Across our 18 years, we’ve taken our “best of” list in a few different directions. We’ve done mathematical, with a ranked voting system. We’ve done personal, with each member of our on-air staff offering their pick for the top album of the year.
But the one that fits best with our guiding principle of music discovery is what we call the essential approach — as in the following question we ask our team:
If you could only recommend ONE album from 2025 for people to listen to, which one would it be and why?
In addition to a nice round list of 10, this strategy gets us a collection of albums that feels very Radio Milwaukee. It’s diverse, it’s expansive, and it’s a little bit weird — just like us.
So while this is a de facto “top 10 best albums of 2025” list, we try to make it more than that. These are the records released this year that our staff firmly believe you cannot afford to miss. And in case you need convincing about a particular selection, they took on the painful limitation of just 250(ish) words to explain their affection.
Check out all of our picks below (presented in alphabetical order) and then use your preferred listening method to start enjoying the best, the top, the essential albums of 2025.
Best albums of 2025
10, SAULT
Calling any album a superb standout is big praise, but it’s even bigger when you’re talking about SAULT. This band is famous for dropping surprise records shrouded in mystery, and sometimes several at once — often dealing with heavy subjects like race and social justice. But 10 feels different.
For one, it focuses on themes of healing and faith. Plus it’s full of great, groovy dance music, bumping 808s and clean sonics. There’s a little mystery, per usual, with all song titles presented in the form of initials — “P”, “I.L.T.S.”, “H.T.T.R.” and so on — to give you a little something to figure out.
Songs like "R.L." (Real Love) and "T.H." (The Healing) are packed with that good disco-funk energy and soul, making you want to get up and boogie, which is something new for them as of late. It’s a bright, feel-good record that shows a powerful group can still make simple, joyful music without losing its deeper meaning.
Even the release of 10 got deep. Taking place over Easter, the band dropped the album online Friday, deleted it from all streaming sites for a couple of days, and then put it back up on Easter Sunday. Death and resurrection, indeed, and a perfect example of how this band treats their music as a special event (even if it caused a small moment of confusion for the fans and streaming companies).
— Anthony Foster
BRONTO, The Hidden Cameras
It’s 2017. I’m visiting House of Weekend in Berlin — one of the hottest nightclubs in Germany’s capital city. Each floor has its own vibe in the three-story setup, and on this particular evening I’m drawn to the sounds of discotheque coming from the first floor.
With the mix's infectious melody and heart-pounding bass, I became entranced, willingly losing myself on the dance floor for hours. It was one of the best nights of my life because of how carefree the music made me feel. Traveling around Europe for a few weeks and still being in my 20s figuring out what life was all about, it was the embodiment of feeling like the world was my oyster.
When I listened to BRONTO from The Hidden Cameras, it transported me back to that time.
This is an album that’ll keep your hips rocking from start to finish. Then you’ll want to put it on repeat for a few days to stretch the feeling for as long as you can. Listening to it on your own is a healthy form of escapism, complete with an out-of-body experience.
To amplify that feeling, invite a few friends over to listen to the vinyl with you and turn your living room into a full-blown house party. You’ll be taken on a heart-throbbing ride through the depths of synth and electro-pop, with this innate feeling that you … must … dance. BRONTO is happy to help you oblige.
— Britt Gottschalk
Celebrities, Collections of Colonies of Bees
My head began swirling with melodies and drumbeats when we were asked to submit ONE album as our favorite of 2025. With so many significant records dropping this year, how do I pick my fave? The answer became clear when I asked myself: “What new album did I listen to THE MOST?”
Hands down, that was Celebrities from Milwaukee’s Collection of Colonies of Bees.
I was super honored when CoCoBees invited me into their Bay View warehouse for rehearsal this spring. There’s something magical — a lingering energy, perhaps — about seeing a space where music is created, nurtured and recorded. I’ve been a big fan since they started as an instrumental collective back in the late ’90s (shout out to OG Chris Roseneau). With every new evolution of this group, something special follows. That’s certainly true of Celebrities.
The record starts with a nod to those early days of gentle electronics that somehow feel very much like they have a soul of their own. And can we talk about the beautiful juxtaposition of Marielle Allschwang’s voice that transitions from ethereal to powerful to a siren song from track to track? She shares vocal responsibilities with the comforting baritone of Daniel Spack, and together they give off all the feels.
