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Pitchfork’s editors are already sorting, compiling, and straining to remember all the music that’s been released this year. So we’re spotlighting some of 2025’s most outstanding records to date by rounding up albums that have earned high scores and Best New Music designations with a quick list of RIYLs (that’s Recommended If You Like) and links to our coverage.
Unlike our year-end lists, this one is organized in reverse chronological order. To help you keep track of the year’s best music, we’ll be updating it periodically throughout the remainder of 2025.
(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)
May
RIYL: Fragrantica reviews; phenomenology; dream logic; the relationship between scent and memory; live music as a liminal space; subtle club beats; modern dance; the sounds of the Oslo subway
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
April
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RIYL: Actually watching, not waiting out, the movie credits; Lia Kohl; loop pedals; Mississippi humidity; buying old family photos at a dilapidated vintage shop; The Sacrificial Code; taking the window seat on multi-hour train trips
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
RIYL: Scrapbooks; collage; free spirits; false starts; first-thought-best-thought; house shows; unplugging; touching grass; smoking grass; growing grass; that one tape that’s been on the dashboard of your car for like five years, since that road trip you took with your best friend, and still sounds great no matter how garbled it gets
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
RIYL: Timelapse videos of nature; drum ‘n’ bass to chill out to; Floating Points symphonies; Objekt; making a complex, inventive beverage to pair with a piece of buttered toast
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
RIYL: Geopolitics; anticolonialism; peace studies; survivor’s tales; kuduro; Burial; rave stabs; reverb; battered patinas; smoke; shrapnel; slivers of light; silver linings
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
RIYL: Grouper; the landscape of coastal Ireland; Gothic novels; Cocteau Twins; going to the beach when it’s raining; dream pop; uilleann pipes; frost on the windows