The rumors are true, KRUI likes music! 2025 was a crazy year all around, and even crazier, we here at KRUI actually listened to lots of albums this year. Whether an artist created an entirely new inventive sound, reinvigorated lost nostalgia, or just made a plain sick record, we noticed. What makes an album good? No one probably knows, but we can talk about why we liked a few certain releases here. We’ve picked out eleven of our favorite albums from this year to share, and explore together.
Addison Rae, ‘Addison’
There was no other album I was more excited to make fun of this year than Addison Rae’s self-titled Addison. Yet, despite all odds and precedents, the TikTok-star-turned-singer-songwriter has deservedly etched a space for herself in the pop star landscape despite following one of the most pivotal years in the genre. In an interview on the Popcast podcast, Rae quotes, “taste is a luxury,” in reference to her own tastes in music and fashion. She credits her success on TikTok and her public as the reason she is now able to pursue her more genuine interest in music. This philosophy becomes very evident within the first few seconds on the album, with the song, New York. A familiar, yet unconventional, pop track opens with a rapid electronic pan and escalates to a breathy Max-Martin-esque dance beat that screams 2000s Britney. It feels nostalgic, yet new. The album is immediately rewarding, offering a fun and campy surface appeal on tracks like Money is Everything and High Fashion. Yet, the listener is often gifted with deeper lyrical focus on songs such as Times Like These and Headphones On. With an entirely female produced record, Addison feels in complete control of the feminine sexuality that underlies the album, reminiscent of her fellow recent breakthrough superstars like Sabrina, Chappell, and Charli XCX. Addison is an incredibly impressive debut project that makes me very excited for her career, and the future of pop music.
-Becca Warfield
Don’t Tap the Glass – Tyler the Creator
DON’T TAP THE GLASS by Tyler, The Creator is a shorter album, running just 29 minutes throughout its ten tracks. Released on July 21, just less than 9 months after the release of his last album, this
album is an outlier in his discography. Tyler’s known for his writing style which (lately) tends to be more
confessional and narrates the personal themes in his life. Instead, this album was written purely to make people move. When he released the album, he was open about this switch and told fans “yall better get them expectations and hopes down this aint no concept nothing” on Twitter. This tweet severely downplayed how strong this album stands out in his discography. While nothing conceptually profound, the album is one of his most upbeat and engaging. Every song builds off of the energy from the one before. Some standout tracks include Sugar on My Tongue, Big Poe, and Ring Ring Ring, which all experienced a lot of hype online. My own personal favorite is Sucka Free. Overall, this album is definitely worth a listen, especially if you need something carefree and upbeat, or just want a good beat to dance to.
-Will Clair
Ethel Cain, ‘Perverts’
Ever since its release back in January, Ethel Cain’s new project Perverts entranced me. This EP represents a drastic tonal and thematic departure from Cain’s debut album, Preachers Daughter, which built a southern gothic narrative from a mix of folk, slowcore, and elements of dream pop. This time around, Ethel Cain completely switched gears and opted for a dark ambient project composed of drone music, unsettling sounds, a near complete lack of lyrics, and a oppressively haunting atmosphere. With Perverts, we are taken on a journey of transcendence to explore the different manifestations of perversion in all its forms. From the opening title track, we are immediately thrust into this world Cain experiences, which transports us to decrepit basements, vast stretches of woods, industrial power plants, and this esoteric divine theatre.
Songs explore twisted depictions of desire, with kick drums, delicate piano and fragile vocals in Punish, and the terrifying howling over continuous murmurings of “i love you’s” in Housofpsychoticwomn. The album touches on the perversions of pleasure with my personal favorite, Onanist, creating its perversion with whispers, powerful bass, and building crescendos. The rest of the soundscape is a combination of heavy instrumentals, drones, distorted vocals, drums, lap steels and the hurdy-gurdy as Ethel Cain represents lustful experiences in Vascillator, proximity and abandonment from God in Thatorchia, and self-destructive within Amber Waves.
In just nine songs, she explores themes of guilt, shame, eroticism, resentment, faith, transcendence and corruption of self, with a soundscape akin to a horror movie soundtrack. It is best challenging for a casual listener, and at worst downright terrifying to anyone curious enough to peek into her veil. But I would be remiss if I didn’t insist that this project is worth the listen, if only to experience the journey of sonic transcendence Ethel Cain drags us through within her perversions.
