Peel Dream Magazine — Rose Main Reading Room • BUY

That Joe Stevens should move to L.A. and end up writing songs about his past in NYC is where any comparison to Steely Dan ends. Gentle pastoral pop meets off-kilter Stereolab analog electronics meets Reichian repetition—an endlessly listenable blend, underpinning wistful youthful impressions of a city that perhaps only existed in the imagination.

Niagara Moon — Rebuild the Circus • BUY

Massachusetts-based Thomas Erwin essentially sticks to a single mode here—good-natured, witty, catchy, mid-tempo, elaborately MIDI-orchestrated pop songs—but damned if he doesn’t do it brilliantly. Even though this isn’t the song I included in the playlist, his lyric from “Beware the Cowboy” has occupied my brain more than any other this past year for what it says about our sociopolitical moment: “They’re wild and rowdy, they’ll beat their chest / Full of fear and anger and doomed for success … We’ve had it with lassos, we’ve had it with guns / If only the cowboy could talk to someone.”

HALO MAUD — Celebrate • BUY

This French artist’s bi-lingual second full-length is the very epitome of what Gray Days & Gold exists to elevate: hook-filled pop music that’s also boldly adventurous. Nothing here is straightforward—the synths are pitch-bending; the bass is like a giant, fuzzy rubber band; the drum rhythms are complex; the guitar solo barely sounds like a guitar at all; the chord voicings and changes are unexpected—but that experimentation is always in service of wonderfully melodic and groovy songs.

The Magic Lantern — To Everything a Season • BUY

London-based Jamie Doe’s fifth album examines the circle of life through the lens of his daughter’s birth followed weeks later by his father’s death. His tender voice floats light as a feather over spare, acoustic, jazz-inspired arrangements. Beautifully human.

Ellen Tsai — Windy Friends • BUY

Each year since 2022 Ellen Tsai has quietly released an exquisite EP of original chamber music based on an organizing theme, this one’s being woodwinds playing compositions inspired by the air, wind and sky. And each year I have nothing meaningful to say about her (apart from the fact that she’s currently Composer-In-Residence and string bassist with the all-volunteer Indian River Pops Orchestra on Florida’s Atlantic coast) because she seems to eschew any sort of public presence or social media except to post that, oh, by the way, here’s an astonishing stop-motion animated film she’s also created using figures she’s handmade from felt to accompany the music. There’s impressive and charming craft in everything she touches.

Real Estate — Daniel • BUY

Apart from the fact that I’m a long-time fan, I almost have a hard time justifying my love for this year’s Real Estate album. The New Jersey band isn’t really stretching beyond their comfort zone; there aren’t necessarily any sonic surprises; every note and drumbeat is exactly where it ought to be, no expectations particularly challenged. Despite being recorded in Nashville and peppered with a wisp of pedal steel, their sound steers firmly down the middle of the road, untouched by any hint of Americana twang and almost aggressively neutral in its approach. But stylistic directness only underscores the quality of their pop tunesmithery, no frippery needed.

High Llamas — Hey Panda • BUY

It’s not surprising that an artist with such an immediately identifiable sound (such that he’s always in demand as an arranger) might begin to feel calcified by expectations. Fueled by a desire to engage with the ways contemporary music has evolved since he began the High Llamas journey in 1990 and inspired by the current crop of artier R&B artists like Solange and Jungle, Sean O’Hagan’s never sounded more playful and invigorated by fresh ideas while also remaining true to his nature. As exciting a reinvention as last year’s Clientele record.

Laetitia Sadier — Rooting for Love • BUY

Call me weird but I consider Sadier’s fifth solo album a sort of contemporary folk music, bearing messages of healing the self, forging greater community, and the collective power of standing up against the forces that benefit from our brokenness and disengagement. As you might expect from a Stereolab alum, though, in this case the machine that kills fascists is more likely a modular synth or a marimba. The result is still killer.

Cabane — Br​û​l​é​e • BUY

Belgian artist Thomas Van Cottom prefers to let other vocalists give voice to his songs, so lucky for us that his closest collaborators, Kate Stables (This Is the Kit) and Sam Genders (Tunng), are so beautifully suited to these songs’ hushed melancholy. Absolutely gorgeous with string arrangements by Sean O’Hagan, but pervasively minor-key and emotionally intense. See also: the lovely EP he released in the fall with French singer Lonny.

Cereus Bright — Anything • BUY

In the dozen years since Knoxville-based Tyler Anthony first began releasing music as Cereus Bright, his sound has evolved dramatically from foot-stomping Americana to something far more elegant. His third album is deliriously catchy and inviting, lushly arranged, stylistically adventurous, and he deserves to be a household name. Please spread the word if only to keep me from sounding like an insufferable hipster who’s hailing a relative unknown as one of the best artists in America.

Bly Wallentine — Oh hey! Are you okay? • BUY

Imagine a musical seed. Gently but purposefully it sprouts from the ground, stretching toward the sun and sky… toward fulfillment. Its limbs grow stronger and twist in complex, unpredictable ways, buffeted by external forces of nature but always following some internal compass, its development not a result of conscious choice but organic truth—becoming its truest self, whatever form that may take: a beautiful riot of color; a bizarre array of textures; a progenitor of fruit that drops, rotting and fetid; a nurturing ecosystem; an integral part of the world.

That’s how I perceive the music—and the person—of Provo, Utah’s Bly Wallentine. Chances are that Bly’s actual process involves lots of time spent composing, setting microphone levels, and dragging audio clips around on a laptop screen, but that they make the end result seem as effortless and naturalistic as the seed thing is a testament to their artistry. A gem of a songwriter whose musical brain operates like no other.