Celebrities is a perfect mix of super-dope guitar solos, electronic glitches and a rhythm section that makes me wanna dance. “You Can Go Again” is one that gets me up outta my seat, hypnotically swaying until the full-on dance break in the chorus. But it moves you in other ways as well, with beautiful quiet moments like “I Was a Dancer (He Was a Natural),” which could appear in a soundtrack to the best indie movie.
Clocking in at eight tracks just over 30 minutes long, this album is meant to be listened to on the original vinyl from front to back, or through a great pair of headphones for a more intimate experience. Make sure you put it into your rotation, and you can thank me on the dance floor at their next show.
— Dori Zori
DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, Bad Bunny
This isn’t just my favorite album of 2025; it’s an experience that moved me deeply.
I came to that realization while standing in the middle of Bad Bunny’s residency in Puerto Rico, surrounded by thousands who weren’t simply attending a concert, but rather living inside the album. Between the montaña-shaped stage, the pink casita and the pulse of the percussion, the night unfolded like a dream, a love letter to the island and its people.
Seventeen tracks of pure magic, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS captures the full spectrum of emotion, joy, loss, reflection and pride. The title track is both a confession and a celebration, holding the bittersweet truth that we never take enough photos before a moment becomes memory.
Through a mix of plena, salsa, reggaetón and electronic vibes, Bad Bunny transforms reflection into rhythm, reclaiming Puerto Rican sound as both archive and future. The song moves beyond geography, resonating with anyone who’s ever longed for home, love or time lost. Yet instead of sinking into regret, it becomes an act of reclamation, self, culture and connection.
What makes DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS the best album of 2025 is its humanity. Having the privilege of watching him perform on my ancestors’ home soil, I understood that this project isn’t about fame or nostalgia; it’s about remembrance, evolution and love. It’s music you don’t just hear; it’s music you feel in your bones, in your breath, in the rhythm of everything that made you who you are, Boricua!
— Kenny Perez
FEMME FATALE, Mon Laferte
I’m such a fan of Mon Laferte. Stylistically, the Chilean artist plays with so many genres while always keeping femininity and feminism as her North Star.
On FEMME FATALE, she is divinely feminine. It’s an album so raw in emotion and vulnerability, there’s something every listener can relate to. And with a collection of jazz, Bolero and lyrical pop, it’ll transport you through time to a vaudeville or cabaret setting. Laferte dials up the feeling by collaborating with other femme powerhouses, like Natalia Lafourcade, Vivir Quintana and Silvana Estrada.
A favorite of mine is “La Tirana,” a duet with Nathy Peluso. This Bolero shares the troubles of two women deemed to be “too much.” The singers flow back and forth in conversation, grappling with each other and the reality of loving too fiercely. It also serves as an ode to Cuban singer La Lupe, an artist who spoke on similar themes and offered her own version of “La Tirana” in 1967. Lyrically, the songs are their own, but they both play with form through boleros.
A personal, intuitive, evocative and sensual project, Femme Fatale is an album that keeps on giving.
— Paula Lovo
Miss Black America, KIRBY
KIRBY’s Miss Black America is not just an album; it’s an emancipation document disguised as soul music. This project is the sound of a Black woman refusing to shrink, refusing to be rewritten, refusing to be ordinary. KIRBY doesn’t just sing; she testifies, she challenges, she exposes, and she heals.
Miss Black America feels like a sonic referendum on what it means to be brilliant, Black and unbothered in a world that would rather borrow our culture than honor our truth. Every track is a reminder that Black women are not muses; we are the blueprint.
This album is as revolutionary as it is intimate, as intentional as it is raw. It is cultural restoration. It is emotional excavation. It is artistic sovereignty. And it deserves to be studied, celebrated and held up as one of the most important soul albums of our time.
— Element Everest-Blanks
SAYA, Saya Gray
Japanese-Canadian musician and producer Saya Gray has intuitively crafted a free-flowing breakup album that never feels confined or close. There’s lots of legroom for movement and self-discovery, and that’s all part of the appeal. It makes it feel true to life.
SAYA was written with a guitar literally at her side as she traveled across the globe, unraveling and processing a universal yet distinct journey. Musically, Gray’s blurred-edges version of folk pulls in the listener as she swirls pop, jazz, trip-hop and classical, with acoustic guitar as the through-line.
