaming on 2020 under Hop Along, Queen Ansleis — the band has not released anything. They toured until 2023, with their last shows being in memoriam of musician and audio engineer Steve Poponi in December of that year. Frances Quinlan’s 2020 debut solo album Likewise garnered praise and attention from critics and fans, but similarly to Hop Along, their output has come to a halt. A brief glimmer (or glow) of hope came in 2024, when Quinlan released “Another Season,” a single for the soundtrack of I Saw The TV Glow. At solo shows around this time, Quinlan played unreleased material they said was from a collaboration they were collaborating on with friend and producer Kyle Pulley at Headroom Recording. Local music also likely know Hop Along’s guitarist Joe Reinhart as an engineer and co-owner of Headroom, and a player in Algernon Cadwallader and Dogs On Acid (both of whom have reunited recently, to much fanfare). Drummer Mark Quinlan and bassist Tyler Long are quite private online, and at this point, a fan’s best plan of action might be to visit Philly and just ask around, hoping that they stumble across news of Hop Along’s next move.

Which artists have you been dying to hear more from? Tell us about your favorites and let us know what you think of our list in the comments here. For the latest album and tour announcements, stay tuned into WXPN and our online Music News page this year.