The WXPN Best of 2025 MEGA LIST: Albums of the Year

Host pick from Mike Vasilikos

“The band Wednesday continued to harness their sound and deliver one of the year’s best albums in Bleeds. This is a band and an album that can at times be loud and ferocious. And then Seesaw to the sweetest of balances. Karly Hartzman who leads the band, is at her sharpest as a lyricist and on bleeds. When you add it all up, you get a terrific collection of songs.”

Host pick from Bruce Warren

“One of the best albums of the year is from the Philadelphia Band Florry called, Sounds Like… Sounds Like well, sounds Like Neil Young’s crazy horse with ragged guitar energy disguised as an Americana, Southern indie rock record pedal, steel, fiddle harmonica, mandolin, organ guitars, more guitars, and yes, even more guitars.”

Palmyra on World Cafe

“I think the reason we’re still a band is that the three of us committed very fully to this thing and have made sacrifices to do it and have moved a lot together and done everything that we can to make it happen as a full-time job. It has been kind of through thick and thin, and we learn a lot of hard lessons and we only get better, I think every year and every tour, at communicating. We have a pretty shared vision, which I’m really grateful for.”

Host pick from Amber Miller

“One of the best albums of the year is Phonetics On and On from Horse Girl on their sophomore album. They make cool gritty lo-fi indie guitar rocks seem effortless, but it takes restraint perspective and maturity to not just layer on and fill every little gap with some bell or some whistle. Those thoughtful choices do less and pare down all the extras, along with witty word play make the album clever and special.”

Host pick from Kristen Kurtis

“If you need a pick me up at the end of this long year, you need Owls Omens and Oracles, the 2025 album from Valerie June. This woman is the embodiment of love and light, which you’ll hear right away with the opening track. Joy, Joy! But then you’ll find a feature from Blind Boys of Alabama on change, and even her messing around with reggae on Sweet Things Just For You, which is a real guided meditation that’ll leave you feeling grounded, whole, and at peace.”

Host pick from Amber Miller

“One of the best albums of the year is Double Infinity From Big Thief. The Musical arrangements, the lyrics and the themes are wistful and tender and beautiful and powerful. It’s an album that amplifies the beauty of the human experience. I especially adore the lovely and positive perspective on aging on the album opener, Incomprehensible, which is something that’s largely stigmatized in modern society. To quote Adrian Lanker, ‘how can beauty that is living be anything but true?'”

Jeff Tweedy on World Cafe

“Bands work really hard over a long period of time to get to a level of intimacy and trust that allows for profound communication musically, and a family band starts there. I can feel it in my performances and stuff. I mean, people kind of say that, that some of the songs on this record are more personal, and I don’t think that that’s really that true. I think I’d write a lot of personal lyrics for a lot of Wilco songs. I think that they can hear that extra layer of trust and intimacy that I have with my jokes and my family.”

The Beths on World Cafe

“During the start of all this, I think there was kind of cautious optimism or something that I was like, okay, well I’m figuring stuff out and I’m feeling better than I have been previously and I’m getting treated for a bunch of stuff and like maybe like, maybe this is it. Maybe I’m gonna be fixed. It’s obviously folly but I really believed it. And then what ended up happening is like, I was like, okay, well I’ve got myself out of the hole. Which is like, that’s a big thing. Yeah. But also now that I’m out of the hole, staying out of the hole is just as you know, that’s the rest of my life. Now it’s like taking care of yourself in these small ways, it’s working slowly on the things that are important to you.”

Host pick from Jim McGuinn

“Philly’s Tisburys have spent nearly a decade doing it the old fashioned way, playing hundreds of shows, building community, and steadily sharpening their sound. Each release is leveled up and with their fourth album, they make their biggest leap yet. Blending nineties rock and power pop with Millennial Indie Grit. A Still Life Revisited is one of the homegrown breakouts of 2025 and captures a band fully stepping out of its influences and into its own.”

Michelle Zauner on World Cafe

“It’s kind of ironic, you know, I was kind of miserable on the Jubilee tour on this very joyous record ’cause it was just such a grind and this record. I feel so at peace and so comfortable and just really happy. I feel very, very happy on this tour and, and I really love these songs and I think we have made a really special show. Funny enough on the melancholy book, uh, maybe the happiest I’ve been.”

Host pick from Bruce Warren

“On one level, XPN Queen Brandi Carlile’s new album Returning To Myself remains true to her Americana roots. On another level, with co producers Aaron Dessner of The National, Andrew Watt, and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, new synth textures and atmospheric keyboards are introduced. There is sonic growth and acoustic rawness alongside Brandi’s introspective and self reflective lyrics on songs like “Returning To Myself” and “Human.” Another album highlight is the full on rock of “Church & State,” a soon to be live concert highlight.”

Tunde Adebimpe on World Cafe

“I found this box of four track tapes and I got my four track recorder out, which was also in a box somewhere in the garage, and just kind of started going through those and found some things that I’d worked on. That tapes went from about 1997 to 2008. So I found two or three things and I was like, oh, this isn’t, this is something, I don’t know what it is. And I also started recording on that four track again, which is kind of how I started recording any kind of music. So that was a real unexpected full circle moment.”