Farmer — Summer • BUY

Since 2020 London-based Mike Farmer has been releasing a series of baroquely detailed LPs, each named for the season in which they appeared. I’ve always argued that there are pop tunes at the core of his extravagantly-styled, proggish arrangements, and I think this third record in the series is his most accessible yet. But as always, the results are infinitely complex, surprising, and often wickedly funny.

The Cleaners from Venus — Lilli Bolero • BUY

Powered by modern tools like Bandcamp and social media, an unflagging work ethic, and half a century’s worth of skill, Martin Newell—elder statesman of DIY living room pop and what’s now termed ‘cassette culture’—is a one-man song factory turning out at least one LP and EP annually from a small river town near England’s eastern coast. Limiting his palette to the tools at hand can result in albums that all have a similar sonic character—such is simply the Cleaners’ way—but the songs themselves are catchy, full of peerlessly-observed details, rich with personality, and even timeless. Newell’s recent catalog abounds with tracks that, had they been composed in 1970, would have entered the songwriting canon by now.

Varijashree Venugopal — Vari • BUY

The first album of original songwriting by this well-established Carnatic singer based in Bangalore, produced by Michael League of Snarky Puppy and featuring guests like Bela Fleck and Anat Cohen’s Tentet, is a jaw-dropping, swoon-inducing display of instrumental and vocal technique.

Olivier Rocabois — The Afternoon of our Lives • BUY

As with this Parisian’s previous best-in-class 2021 album, his sumptuous old-school baroque pop is made all the more charming by his complete lack of pretense and his obvious joy in making records about (I’m quoting here) “the self-liberation of a 50-year old bald and chubby man who found solace in music and love.” As he sings in “Over the Moon”: “Sort of beat the records for lazy old late bloomers like me … 
I’m over the moon, thinking up tunes.” Contagiously spirited.

Philippe Crab — Coucouville • BUY

The Parisian composer’s latest album is closer to the art-song end of the spectrum—which is to say you won’t find standard verse/chorus structures or predictable repetition—but it’s playful and restlessly inventive with surprises around every turn. A joy to listen to, even if you don’t understand a word of French.

Jessica Pratt — Here In the Pitch • BUY

I hear plenty of contemporary music rooted in nostalgia, attempting to sound like a lost recording from 1966, but Californian Jessica Pratt seems to come by it more naturally—it’s almost a state of being she inhabits rather than a fashion choice. (If I were to meet her at a party, I’d half expect her voice to be drenched in room reverb.) But of course a retro sound is nothing without great songs, and this is a concise but finely honed collection of ethereal folk-pop that sounds like no one else.

Alex Pester — Boy • BUY

A perk of being an unknown indie musician who doesn’t tour is the ability to be as prolific as you’d like without pausing to appease the powers of marketing & promotion. The Bath, UK-based Pester released two albums in 2024 (and yet another within the first few days of 2025), and it’s always a joy to hear his craft evolving in real time. This record, the second of the two, contains some of his most direct, hummable hooks and melodies yet, while never sacrificing musical interest or, it goes without saying, genuine heart.

Cosmo Sheldrake — Eye to the Ear • BUY

The Sheldrakes are a unique bunch: brother Merlin is a mycologist and author of a bestselling book about fungi, while Cosmo is purveyor of an odd sort of erudite orchestral pop music with a deep connection to the natural world, music which always puts me in mind of marching cartoon elephants—loping timpani-and-tuba rhythms, simultaneously whimsical and sinister. It’s immersive world-building of the highest order, surprisingly funky at times, and endlessly delightful.

Brittany Howard — What Now • BUY

As good as Alabama Shakes were, I’m a much bigger fan of the road less traveled that Howard’s solo career has followed, chasing moods, textures, rhythmic complexity, and emotional subtlety beyond the natural terrain of most four-piece rock bands.

Middle Sattre — Tendencies • BUY

The debut album by this Austin-based group is an unsparing examination of how burgeoning queerness upends the self- and world-view of someone raised in Mormon orthodoxy. Many songwriters would treat such naked confessional as an end in itself, but band leader Hunter Prueger has put as much attention into the composition and arrangements as the lyrics, creating a record that’s deeply rewarding on many levels.

Tanner Porter — One Was Gleaming • BUY

A trained composer & arranger with numerous opera, ballet and song-cycle commissions to her credit, New York-based Porter’s second album in an art-song vein is a feast for the ears which doesn’t shy away from theatrical drama while remaining emotionally honest and quite moving.

Dorothea Paas — Think of Mist • BUY

The Toronto artist’s second album is a gorgeous, soothing collection of old-school songcraft that feels like a warm embrace from 1977 when nothing was digital. You can practically hear the dust glinting in a golden-hour sunbeam through the window. RIYL: last year’s Holly Henderson record The Walls.

Jan Bang — Reading the Air • BUY

This rare vocal-based album by the prolific Norwegian composer is a masterpiece of understated elegance, everything played with such restraint that it’s more akin to sounds being carried in on the wind than musicians in front of microphones. Percussion is used as a heartbeat rather than propulsion, leaving emphasis on the melodies, harmonies, Bang’s lulling baritone, and the ethereal blend of organic and electronic instrumentation. RIYL: The Blue Nile, David Sylvian.

Yani Martinelli — Polaris • BUY

The Madrid-based songwriter’s latest album is a love letter to the natural world: the flora and fauna, the colors and elements, the glorious beauty of it all. It also seems like the most lavishly produced of her work to date, rendering her graceful, tropicalia-inflected songs in a broader palette of lovely hues and textures than usual. A heartfelt balm for the soul.