With our recent countdown of Albumism’s overall 50 Best Albums of 2025 complete, it’s now time to celebrate the wonderful records that our writers’ have deemed their personal favorites of the year. Even the most cursory scan of our staff’s selections below reveals just how unique and varied our musical tastes are, which certainly shines through all of our articles throughout the year.

Check out our personal picks and let us know what your favorite albums of 2025 are in the comments below!

#1 | Wolf Alice | The Clearing

Expertly orchestrated by pop producer extraordinaire Greg Kurstin (Adele, Foo Fighters, Maren Morris), The Clearing evinces a band clearly in control of their distinctive sound, replete with the contrasting textures and varied hues contained therein. Wolf Alice’s commitment to experimenting with their art and expanding their songcraft beyond the tried-and-true is most notably evidenced in the jaunty, shapeshifting lead single “Bloom Baby Bloom,” which sounds like nothing else in their repertoire to date.

Getting older entails the constant reassessment and prioritization of what’s most important to ensuring a life well lived. Now embarking upon their thirties, a full decade removed from their auspicious formal introduction as a band with My Love Is Cool, the members of Wolf Alice appear more comfortable than ever with their shared identity as a band, with The Clearing serving as a blueprint for how to mature gracefully and purposefully.

#1 | Nicki Richards | Love Life

If the name Nicki Richards is unfamiliar, you may have missed her understated and essential 1991 debut Naked (To the World). Her versatile, feline alto has transfixed me ever since. Though the multidisciplinary artist can write, play, and produce her own projects, Richards issues new music only sparingly between tours with Madonna, Mariah Carey, and Steely Dan. After her latest hiatus, 2025 brings us Love Life—an all-star, soul-soaked contemporary jazz meditation.

On Love Life, she luxuriates in deft arrangements with legendary musicians like Marcus Miller, Lenny White, Mark Kibble, Bashiri Johnson, Cyrus Chestnut, and Will Lee. Together, they sketch an abstract portrait of a self-possessed woman embracing desire (“It’s Your Thang”), entanglement (“Heartstrings,” “Tether Me”), addiction and redemption (“New Orleans”), and social activism (“Anything”). She even delivers a stunning reinterpretation of Joni Mitchell’s “Sweet Bird” from The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1976).

While the year saw impressive releases from Jacob Collier, Lalah Hathaway, and even former boss Ms. Carey, Nicki Richards dominated my playlists. That voice speaks for itself. With the Love Life sequel It’s Complicated already locked and loaded for 2026, her flourishing artistry will only deepen its roots.

#1 | Jamie Woon | 3, 10, Why, When

This year has been a funny one for me. Fors most of the year, I've felt thoroughly overwhelmed by the amount of new material and have often retreated to things I already love or have explored old records as I attempt to “fill in the gaps.”

But Jamie Woon picked me up, gave me a good shake and set me straight. I've loved both of his other albums and had yearned longingly from afar for a new album. This was made even more clear when I heard his influence and pen in new material by Elmiene, so when this album dropped in the second half of this year, I was rewarded for my patience by another wonderful set of songs.

His voice improves with each album and lends everything a sheen of melancholy that really hits the spot for me. Opener "All The Way" sends shivers down my spine every time I listen to it and the same is true of "Ghost" at the end of the album. In between, there’s a hint of whimsy and much more of his uniquely atmospheric self-analysis. In some senses, this record has saved me from a retreating musical world that often comes with growing old and I'd wait 10 more years for another album from him. Again.

#1 | De La Soul | Cabin In The Sky

One would have understood if De La Soul’s musical journey had stopped with the death of Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur in early 2023. The group could have retired from recording new music, and, if they felt inclined, done the occasional tour or hit the summer festival circuit every few years. Instead, at the urging and with the blessing of Dave’s family, they decided to record more music. Their efforts resulted in Cabin In The Sky, the best album of 2025.

Part of the year-long “Legend Has It” series from Mass Appeal Records, Cabin In The Sky is built upon the concept of making the most of your life while you’re still here on this planet. It invokes many of De La’s previous releases, but in terms of subject matter, the members of the group speak with the wisdom that one acquires in their fifties, aware of their own mortality, but still feeling like they’ve got a lot to offer to the world.

#1 | Olivia Dean | The Art Of Loving

The rush of fresh air we needed, Olivia Dean's sophomore outing The Art Of Loving is soothing, focused, and quietly confident. With a tight 34-minute running time, it doesn't overstay its welcome, letting quality over quantity lead the listening experience. Highlights like "Loud," "So Easy (To Fall In Love)," "Something Inbetween," and the mood-lifter "Man I Need" will make this an album to return to time and time again.