Pastoral in some breaths and sweeping in others, SAYA shifts within an outline drawn wide, with a bold, unmistakable perimeter. Upon listening, it’s clear this process wasn’t just a journey for Gray; it was also an exercise in boundary-setting.
This is my essential album for 2025 because it reflects emotional weather patterns in my experiences this year that, while not identical, share instances of deep reflection and hope. It’s also an album I gravitated to again and again for its pure substance. Each listen brought fresh nuances: a slide guitar line, a funerary organ, a wiggly synth, a vocal harmony, a rhythm, etc. It feels like I’m still discovering layers.
Amidst all those layers and still-activating measures of growth, these songs give off strength and cohesiveness. That little flicker of emotions between the dark and the light feels very real and, ultimately, magnetic.
— Erin Wolf
Songs in the Key of Yikes, Superchunk
Before I even listened to Superchunk’s newest album (their 13th), it already checked a box that I love about the band: a clever album title.
Songs in the Key of Yikes joins Here’s to Shutting Up (2001), Majesty Shredding (2010) and I Hate Music (2013) on the list of a 35-year career that has brought me so much joy. There’s a timelessness to all 10 tracks on this album but some of the lyrics carry a little more weight from the years Superchunk have been writing, recording, touring and seeing other bands who are their peers succeed or disappear altogether.
“Is This Making You Feel Something” is a near-perfect start to this album — an opening song that feels like the beginning of a conversation you’re having with the band. Without any context, you’d think that songs titled “Everybody Dies,” “No Hope” and “Train on Fire” would make this conversation a serious and dire one, but these songs are more reflective than depressing.
Superchunk have been so great for so long. This entire album is a reminder of that while also serving as my “2025 was chaos, and I’m uncertain about 2026, but at least we have Superchunk” album.
— Jon Adler
System, Prewn
“Dirty Dog” first caught my attention. Rejecting the expected formula of a song, the structure allows for an imperfectly perfect stream of consciousness to be set free. Refreshing, the successful resonance of a track in its conventional failure. It spitefully confesses the responsibility our narrator has in an unsavory attachment:
Damn that dirty dog did it again
Drowned and fell around
And he walked all dead to his momma's house
She said I love you honey where have you been
It's been years
Darling I miss you so
The shamefully honest narrator I’ve grown so fond of goes by the name Prewn. Massachusetts’ Izzy Hagerup is the author behind System, the project that introduced us.
Her sophomore album was written during her mid-20s as a method to escape the numbness and confusion that had become a symptom of unprocessed pain. There’s a comfort in her acknowledgement of the self-centeredness in this period of her life. It's the rumination tracked in a journal in the middle of the night. The knocking of anxiety, fear and self-loathing that needs to be penned by an understandably all-consuming author.
The defeat in her lyrics are just as refreshing as how they are composed. Prewn recorded every instrument on this record — guitar, the hollowing cello, wailing ragged vocals and what she describes as “makeshift” drums. Her latest musical installation leans into an electronic element. Think SWANS, Viagra Boys, Lealani and Fiona Apple.
If you sit long enough in the ugly, it can start to turn beautiful. Prewn’s System is essential in finding the sense in that.
— Carolann Grzybowski
The Clearing, Wolf Alice
The last time we saw Wolf Alice (in album form anyway) was 2021’s Blue Weekend, a shiny and swaggery collection that demonstrated their shape-shifting capabilities. So maybe we shouldn’t have been so surprised when the band showed up in 2025 looking and — more importantly — sounding drastically different but no less excellent.
Having played around with ’90s grunge and ’80s synths on their previous album, Wolf Alice takes it back another decade on The Clearing and largely sticks to a ’70s groove that conjures thoughts of ABBA, Fleetwood Mac and other era-specific touchstones. Yet the album still manages to be a study in contradictions. It’s rooted to a particular time while still presenting variety while still sounding like a cohesive project.
The sonic switch-up definitely baffled some and downright alienated others. Imagine your last memory of this band being “Smile” and then hearing something like “Bread Butter Tea Sugar” (my favorite track from the new record). But that’s what keeps Wolf Alice from getting lost in the crowded Brit rock realm. When you’re this defiantly diverse, you can’t help but stand out.
— Brett Krzykowski