16 Great Albums You Might Have Missed from Winter/Spring 2025
It seems like we’re digging through more music than ever. We’ve arguably never been so lucky to have so much good music to dive into every week, and yet it’s never been more stressful to realize that we don’t have time to listen to it all. But we’re taking a moment to highlight some of the records that might have flown under your radar (and ours) in the last few months. Get caught up with our list of great albums you might have missed from winter and spring.
Ainsoph – Affection & Vengeance
Much like the outstanding Vuur & Zijde, whose most recent album Boezem made our best metal albums of 2024 list, Dutch group Ainsoph pair metal with shimmering gothic rock and post-punk in a way that feels both seamless and inevitable. It’s not exactly news that goth-rock and metal make a good pairing—see: Tribulation, Unto Others, Cloak, etc.—but Ainsoph view such a hybrid from the reverse angle, their approach rooted more in post-punk than metal, but with surging post-metal flourishes, eruptions of blast beats, and a muscularity that you don’t often find in vintage 4AD material (outside of, say, The Birthday Party). To hear a song like “Affection” is to witness a whirlwind of power and beauty. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Sasha Berliner – Fantôme
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Is there any sound better than jazz vibraphone? If there is, I don’t want to know about it. Vibraphonist Sasha Berliner has collaborated with the likes of drummer Tyshawn Sorey and Finnish group Kaisa’s Machine, but it’s her third full-length Fantôme that represents her most impressive work to date, a nocturnal but highly accessible set of ethereal post-bop that employs her instrument in the service of richly layered arrangements that demand unraveling on a good set of headphones. These six compositions are mesmerizing and complex, thoroughly contemporary but echoing some of the most fascinatingly avant garde moments of Blue Note in the early ’60s. Simply put: This is one incredibly cool set of modern jazz. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Boldy James & Real Bad Man – Conversational Pieces
It might seem unlikely to find a record by a name like Boldy James in our “great albums you might have missed” list, but bear in mind, the prolific rapper has released an album a month in 2025 so far—that’s the kind of pace that’s not so easy to keep up with. His latest finds him once again teaming up with producer Real Bad Man, which he’s collaborated with on two excellent records prior. Preceded by the outstanding early track “It Factor” with El-P, an undeniable highlight here, Conversational Pieces is rife with darkly immersive production and Boldy’s stoic yet grim storytelling, which reaches stunningly subtle climaxes on standout moments like “Fear of God,” where Boldy trades verses with Conway the Machine over a rich, cinematic backdrop. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Spotify
Brown Horse – All the Right Weaknesses
Brown Horse are that rarest of bands—a standout alt-country act from England. The Norwich group’s sound is rooted more in the scruff of Lucero and more closely aligned with American contemporaries such as Wednesday than more traditional roots music, pairing rustic plucks of banjo with peals of distortion and shakily vulnerable vocal harmonies. The group’s sophomore album All the Right Weaknesses roars with fuzz even as it carries a soulful earnestness, maintaining a balance of earthiness and orneriness that ensures a consistently thrilling 43 minutes of rustic anthems. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
The Convenience – Like Cartoon Vampires
New Orleans’ The Convenience first caught my attention back last fall with their single “Routiner,” and six months afterward, their sophomore full-length arrived with a tracklist loaded with infectious and taut indie rock. The songwriting is top notch throughout, from the mesmerizing opener “I Got Exactly What I Wanted” to the knotty rhythmic exercises of “Dub Vultures,” to the bass-driven grooves of “Waiting for a Train” and the intricate guitar harmonies of “Vanity Shapes.” It’s rare that a set of melodic, guitar-driven indie rock stands out to me after hearing thousands of them, but The Convenience have done just that. A must-hear for anyone who’s ever been enchanted by the sound of guitars, drums and a great melody. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Neal Francis – Return to Zero
Every record or album needs a compelling narrative during its promotional rollout. For his third album, released in five years, Chicago singer-songwriter Neal Francis offers an intriguing elevator pitch: “What if Thin Lizzy made a disco record?” That’s a catchy concept. The first three tracks reveal a remarkable symmetry, especially with the powerhouse Brooklyn-based vocal trio Say She She, firing on all fours with the standout song “Don’t Wait.” This track features classic disco elements like lush strings, intricate piano breaks, and groovy bass solos, along with an energetic strut in the middle. It’s something Thin Lizzy never acheived.
