An exceptional year for new music, even if much of what follows are late-career triumphs by long-adored artists. Fortunately, there are two entries from singer-songwriters mostly new to me and another by a young Irish musician who seems poised to take over the world. 

10. Suzanne Vega, Flying With Angels

I’d be shocked if Vega in her mid-sixties scored another surprise hit like “Luka” or “Tom’s Diner” but I also never would’ve guessed that she’d put out her best album in nearly twenty years. It helps that she’s not content to rest on her laurels, essaying new-to-her sounds like jaunty post-punk/new wave (“Rats”) or blue-eyed soul verging on yacht rock (“Love Thief”). Her signature sound is as spirited as ever whether it’s pop (the single “Speakers’ Corner”), folk (interpolating classic Dylan on “Chambermaid”) or something in between (the electric, spare title track.)

9. Florence + The Machine, Everybody Scream

Just I began losing faith in Florence Welch, she came roaring back with her most interesting album in a decade. It may not have a single track as immediate as her best (from “My Love” to the immortal “Dog Days (Are Over)”) but she appears to be playing the long game, retaining an ever palpable drive but locating and cultivating a sharpened focus that has often eluded her. She acknowledges her elder status but makes artful, witty, candid sense of it: “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music because you can,” she quips in “One of the Greats”, and she’s only half-joking.

8. Hatchie, Liquorice

On her third album, this Brisbane-bred musician dives even further into lush, heavily-reverbed and multitracked guitar-centric dream pop influenced by the Cocteau Twins and an array of 90s shoegaze bands (especially The Darling Buds, who split the difference between those two genres most successfully.) Arguably, she already perfected this balance on her effervescent (and to-date, still best) song, 2022’s “Quicksand”.  However, her songwriting and arrangements still feel fresh rather than frozen in amber, their sparkling hooks cascading on by in one breathless, euphoric rush, especially on “Sage”, “Lose It Again” and “Only One Laughing”.

7. Cut Copy, Moments

Like fellow Australian Hatchie, this quartet primarily draws from a distant past—in this case, early 80s synth-pop (vocalist Dan Whitford has always resembled The Human League’s Philip Oakey) but they’ve gradually outgrown coming off a tribute act with pop’s aesthetics across the past few decades slowly melding into a timeless, genre-bending whole. Their latest has some of their catchiest and tightest songs in years (“Belong To You” even manages to fold in some pedal steel!) but it also makes room for experiments like the seven-minute title track which thrillingly transforms midway into a hypnotic, Krautrock (or maybe Kraftwerk?)-derived groove.

6. Blood Orange, Essex Honey

Aware of but not really familiar with Dev Hynes’ long-running musical project, his first release in seven years got my attention with its ultra-specific tone (elegiac 80s British sophisti-pop such as Prefab Sprout and Scritti Politti) and unusual song structures (tracks are often broken up by fragments of seemingly unrelated tunes and melodies.) The likes of Lorde and Caroline Polachek make guest appearances but they’re unflashy and as fully integrated into the sonic textures as samples from The Durutti Column and Ben Watt. It unfolds like a melancholic dream, evoking scattered childhood memories as it processes longing, loss and grief.

5. Jens Lekman, Songs For Other People’s Weddings

Released in tandem with a David Levithan novel of the same title (featuring Lekman’s lyrics), both the book and this album spin a narrative of “J”, a wedding singer-for-hire based on this Swede’s own side hustle (itself running parallel to being one of the more distinct singer-songwriters of his generation.) Clocking in at eighty minutes, this first solo release in eight years is easily his most ambitious to date, alternating trademark orchestral pop with electronic breakbeats and scene-setting interludes, pulling off a ten-minute epic (“Wedding in Leipzig”) as nimbly as he does impeccably conceived short stories in half that time (“A Tuxedo Sewn For Two”).

4. Anna Von Hausswolff, ICONOCLASTS

Another Swedish musician, Von Hausswolff’s gothic, cathartic wall of sound couldn’t be further from Lekman’s wistful reveries, even though her first album in five years is nearly as long (and twice as epic) as his latest. Only fleetingly aware of her past output, I immediately took to these loud, dramatic soundscapes (if only she had had the opportunity to work with the late Jim Steinman!) Kindred spirits Ethel Cain and an ever-warbly Iggy Pop show up but the album’s guest MVP is saxophonist Otis Sandsjö whose melodic riffs and raucous squawks unlock seemingly limitless possibilities in Von Hausswolff’s approach, especially on the slippery, startling, propulsive “Struggle With The Beast”.

3. CMAT, Euro-Country

Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson’s third album is this year’s great leap forward. I could sense it from the delightful videos she put out for its pre-release singles and as a whole, it’s only collectively grown on me over the past few months. One could deem her an Irish Chappell Roan but she’s closer to a Gen-Z Kirsty MacColl—clever, cheeky, impassioned, someone you can’t help but root for. She excels at tunes not only packed with memorable choruses but verses and bridges, too, plus a deeply felt perspective all her own, suffused with carefully considered snark (“The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station”) cunning wordplay (“Janis Joplining”) and eloquent heartbreak (“Lord, Let That Tesla Crash” and the sweeping title track.)

2. Saint Etienne, International

When this venerable British trio announced their 13th album would be their last, it was unexpected and bittersweet (they’re not breaking up per se but rather “drawing a line in the sand” and recording no more.) Unlike nearly all of their previous long players, International doesn’t really push their sound anywhere new, exactly, serving more as an “Oops! All Bangers” victory lap. Still, even without that added sense of finality, these twelve solid songs are both triumphant and poignant from opener/lead single “Glad” (as fresh-faced and euphoric as anything on Too Young To Die: Singles 1990-1995) to the cumulative resolve of closer “The Last Time”. A lovely bow on top of a singular discography.

1. Doves, Constellations For The Lonely

It’s awfully rare, but occasionally, upon first listen, you just know you’ve heard what could potentially become one of your all-time favorite albums. After a long absence, this active-in-the-aughts band returned with 2020’s The Universal Want; five years later, they’ve followed it with an astonishing full-length that almost eerily anticipates the chaos and anxiety of how 2025 would play out (or likely was in the air to begin with.) One of the more cinematic, post-Britpop guitar bands to emerge after Radiohead’s OK Computer, they’ve never lacked for ambition, their power-trio dynamics enhanced by their expansive arrangements. Beginning with the supposedly Mad Max-inspired single “Renegade”, each song matches a solid rhythmic foundation with a sense of awe and reaching for transcendence. Even though vocals are now shared between all three members, lead singer Jimi Goodwin still defines them as does the searching and humaneness in their lyrics (“Be careful of those stupid schemes… never let them fill your mind,” Goodwin tenderly warns.) The momentum flows steadily throughout, expertly building in final track “Southern Bell” as it shifts from a mournful lament to a declaration of purpose in its exhilarating, near-apocalyptic second half.