Host pick from Bruce Warren

“Three years have separated Mt. Joy’s 2025 album Hope We Have Fun and their 2020 release Orange Blood, and it was more than worth the wait. As their popularity has soared, based largely on the strength of their live performances, gone are the early descriptions of the band as primarily an indie folk group, even as acoustic guitars continue to play a role in their songwriting, recording, and performing. The strength of Hope We Have Fun is in its strong songs and multiplicity of music styles, from the Americana leaning collaboration with Maren Morris on “Highway Queen,” to the pop leaning feature on “In The Middle” with Gigi Perez, to the alt leaning “Coyote.” Other standouts include “Lucy,” and “God Loves Weirdos,” a favorite that rose from the fans’ reactions to the live performance of the song.”

World Cafe

“I am also new to the ology game. I moved upstate,” Hannah Cohen says. She talks about discovering an earthstar mushroom on her property and says, “Earthstar is such a fun thing to say, earthstar mushroom.” The album was made upstate with her partner and co producer Sam Evian, and it brings in guests including Sufjan Stevens and Clairo.

Host pick from Jim McGuinn

“After the success of the Dylan Biopic, A Complete Unknown, a new guitar playing truth saying Troubadour broke through: Jesse Welles. After a decade in indie bands and nearly quitting music, the Arkansas native began writing and recording topical protest songs, addressing capitalism, microplastics, war, and more writing and recording at a furious pace, Welles released four studio albums in 2025, including Horses, cementing his status as one of the year’s most prolific and compelling voices.”

Host pick from Kristen Kurtis

“My favorite album of the year is Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party by Haley Williams. Now her band, Paramore has been aging like a fine wine, just getting better and better as the years go by, but she has somehow managed to step it up even further as a solo artist here and she had something to say across the 20 songs that make up the record. I deeply appreciate her calling out Morgan Wallen on the title track, grappling with Generational Trauma On Kill Me, and the reference to Strange Fruit in True Believer. Just to name a few highlights.”

Kathleen Edwards on World Cafe

“ Jason really pushed me to just play the song and we recorded it and that was it. And the tinkerer and the ruminator in me goes like, well, I wanna go listen to this and make sure it’s right. And he really. It forced me to accept it was the way it was, and it was actually one of the biggest learning curves. But also the thing that I am so glad that I did learn, because I think it comes from insecurity. I think it comes from trying to overcompensate for wondering if it’s good enough.”

Bartees Strange on World Cafe

“I always am thinking about where’s a safe, affordable place you can be yourself, a diverse, affordable art community,” Bartees Strange says. “The more things you ask for, the fewer and fewer” places seem to fit. He talks about “cycling through the options and not knowing where to go.” On World Cafe, he connects that fear to the album, a record that sits with anxiety and turns it into something loud, sharp, and driven.

Host pick from Mike Vasilikos

“Jason Isabel gave his band the 400 Unit a breather and wrote and produced his most stripped down intimate record to date. And while the album is reflective of some recent life changes for Jason, what foxes in the snow captures best is his incredible storytelling, and dare I say, underappreciated guitar playing as well.”

Florence Welch on World Cafe

“I think the imagination is this form of escape, mythology is a form of escape,” Florence Welch say to World Cafe host Raina Douris during a recent interview . “I was looking to find meaning in the experiences that I had had.” She says she was “looking to explore forms of power” and “to look for other women who’d kind of lived a nontraditional life.” On Everybody Scream, she frames the songs as a way to work through what happened to her, and to turn that into something primal, intense, and alive.

Wet Leg on World Cafe

 ”I always thought, you know, there’s so many love songs out there. The world is saturated with love songs. Why would anyone ever need another one? I think I felt more inclined to to write love songs since meeting my partner and discovering my queerness and kind of like wanting to explore that I think has kind of like added this like extra layer of like, see what this is. Feel it out.”

Host pick from Dan Reed

“ I think one of the best albums of 2025 is Never Enough by the Baltimore Band Turnstile. This group has done tons to redefine what hardcore means. Taking the DIY ethos and independent mindset in directions that have nothing to do with tempo or aggression. The album is wildly diverse musically and the band’s ability to craft a catchy anthemic tune like Seeing Stars, which is chockfull of retro touchstones and an irresistible beat points to a group that is not only brave enough, but talented enough to successfully evolve”

Host pick from Eric Schumann

“In 2025, we found out what music fans in Ireland have known for a while. CMAT is the real deal. Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson was an XPN artist to watch this year, and for good reason. Euro Country may be her third album, but it’s the perfect gateway into CMAT. Charming and cheeky world. Her well observed lyrics pair up perfectly with the folk pop and post-punk arrangements. Found all over the record. CMAT’S spring tour brings her back to Philly in mid-May, giving us all a chance to see what CMAT is all about.”

World Cafe

“I call it a bit of a sonic trust fall,” Sharon Van Etten says about making this record with her band. “We also had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together.” “We had conversations about where we were in each other’s lives,” she says, and “we just reconnected in a way you wouldn’t if it was just work.”

Host pick from Raina Douris

“The first time I listened to Geese’s album, getting killed, it felt like a revelation. It sounded new. It’s technically indie rock, but there are parts that sound like an explosion where it sounds like there are a hundred people in the band all playing at once. And the beauty and the chaos are held together by Cameron Winter’s gorgeous and strange voice. It also contains my favorite lyric of the year in the song Long Island City, Here I come, which is ‘The Lord has a lot of friends, and in the end, he’ll probably forget he’s never met you before.'”