-Clara Carrion
Westside Gunn, ’12’
Westside had a big year in 2025 with 3 full-length albums, 2 EPs, and multiple singles, including crossovers with JID, Cookin’ Soul, Karriem Riggins, and Doechii, who just received the Grammy for Best Rap Album of the Year last February. 12 is the newest installment of Westside Gunn’s long-running Hitler Wears Hermes mixtape series, which feels less like a batch of individual songs and more like a cohesive project than any Griselda releases this decade. Amidst all the deluge of content from the Griselda label this year, 12 went under the radar and underappreciated, even by fans. While the album doesn’t experiment or break new ground sonically, it’s my favorite this year merely for the penmanship and lyrical delivery from all parties involved.
The best RYM review I’ve ever seen noted, “Westside Gunn is the moment hip-hop goes post-hip-hop—transforming the MC into an echo, the beat into a museum piece, and the genre’s symbols (luxury, violence, nostalgia) into looped artifacts”. Almost nowhere is that more clear than on tracks like Vert and Bury Me with a Stove, where the essential hip-hop drums are replaced with droning ad-libs and grainy phonographic samples: Creating Giselle’s trademark haunting and lavish atmosphere. The tracklist, however, diversifies, with the gritty hardcore boom bap posse cut that is Boswell and Tom Sos’s featherlight voice and rhymes on tracks like Gumbo Yaya and Health Sciences offering a ray of light in 12’s nocturnal atmosphere.
Though technically under the name Westside Gunn, spiritually, this is Stove God Cooks’ masterpiece. He features on almost the entire first leg of the tracklist and steals the show in the album’s drumless outro, Dump World. StoveGod sounds more at home on an altar than in the studio, bringing unflinchingly egotistical lyrics and drumless gospel hymns to create a liturgy of the self, demanding the listener bend the knee and pray. Bars like “The Virgil Rug say rug, the plug name in my phone say plug” or “YOU EVER COOK HALF A BRICK IN DA AIR FRYER” puts the entire Western literary canon to shame. Stove God features on this project more than any other Westside release. So if you’re looking for the most lavish bars in hip hop today, this project is for you.
-Amman Hassan
PinkPantheress, ‘Fancy That?’
It’s a Pink sweep. This music video for Stateside was shot outside a JCPenny, and really I think that’s all you need to know to truly get what this album’s all about. Music and fashion trends have been dominated by this idea of “Y2K” for the past few years, what initially began as unique and inspired 2000s throwbacks quickly turned into force-fed slop and algorithmic nostalgia regurgitated back at us from every corner Tiktok could touch. This year–praise god!–we’ve maybe started resisting crap in a low-rise bow, and with projects like Addison, Essex Honey, and cheetah print, we’re finally seeing a rise of Y2K nostalgia that is not only hopes to remind, but to inspire.
I hate to laud a southern, but anyone who can flaunt ultra-high rise capris is committed to this Y2K shit. It might as well be 2006 for PinkPantheress as she’s tapping into her U.K. jungle and D&B roots right from the opening beats of Fancy That’s first track, Illegal, with a complete embrace of a nostalgia that doesn’t stale or pull superficial. From Tonight to Romeo, this is neither her most emotional nor ambitious release, but I’d say it’s by far her most stylistically unique and coherent project by far. With this mixtape, Pink’s solidified her image. She’s drawing influences from around the world into her Brit tartan aesthetics, and creates tracks out of it that are so fresh & fit, it’s actually a no-skip record. Whether I was fucking about in Scandinavia or stateside, Fancy That? has been my dearest friend this year. This mixtape is sweet, sexy, and just pure fun with a bassline, it’s everything that this vague memory of an animal-printed and velour-clad 2000s embodies. Nostalgia is a tool, and Pink wields it with her iron-plaid fist. like what!?