According to reports, Francis spent many nights soaking in the sounds of house music pioneer Derrick Carter during his DJ sets at Chicago’s LGBTQ+ party, Queen! He said about his frequent visits to Queen! nights to SPIN: “House music is like cycling, going from a band in a room, getting sampled by someone, and getting turned into a house track, and now it’s coming back into a band in a room environment, like this circle of inspiration.”
Return to Zero is a groove attack with rock corners and golden soul flowing through. I’ve been following Francis for a minute, and yes, this is his most complete album to date, albeit uneven in some parts, but I’ll take it, because nothing is wasted. “Can’t Get Enough,” toward the end, returns those disco-tinged ideas into some of his strongest arranging to date. – John-Paul Shiver
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Gunn-Truscinski Duo – FLAM
Steve Gunn and John Truscinski most recently collaborated with Body/Head guitarist Bill Nace on 2023’s gorgeously abstract Glass Band, and a year and a half later, the duo is back to their own improvisational works, paring back the climactic surges of Soundkeepe in favor of something more quietly fascinating. (Exception: the eruption of distortion that drives “Conviction”). FLAM is a gentler but no less mystical work, whether floating on a bed of gentle guitar plucks on “Fin,” or whirring into the unknown on the otherworldly “Live Text.” It’s a gentler but no less dazzling sonic alchemy, one born of two musicians operating on a psychic connection. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Bridget Hayden and the Apparitions – Cold Blows the Rain
Released at the dawn of the new year, in the depths of winter, Bridget Hayden and the Apparitions’ Cold Blows the Rain has a deep chill running through it. The British folk artist pairs folk with haunting drones—a signature sonic hybrid that goes back 15 years to her 2011 debut A Siren Blares in an Indifferent Ocean. But Hayden finds fertile ground in this kind of rustic minimalism, pairing plucks of banjo against an eerie wheeze, a sound that occasionally feels supernatural as much as it does rooted in old-time traditions. It’s gorgeously chilling, a stark invocation made under the stillness and the dark of night. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Knats – Knats
London’s been a much-hyped locale for forward-thinking jazz over the past decade, but jazz-fusion duo Knats put Newcastle on the map with their own debut of deep, soulful compositions rife with laid-back grooves. King David Ike Elechi provides nimble and acrobatic feats of rhythm throughout—just check the intro to “500 Fils”—but there’s a warmth and accessibility to this set of electric jazz that ensures a satisfying balance between a reverence for a classic bop sound and a more modern sense of atmosphere. Yet it’s in the more graceful and sentimental moments, like the beautiful “Tortuga (For Me Mam)”, where Knats set themselves apart, revealing the heart that drives their rhythmic impulses. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
maud the moth – The Distaff
The fifth album by Spanish-born, Edinburgh-based Amaya López-Carromero draws a line between Dead Can Dance-style darkwave and a heavier, doomlike atmosphere that felt eerily appropriate during the winter season in which it was released, but casts an overwhelmingly gothic pall regardless of when it’s heard. As maud the moth, López-Carromero is masterful at crafting haunted atmosphere and an unconventional sense of heaviness, building operatic works of necromancy that showcase her impressive vocal range while burrowing into macabre, shadowy places. Gothic grandeur at its most subtly unsettling. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Charif Megarbane – Hawalat
Lebanese artist Charif Megarbane’s 2023 album Marzipan was a first—specifically, the first album of newly recorded material to be released on the impeccably curated reissue label Habibi Funk, which specializes in standout and previously long out-of-print Middle Eastern music, from Beirut singer/songwriters to Libyan funk. Megarbane crafts a sound that fuses funk, jazz and psychedelia with Lebanese folk sounds—something that recalls the crate-digging productions of Madlib, but recorded entirely with live instruments. Much like its predecessor, Hawalat is eclectic but bright, rife with intricate instrumental arrangements and unforgettable melodies—a lush cinematic journey where all you need is a good pair of headphones. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
The Null Club – The Null Club EP
