Shockingly enough, twelve months have passed since the last listing season. It’s gone nauseatingly fast. Amid a year of rage, protest, community building and boycotts, there have been piles and piles of brilliant albums. After all, like death and taxes, good music is one of life’s only constants.
Every year, new stars are born and existing ones rise, and some even get a glorious second wind years after bursting onto the scene. 2025 has been no different. For a certain crop of artists, it was their year…
Lambrini Girls
After releasing their witty yet fierce debut album Who Let The Dogs Out? just weeks into 2025, Lambrini Girls reached a state of near omnipresence. They found their way into seemingly every magazine and onto every festival poster, raging against police brutality, workplace harassment and gentrification, as well as speaking up for Palestine. The Brighton punk duo started the year by topping Drowned in Sound's Class of 2025 and then circled the globe, spreading their message with an incendiary yet joyous live show cementing their reputation not just as warriors of equality and justice, but as incredible musicians.
CMAT
Have you done the butcher, the baker, the home and the family maker this year? Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson aka CMAT poured lighter fluid on the hype building around her with ‘Take A Sexy Picture Of Me’, an incisive study of beauty standards and the fetishisation of youth that also sparkled with wit. (“I did leg things/And hand stuff/And single woman banter.”) The subsequent Mercury-nominated album Euro-Country built upon this promise, spinning her irrational hatred of Jamie Oliver into a fabulous and surprisingly profound conversation with herself and reflecting soberly on shifting notions of Irish identity, with devastating moments (“I was twelve when the das started killing themselves around me.”) 2025 has crystallised what a bona fide original she is.
JADE
JADE has never had so much fun making pop music. The Little Mix alumna scored huge hits with the floor filling ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Plastic Box’ ahead of her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby!, but away from her technicolour, shapeshifting pop world, she’s also shown how keen she is to speak out. During her live performances of ‘FUFN’, she invites the crowd to chant “f**k you” to everyone from Reform UK to JK Rowling, as well as “welfare cuts, transphobia, silencing protest, selling arms and justifying genocide” - and she even called out Matty Healy for his cowardly apoliticism speech at Glastonbury. She’s every inch the modern pop star, embodying everything music ought to be in 2025 – fun, cathartic, but with a conscience.
Ethel Cain
Ethel Cain’s standalone project Perverts – neither EP, nor album, just hypnotic droning for 90 minutes – might not have been to everyone’s taste, but there’s enormous merit, and fearless, to her creating it simply for creativity’s sake. Equally talked about was new album Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, which dialled up her masterful sense of contrast – more placid in sound (yet just as varied and indebted to the Southern Gothic), yet no less emotionally turbulent. Where Hayden Anhedönia might go next remains a murky mystery, but she’s gifted us magic nonetheless.
Hayley Williams
The world would be a far darker place without Hayley Williams. Not only was Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party easily her finest album to date as a solo artist, but the newly independent artist also unveiled one of the most creative album campaigns in recent times. She leaned on public radio and traditional media, focusing on building community and conversation by letting fans arrange the songs into their own track list, choose-your-own-adventure style and bringing them together with the ‘Ego Nite’ record store release parties. Her master stroke was her performance of ‘True Believer’ on Fallon, already a power move given that it’s her most political song to date, but she matched her words with her actions by performing behind an orchestra consisting entirely of musicians of colour. This is how you do allyship in 2025.
Sean Adams
Turnstile
In heavy music, hardcore is the genre of the moment. It combats the isolation and individualism of late capitalism with a focus on DIY, individuality and building community, and Turnstile have led its charge towards the mainstream. Their return with fourth album Never Enough was a widescreen celebration of sun-soaked joy, amalgamating surf rock breeziness and ambient flourishes to create something to get their ever-expanding fanbase dancing. They’ve been equally conscious to bring the new guard up with them, elevating the platforms of equally promising names from Speed and High Vis to Mannequin Pussy on their tour packages.
Deftones
Few bands reach the sterling form that Deftones are in after 30 years together. They’re arguably more loved than ever, beloved by Gen Xers who remember when Around The Fur came out and a new swathe of Gen Z fans who have all lapped up their first album in five years, private music. And how many bands around that long can still whip a song as enthralling as ‘milk of the madonna’ out of their back pockets? It’s no wonder that they’re headlined Crystal Palace Park this year and have the London edition of Outbreak (in conjunction with All Points East) the next. The Sacramento alt-metallers have officially become a countercultural behemoth.
ANONHI
Climate can get buried to the bottom of the agenda sometimes, but ANOHNI offered a stark warning this year about the ailing health of our coral reefs – “a very beautiful sunlit graveyard, with beautiful grave stones,” in her own words. Her reaction went on to inspire a performance at the Sydney Opera House in May, a Mourning The Great Barrier Reef tour and a profoundly beautiful eco-conscious showing on the Park Stage at Glastonbury. She’s offered a poignant reminder that even when we turn in fear from the climate crisis, its horrors continue – and we kill the world’s natural beauty as a result.