-Pauly
Sudan Archives, ‘The BPM’
“An artist’s foray into a “Gadget Girl” persona in the year 2025 may verge on cliche and could even be banal, but with Sudan Archives it just feels so right. Following the acclaimed 2022 album Natural Brown Prom Queen, on this new record, The BPM, Sudan Archives leans even heavier into the (dare I say) archive of dance beats she intricately weaves together to explore the relationship amongst technology, body, and identity. With fifteen songs and clocking in at just under an hour, the album never feels bloated or rushed. The songs, which pull on club beats inspired by Midwest cities like Chicago and Detroit, flow from one to the other to explore Gadget Girl’s sci-fi persona and life. “MY TYPE” is a notable standout, with a racing beat, quick lyrics, and a chorus that is an instant club classic. On the album opener “DEAD” she sings: “Where my old self at? / Where my new self at? / Where my light side at? / Where my dark side at?” with a chorus of “right here, right here” reassuring herself after every line. Gadget Girl can go everywhere and be everything, as she sings on “A BUG’S LIFE,” another album standout, “’cause she never looks back / and she can’t go home.” With Sudan Archives and The BPM, I don’t think we even want to anymore.”
-Corrine
Frost Children, ‘SISTER’
SISTER, the latest Frost Children album, was released on September 12th of this year, which perfectly blends genres to create a timeless electronic-hyperpop-indiepop-EDM album that will be played for years to come. The two siblings, Lulu and Angel Prost, began making music together in 2020, leading them to release 5 albums from 2020-2023. After a 2 year break, they returned and released what is, in my opinion, their best album yet.
SISTER builds upon the electro-punk and indie-sleaze style of hyperpop they employed in the albums SPEED RUN and Hearth Room, but turn the EDM knob up slightly. This gives the album an inherently nostalgic quality that I haven’t heard from a new release ever in recent memory. They perfectly encapsulate the energy of 2010s pop hits but build upon them with their already established abrasive style of hyperpop, to not only draw from the past but to innovate a new style of electronic music all together. Songs like Falling and Position Famous perfectly illustrate this push and pull – they sound at points deeply nostalgic and also very innovative, creating for a sound I haven’t heard before and a mix of genres that I’m sure will influence the next wave of electronic music for years to come.
-Chase
MIKE, ‘Showbiz!’
I, like many others, was introduced to MIKE by his long term friend, collaborator and fellow abstract hip hop artist Earl Sweatshirt. Mainly from a line off his 2018 single The Mint, “I was in the kitchen with that nigga Mike”. Curious, I decided to check out his 2019 album tears of joy, and since then I’ve gotten to experience one of the best and most unique modern hip hop discographies unravel with Showbiz! being no exception.
With 24 tracks, you’d think MIKE’s signature laid back, monotone delivery would get repetitive or boring but far from it. Combined with the sample heavy jazz & soul inspired production it creates a very relaxed, meditative feeling to the album that makes it feel more dream-like than sleepy. His lyrical ability has also never been sharper with tracks such as Lucky and When it Rains featuring bar after bar of creative and well delivered lyrics.
But what really holds this album together and makes it my favorite release of the year is its common thread of family, reflection of one’s past and the path ahead of him. On one of its standout tracks What U Boutta Do?/A Star was Born he professes “I’m the living proof, I’m my parent’s child. Put you in my shoes, it’s a scary route”. Since a lot of MIKE’s work revolves around mental health and personal struggles, seeing him be able to so honestly reflect on some of what’s led to these issues discussed on other tracks is very fascinating. On the albums most popular track man in the mirror it begins with a sample of a man discussing the pressure of his job and how “showing off” has almost become a requirement, but also a huge cause of pain in his life. As MIKE has continued to see growth and recognition it’s fascinating to see how this has affected his perception of himself and “the man in the mirror”.
With such a consistent album that I’ve been replaying since its release I’m excited to see where the career of one of hip hop’s best working rappers is gonna continue to lead us toward. And if it’s to more amazing albums like this one. Then I’m pretty happy with the trajectory.
-Tarik Krob
Kevin Atwater, ‘Achilles’
Once again, Kevin Atwater manages to break my heart yet simultaneously make me sing along. His first album, Achilles managed to be in my constant rotation year round. Despite his soft voice, Atwater with each song, manages to illustrate his emotions so impactfully. Atwater has been hurt before and much of that gets channeled in crushing lyrics that paired with intense instrumentals. That’s what I like about Atwater and this album. It wears its heart on a sleeve and inspires a sort of connection with Atwater in a sense. Atwater bares his soul for the album and as a listener I feel appreciative he’s willing to share it all with me. Most of songs come from Atwater’s personal experiences and it’s clear that he’s laying all his cards on the table. I don’t just admire that Atwater’s is willing to get vulnerable, it’s also that I think he’s able to tell the stories in these songs quite beautifully. That’s what got me to got me to come back to this album numerous times this year. Some of my favorite tracks of this album include “Jamie’s Daydreams” and “the cage”, as they show Atwater at his angriest and hurt. Even though Atwater never raises his voice in either song, his anger is palpable and visceral through lyrics that pack a punch. achilles has showed me that Kevin Atwater is still manages capitivate me with his stellar songwriting and has me excited to see what he has in store for the future.