The Null Club released its debut EP this spring, and damn, what a debut it is. The solo project of Gilla Band’s Alan Duggan Borges, The Null Club leans hard into fluid applications of industrial noise, deep grooves within punishing metallic structures—not unlike his full-time band if they were more abstract and pulsing with electronic menace. The most immediate comparison that comes to mind is Fuck Buttons, though Mandy, Indiana—whose Valentine Caulfield makes an appearance here—is likewise in the ballpark. For that matter, a few other notable guests appear here, including ELUCID of Armand Hammer and The Horrors’ Faris Badwan. But while they add splashes of color and charisma to the EP, it’s all about the musculo-skeletal noise that Borges sculpts, and what a sound it is to behold. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Perennial – Perennial ’65
New England self-proclaimed “modernist punk” trio Perennial should be the next big thing—like yesterday. They’ve got all the goods you can ask for: bottomless garage-rock guitar hooks, sweet ’60s-style electric organ-driven scrunch, maniacal drums action and shouty call-and-response vocals, not to mention those cool matching striped tees. Perennial’s DIY art-punkazoid earworms cram enough infectious licks and yelps inside a mere two minutes to last a lifetime, as 2024’s kickass Art History attested. Perennial ’65 clocks in at just a bit over 13 minutes but these moddish miscreants are all about the minimalism as they dive headlong into another contagious-as-heck should-be-hit (“Perennial ‘65”) that’ll get the pit revved up, an apropos Kinks cover that they, of course, ace (“All Day And All Of The Night”) a couple of rad and throbbing dancey remixes and then close it out with a punky, mostly instrumental lounge-type number (“C Is For Cubism”). Part Brit Invasion!, part Jonathan Richman and part early Beatles, Perennial hit on every dang cylinder. – Brad Cohan
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
PremRock – Did You Enjoy Your Time Here?
Less than a year after releasing Nobody Planning to Leave as part of the duo ShrapKnel with Curly Castro, emcee PremRock takes a few steps away from the unsettling and hallucinatory sounds and images of that group with Did You Enjoy Your Time Here? For the most part—while PremRock allows a little more earnestness and soul-fueled production into the mix, he still sounds perfectly comfortable amid the looming darkness in an eerie standout moment like “Void Lacquer.” Yet Did You Enjoy Your Time Here? is as much introspective as it is overwhelming, telling human stories amid fragments of fast-moving images, and reflecting the absurdity of our times while still occasionally finding a ray of hope in it. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Yesness – See You at the Solipsist Convention
Call me a biased Don Caballero super-fan (guilty as charged!) but it should have been a bigger deal when news broke that Damon Che—the octopus-armed drummer and mastermind behind the visionary math-rock OGs—was one/half of a brand spanking new band, and a duo no less. Yesness brings together Che alongside a sonic kindred spirit in multidimensional shredding bassist, Kristian Dunn of El Ten Eleven fame. The result of this union of these two underground rock lifers, titled the very Che-esque See You at the Solipsist Convention, showcases Che and Dunn’s chemistry full throttle on the album’s dozen Technicolor and breezy yet knotty post-everything instrumentals. Dunn’s eight-string bass heroics, pedal board-hurdling magic and effects and loops-laden prowess proves the perfect complement to Che’s mind-bending percussive thwacks and trademark wallop which is positively American Don-ish in its methodical post-jazz approach. Sure, math-rock purists may compare Yesness to Battles (both are duos and the latter features an ex-Don Cab member) but we can certainly enjoy both. I sure do! – Brad Cohan
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Zeicrydeus – La Grande Heresie
I knew Zeicrydeus would be a different kind of black metal band when their Bandcamp page said they were recommended for fans of Manowar and German power metal band Running Wild. The project of Phillipe Tougas (Worm, Atramentus, so many other bands), Zeicrydeus draws heavily from the Greek black metal scene of the early ’90s, but it’s heavily swirled in with elements of classic heavy metal—its flair for drama, its unabashed pageantry, the occasional clang of an Iron Maiden-like bell, and on moments like “Sous L’Ombre Éternelle Des Vestiges D’Heghemnon,” the swagger and gallop of speed metal with a bassline seemingly plucked from a gothic rock record from the same era. Though this self-released tape is just the first taste, I get the feeling we’ll be hearing a lot more from a project that’s already this strong out of the gates. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