Sean Adams
FKA Twigs
FKA Twigs lit up the music sphere with her new album EUSEXUA, a hedonistic, ethereal body of work basking in the glory of feeling alive, soaking in the most potent joy the world can offer. In the wake of the hype around it, she followed it with sequel-of-sorts EUSEXUA: Afterglow, and such is its success that it’s taking her into arenas next year. Frankly, EUSEXUA is a frame of mind that anyone and everyone seemingly wants a piece of.
Lily Allen
The internet got their pitchforks out for David Harbour in the wake of Lily Allen’s surprise comeback album West End Girl, but it’d be unwise to let it overshadow the scale of its artistic achievement. Written in an emotionally fraught burst lasting just 10 days, it dissected the fallout from her divorce in painstaking, semi fictionalised detail, hopping from genre to genre as it went along. The acclaim was instant, and these songs ignited fierce conversation about the experience of infidelity and being coaxed into nonmonogamy under duress. ('Nonmongamummy' is also a genius song title, let it be said). It’s taking her into theatres next year followed by arenas, putting her officially, firmly, back on top.
Tori Tsui is on the podcast
The news cycle has been full of climate headlines with COP30 taking place, and to coincide with that, Sean sat down with climate justice activist Tori Tsui to discuss the relationship between the music world and the fight against climate breakdown. For starters - music fans care 10% more about climate than the general population.
Tori has worked with Brian Eno's organisation EarthPercent and on Billie Eilish's Overheated climate conferences, and even got Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to sign the climate treaty before introducing Massive Attack on stage. She and Sean get into everything from why artists are too scared to bridge the knowledge gap about what fans can do about the climate emergency to the intersectionality of climate justice and Palestine.
🎧 Subscribe for new episodes on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or search for "Drowned in Sound" wherever you get your podcasts.
Propaganda Independent Venues promises zero merch cuts
Merch sales are a lifeline for artists - and merch cuts eat unfairly into what they take home from tour. As such, it's refreshing to hear new venue operator Propaganda Independent Venues promise not to take any cuts from the locations in their portfolio. They've just acquired two London Venues, XOYO and Camden Assembly, and also operate the Birmingham XOYO venue as well as The Globe and Tramshed in Cardiff. If you show up to any of these, you can buy your merch in confidence, knowing all of the money will land in your favourite artists' bank accounts.
Influence Boost Awards takes on the unfairness of ticketing
Drowned in Sound has partnered with this fantastic project for content creators. Fancy joining in? Head over here.
Bookmark this resource we've created about the state of ticketing and how not to get scammed:
Sean Adams
Track of the Week
'Marsh' by Cliffords
If you engage with Drowned In Sound regularly (if you do, thank you!) you'll know how much Sean loves Cliffords. Between this new song and their fantastic live show at Reading that I went to see, I understand why. It's a gorgeous song, animated by the warm squall of an electric guitar behind vocalist Iona Lynch's rich vocals, and touches on the heaviness of seasonal depression and the cracks of light that emerge as you work to alleviate it. If you feel seen, this one's for you. And hey - the shortest day of the year is only a few weeks away, and then things might (literally) brighten up.
Also subscribe to our 2025 Favourites playlist on YouTube for more recent tracks of the week.
Community Prompt
Pigs x7 appeal for second-hand instruments for Christmas
When you're trying to keep the lights on and the fridge fall, creativity slips down the to-do list. That's why Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs (to quote their full Christian name) are appealing for unused and unloved instruments they will donate to families across the North East this Christmas, believing people from low income backgrounds around their local area are being priced out of music.
"I understand that is the priority for most people and rightly so, but what a horrible world to be in where economically there's a vast proportion of the country that is completely cut off from, not just music, but from the arts in general," vocalist Matt Baty told BBC Newcastle.
"You need voices and experiences expressed from all walks of life and I feel, you know, on the path that we're going down now, those voices have been very, very marginalised and have been less and less prominent."
If you want to take part, you can email info@pigsx7.com for the band to arrange a collection, or instruments can be dropped off at the Newcastle venue Cluny.
Hopeful story of the week
Musicians come together for Together Against The Far Right alliance
Mobilising against the far right has never been so urgent - and musicians are helping to lead the way. Together Against The Far Right brings together names like Fontaines D.C., Paloma Faith and Lenny Henry, as well as Charlotte Church, Joy Crookes, Frank Turner, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Napalm Death, The Charlatans and more to promote unity in the threat of the far-right.
In addition, 50 civil society organisations have signed up, including Stand Up To Racism, Love Music Hate Racism, Unison, TUC, National Education Union, Friends Of The Earth and Unite The Union.
A press release for the alliance reads: “The far right’s false promises exploit the very real economic pressures facing ordinary people, using them to scapegoat migrants, Muslims, and refugees. In response, the alliance aims to unite the country and show that our true strength lies in solidarity.”
The campaign will organise a major national demonstration in London on Saturday 28 March 2026. You can sign up to be a part of it here.