-Ria Das
the side peices (heavensouls x stickerbrush), ‘darkskin n****s with lightskin problems’
Prolific avant-rap producer-mcs stickerbrush and heavensouls more than eke out a place for themselves within an ever-expanding universe of deepweb art. Teaming up for a second time after their initial inverted skintone collaboration, 2024’s lightskin n****s with darkskin problems, 2025 sees the two solidifying their artistic connection in a fragmented and frenetic auditory experience often as multifaceted as everyday life in 2025 feels, an unpredictable world of extremes, liable at any moment to turn on a dime to a polar opposite. Expansive, enveloping sound collages initially cloying in their sweetness give way to harsh staticky bursts, overlapping vocal shards and textures swirling- one moment cacophonous, the next, breathtaking. Any artist that can transition from a verse about zero star yelp reviews to one of the best Jersey Club beats I’ve heard all year surely has a grasp of what exactly they are doing.
While both artists are by no means household names, the sheer quality of this project has caused a slow but steady expansion of their profiles throughout the year, setting the stage for their anticipated third project dropping next year.
-Evan Raefield
Sam Fender, ‘People Watching’
For 2,603 minutes this past year, I was listening to Sam Fender. In November of last year Fender announced his third studio album “People Watching” would be released on February 21st and the anticipation only built until then. Some singles to try and calm the excitement only led to the expansion of this desire to hear the whole thing. The record opens with the title track, my 13th most listened to song this year, and for good reason. Its bright instrumentation, a collection of acoustic and electric guitars brought along with a dancing bassline and much more, welcome you into this reflective and beautiful record.
One of Fender’s greatest skills is making you feel like you’re next to him at a pub talking. These songs trace all the things that have made him who he is to their origin. A disruption of faith on “Little Bit Closer” is written as a confession of confusion from a man who is lost in his relationship with god, or whatever else is up there. It’s not often a younger artist, 31, can be so honest about his worries about death and what will happen to him and his loved ones when that day arrives. A plea for not even an answer, but guidance, placed along with an outro that rivals any contemporaries is something that will rattle around the ears after a listen.
“Arms’ Length” is another favorite of mine, with a riff that made me find the nearest guitar and play along. Fender’s voice is an instrument in and of itself. His tenor range cuts like a silver bullet through his guitars, with a sturdiness that anchors each tune to the stories he is so good at telling. “Rein Me In” has gotten a lot of attention recently too with Fender inviting fellow rising star Olivia Dean along for the tune. “Something Heavy” is another honest reflection on the loss of friends, even if they are still alive. It drips in heartbreak for those who’ve fallen to substances and is an extension of the hand to those trying to make it out the other end. This album is a no skip for me, but these songs in particular have etched their way into my mind.
Fender rightfully so has a stranglehold across the pond, selling out three nights at St. James Park in Newcastle this past June. These annual homecoming gigs in Newcastle keep getting bigger and bigger, and rightfully so. His live shows are an explosion of joy and vulnerability. I had the privilege of seeing him in a much more intimate setting than those in England at The Aragon Ballroom in September. Hitting six songs off “People Watching”, Sam and his band have written their names on this historic venue. Accompanied by a stellar live band that brought my favorite record of the year to life, the closing tune of “Hypersonic Missiles” left me hugging my brother and strangers alike. There was a communal feeling in that room, knowing this was the smallest venue we will ever see Fender in as his conquering of the States will require a much larger space the next time he comes our way.
“People Watching” has not left the rotation and will not any time soon. An open book with a golden voice, Sam Fender is here to stay.
-Logan Melia
Thanks for rocking with college radio in 2025, stick with us here at KRUI in lovely 2026 and beyond<3.