Alternatively titled ‘good shit that I’ve just got round to listening to’. There’s always gonna be good music that misses the end of year hype train, and even a connoisseur like myself is late to the party sometimes. So, from electro ambience through to heavy noise-rock, via lo-fi underground rap; here’s our recommendations for 10 of the best 2025 projects that you may have missed.
Crystal Sting Bubblegum Aquarium
Top Track: Splash Party
The debut from Toronto production duo, Crystal Sting, pairs electronic experimentation with instrumental improvisations, creating an immersive underwater soundscape that feels part video game soundtrack, part ambient jam. The album sees the free-roaming melodies of multi-instrumentalist, Bjorn Kriel, become warped by the hardware wizardry and unconventional sampling of Kurtis Perrie. The result is groovy, hypnotic, and faintly eerie. The Bubblegum Aquarium title is completely apt for the playful aquatic atmosphere they create; even if, in true 2020’s fashion, it’s actually taken from a vape flavour.
Dossers What’s The Problem?
Top Track: Golden Boy
On What’s The Problem, Dossers present a series of bleakly familiar portraits from modern Britain; old-school misogynists, red-pilled modern-day fuckboys, and the loudmouth wisdom of a generation stuck in another decade. Frontman, Matthew Baxter, lifts these characters beyond cliché with his dry, incisive humour as the Teeside five-piece take cues from early IDLES, bolstered with a thick dose of raucous grunge power. Channelling their frustration and disillusionment into a promising debut EP that thrives on the tension between atmospheric post-punk and brute-force aggression; packed with hard-hitting observations and the riffs to match.
Echomatica Echomatica
Top Track: Breathe
The self-titled debut from New Zealand’s Echomatica feels like stepping into a lost 90s classic, hovering somewhere between the hushed mystique of Mazzy Star and the shadowy trip-hop tension of Portishead. The fragile vocals of Charlie Maclean (partly the consequence of a bout with COVID) anchor the album; floating through the record with haunting intimacy. It’s an album that gently entrances you with its blend of lush dream pop elegance and ominous electronic undercurrents.
Errol Holden JOE FROG 2
Top Track: Cashmere Kufis
Errol Holden is the next big name in coke rap. October’s MULBERRY SILK ROAD brought him increased attention, with its executive production credit for Roc Marciano (which, in practice feels like Marci throwing the considerable weight of his co-sign behind Holden). But from his prolific 2025 output, I’m most partial to the production on December’s JOE FROG 2. Its mix of dusty soul samples and cinematic opulence will be welcome to the ears of Griselda fans. This may not be the most insightful observation, but a crucial element in certain rappers’ appeal is that they just sound fucking cool; and Holden absolutely fits that bill. He raps with a precise intensity, urgent but deliberately economical in his language; as if he’s intent on wasting as little time as possible in getting his point across. Holden projects a focus and confidence that already has him sounding like an old master.
gnrlyhd Major Malfunction In The Bay
Top Track: YOU GOTTA GIVE
MAJOR MALFUNCTION IN THE BAY sounds like a beat-up cassette you weren’t supposed to find; a grimy city snapshot filtered through VHS static. The Philly trio (producer, Philth Spector, and emcees, Daily and Helly Hensen) stitch together crunchy boom bap drums, chopped-up jazz, and dub grooves as bars are traded with the scrappy energy of early Beasties. There’s a deliberate roughness here as tracks bleed into each other via interludes and fragmented samples, creating a hazy, psychedelic swirl where a treasure trove of throwback gems emerge while this old tape constantly threatens to unravel.
Hyloxolos Hyloxolos
Top Track: Blue Eyes, White Fangs
Coming together as near strangers and forged over an intense 48-hours, the debut from this psych-rock supergroup includes Peter Matthew Bauer of the Walkmen, Dylan Carson of drone metal pioneers Earth, and Dave Harrington (whose album with DARKSIDE made our top 10 of 2025). Six sprawling tracks unfold across a 40-minute trek through slow-burning doom-metal sludge. Much of the album inhabits fairly familiar stoner rock terrain, but the rewards of this journey truly pay off in the later moments. On Waxes of Love, ambient swells erupt into righteous riffage, before the album closes with Blue Eyes, White Fangs; bringing a bruising opening chapter for this collaboration to a culmination of revelatory beauty.
Julianna Riolino Echo in the Dust
Top Track: Seed
Southern Ontario musician, Julianna Riolino, may well possess a generationally great voice. On her second album she’s a throat-shredding powerhouse and a smouldering songbird; from track-to-track she shifts between echoes of the likes of Dolly, Joan Jett, and Stevie Nicks. That range is mirrored musically; rooted in Americana, but roaming freely between heart-on-sleeve balladry, fiery rockers, cosmic country-pop, and even surprising detours like the glorious doo-wop retroism of Seed. Tracing personal growth through love and loss, Riolino balances blunt candour with poetic grandeur, delivering every emotional rise and fall with total conviction.
J.U.S The Treasure Map
Top Track: Labor Day
Amidst some of the distinctive personalities that have emerged from Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigade crew, J.U.S stands out by staying understated. His causal, conversational delivery proves sneakily versatile across production that shifts fluidly between warm soul, playful grooves, and gritty menace. He sounds equally at ease drifting through woozy MIKE or Earl territory like on Labor Day and Last Dayz, or trading bars over grimy coke rap cuts. Through these stylistic turns, a cast of sharp-edged characters are introduced to play off his laid-back approach. Treasure Map marks another strong entry as J.U.S enjoys a low-key run of reliable quality.
sleepingdogs home remedies to cure bad luck
Top Track: live from my dyin’ hill
If we’re talking low-key underground rap of reliable quality, we can’t forget sleepingdogs. Their DOGSTOEVSKY LP was one of our favourites of the year, and they capped off 2025 with the gift of five tracks of foggy, stoner introspection. Andrew and Jesse The Tree wearily ponder existence with dry wit, gentle melancholia, and some of the best hooks around, set against a backdrop of lo-fi soul, warped atmospherics, and even a haunted fairground waltz. They may not have the answers to life’s problems, but sleepingdogs have the choruses to help you cope.
Tickles Sugar & Plastic Plates
Top Track: Daughters Around
There’s an inherent absurdity in pairing the goofy moniker of Tickles with their ferocious brand of noise-rock. That playful contradiction is central to the French quartet’s approach, very much evoking the post-hardcore assault of Mclusky; both in sonic and sardonic spirit. Heavy themes of anxiety, abandonment, and lingering childhood scars are offset with moments of lightness; partly the result of some charmingly crooked English phrasing, but also in surrealist lyrical flashes. With this impressive debut, Tickles channel life’s messy tensions into cathartic, celebratory chaos.
More 2025 in Review
No Frills Reviews 
Leave a comment