#1 | Matt Berninger | Get Sunk

The National singer didn't tour with his debut solo album Serpentine Prison (2020) thanks to COVID, so when I finally got to see Matt Berninger perform material from sophomore effort Get Sunk at Bimbo's in San Francisco earlier this year, I wasn't sure what to expect.

Much like the album itself, the show was a refreshing and captivating return to form, with the black-blazered Berninger at times channeling his now-trademark theatric frontman persona, while hearkening back to the soulful National days of yore, when the band were relatively unknown and quietly booking Brooklyn bars.

Some 20 years prior to the release of Get Sunk, I'd seen my first National show, somewhat on a whim, with their third album Alligator just beginning to gnaw at the corners of my mind, and the experience was truly a revelation. When Berninger invites you into those secret meetings in the basement of his brain, it's nearly impossible to not sink into his "wicked, ordinary" way.

#1 | Addison Rae | Addison

I returned to Addison Rae’s Addison often this year to escape. I’d pull this album up on long mind-clearing walks or while driving to get lost in bottom-heavy, smudgy and mostly minimalist soft-club pop.

Blissed out in "RuPaul's Drag Race Season 1 filter" soft lighting, Addison’s water-colored and vaseline’d atmospherics crisscrossing with humid beats expertly bottled up the fantasy of a mussed and sensual summer that I hadn’t heard in an album in a long time.

Maybe it’s the soft restraint in Rae’s vocal delivery that made Addison effortlessly repeatable for me. Or maybe it’s the unbothered and untethered vernal character she unravels song by song—sincere yet winkingly satirical—that kept me intrigued.

“Kick drum, chew gum…” Youth is fleeting, but on Addison it lasts forever.

#1 | Clipse | Let God Sort Em Out

I remember watching an interview of Clipse back in the early 2000s during which the brothers Pusha T and Malice explained how they were so passionate about hip-hop as teenagers they once fought over who they thought was the better rap duo, Smif-n-Wessun or Mobb Deep. Over 20 years later, in a year that welcomed albums from all three groups, it’s Clipse who have emerged as the head of the class of hip-hop culture’s elder statesmen.

Pusha T and Malice’s long-awaited reunion delivers lyrically, intellectually and emotionally. The production, which is handled solely by the group’s longtime collaborator Pharell Williams, is reminiscent of Clipse’s 2003 album Hell Hath No Fury in its darkly cinematic overcast.

Let God Sort Em Out is one of 2025’s most introspective listens and one of the most transparent offerings from hip-hop in recent years. It is successful in reintroducing the group’s high level of signature wordplay, delivered by two savvy veterans. The album satisfies both long-term fans while landing as accessible for new listeners.

#1 | Olivia Dean | The Art Of Loving

One of my favorite things about being a parent to a Gen Z kid is discovering artists they are into. I got turned on to Olivia Dean a while back thanks to my daughter who was playing her music in the car. When The Art Of Loving was released, I knew I had to give it a listen. I was not disappointed. The lazy narrative that she's a throwback does her a great disservice. One can pay homage to the past while making a sound of their own.

Inspired by the writings of the late writer bell hooks, The Art Of Loving is a brilliant pastiche of soulful pop that made me want to just close my eyes and listen. It's a breezy, refreshing breath of fresh air we all desperately need right now.

#1 | Elias Rønnenfelt | Speak Daggers

The second solo album by Iceage frontman Elias Rønnenfelt, Speak Daggers was recorded in his bedroom, with its title lifted from Hamlet. It’s piercing and beautiful, brutal and tender in all the right places, and it contains so much variation that it’s impossible to ever get bored. The album begins brooding and gothic with “Crush The Devil’s Head”—a winding narrative, a stroll through the graveyard—and then takes a jangly and baroque turn with “Love How It Feels.” “USA Baby” is clanging and metallic, a swagger-y singsong with appropriate sadness for what the USA is becoming—from the perspective of someone in love with an American. The reggae-steeped “Not Gonna Follow” features The Congos and infuses the album with a melancholy, global meditation.

“No Longer A Kid” is a shimmery, sun-dappled reflection on leaving innocence behind, while “Mona Lisa” is a rocker about the complications of intense infatuation—“I love you / I hurt you even better.” “Hollow Noon,” my favorite track on the album, is just so heartbreakingly wistful in the way it reflects on something beautiful you can’t ever get back. “World Prison” is nihilistic, careening, and punk rock in the best possible way, while “Kill Your Neighbor” conjures Nick Cave’s baritone and vivid, poetic storytelling.