my favorite music of 2025
(plus a few notes)
caroline 2 originates from a blend of eight free-spirited multi-instrumentalists Londoners, and this is the best thing I got to hear this year. These guys are cooler than rockstars, they are music nerds and they are willing to scream to the world how much they are good at their craft. I got the chance to see them live this year, on a freezing night in Paris and the throat starting to show signs of an incoming cold. Their music did more for me than any plaid and a box of Ricola ever could. caroline has this incredible analog feeling, full of textures and roughness, but gently refined and perfected by modern digital processes. It’s like this dissonant symphony where every sound is tangible, and it was somehow perfectly recreated on stage. Their music sounds like rehearsed improvisations of a cathartic contemporary post-rock and you should definitely hop on their train.
Alongside Nourished By Time - The Passionate Ones, this is the record that made me want to dance the most this year. Sudan Archives’ music conveys an almost orchestral force that lands exactly where it should: on the body. She is playful : she experiments with BPMs, brings fun vocal and violins medley, alternates rhythms, switches beats. It feels like wandering through her open-world video game that she’s shaped exactly how she wants it. But the playfulness never undercuts her skill. Her musical background and her virtuosity on the violin is the reason why this euphoric world stitches together. Each song has its own personality and purpose, yet the album unfolds as a fully coherent piece. It’s energetic, surprising, Sudan Archives never misses a good drop and the result feels like a refreshing version of 2000s dance and house with R&B touches.
Real Life may be my favorite song of the year, and this debut EP is the first time I’d heard of ear (pun intended). This record feels like an internet gem, a lost tape from a dark forum, something you almost want to gatekeep for the few friends who « will get it ». It’s the softest glitch-core I’ve heard, so smooth it almost feels wrong. Production is choppy, inventive, floating. It sounds like new made with old.
There’s a y2k nostalgia running through it that I am so fond of about: esoteric female vocalists set against deep, contrasting bass. Their music reminds me of those endless summer drives from my youth, deeply melancholic but also interrupted by the trashy, dirty feel of highway stations you’d stop at to grab awful food.
The EP frustrates because it leaves you wanting so much more, but is so promising. Don’t mind their disturbing cover (that made me click, I must confess) and give it a spin. These 2 need to be carefully surveilled over the next few years.
There’s something so cinematic about Big City Life, it feels vintage, almost rusty, yet its minimalist and stylish production instantly puts you exactly in the right setting: a shy, cosmopolitan era. Straight from Oslo, Catharina and Henriette have crafted a snowy cut of Lost in Translation, it’s romantic, nocturnal, sometimes sensual, and a gentle, misty melancholy permeates the whole record. You got time and I got money is stunning, rendering perfectly the clichéd slow dance I never had in high school into something real. It’s the perfect soundtrack for those lonely walks after the sun goes down.
Saya Gray confirms her promise with SAYA: after two years of following her work, this record makes it clear she’s headed for something much bigger. While the album is less experimental than her earlier EPs, she retains the singularity that made those releases so exceptional. Her voice is, as ever, warm, expressive and beautifully controlled, while the production remains meticulous and tender, wrapped in a comforting, warm groove. On stage she’s electrifying, and “HOW LONG CAN YOU KEEP UP A LIE?” is one of my favorite songs of the year. The record showcases the broad palette of Saya’s talent and brought her a larger audience, although I hope she returns soon to more daring, bold, boundary‑pushing sounds.