10.10.2025 – 10.10.2025 – 10/10/2025 – 10/10/25 – Oct. 10th, 2025
Friday’s Releases Sizzle — But Has the Public Already Written Off the Class of ’25?
As the year winds down, the music world delivers a massive wave of tuneful bangers, arriving squarely between major releases from Taylor Swift and Tame Impala. This week’s playlist stands as evidence of the quiet brilliance among 2025’s emerging artists — talents who may be unfairly written off thanks to the lackluster chart performances overshadowing them on this year’s Top 40.
Highlights, Curiosities, and Observations:
- Brazil’s classic rock champion Teago Oliveira teams up with Dr. Dog’s drummer Eric Slick to channel the innocent AM station vibes of the early 1970s, delivering a shaggy-dog earworm in day-dreamy “Spaceships”
- Baja California, Mexico’s Lorelle Meets the Obsolete “Regresar / Recordar” reaches deep into the avant-garde with its fuzzed-out drums, vampy vocals, and unpredictable synth programming.
- Atlanta’s María Zardoya — best known as the lead singer of The Marías — steps out on her own this week with a solo LP under the moniker Not For Radio. Fans of The Marías will find plenty to love here, but the opening track, “Puddles,” is the real standout: a dreamy wash of arpeggiated synths that recalls the shimmering magic of The Goonies and The Neverending Story soundtracks.
- Things get quirky as Israeli singer Asaf Avidian’s jazz-lounge rumination on death, “I Don’t Know When, I Don’t Know How, I Don’t Know Why” barrels toward an unexpected Kendrick Lamar-meets-Hector Berlioz climax.
- Paris’s Pauline de Tarragon, AKA Pi Ja Ma somehow manages to seamlessly apply grungy loud-quiet-loud production to the patient melodicism of Broadcast and Cat Power in her simple, catchy throwback to 1960s yeh yeh “Chiale.”
- Madison Cunningham is doing cool stuff with orchestral skronkiness by interplaying marimbas and bass-clarinets on the gorgeously-arranged “Golden Gate (On and On).”
- Beguiling Junior understands the assignment: make fun of coked-up AI bros.
- Opus Kink channels Oingo Boingo and spy music with noisy Halloween rocker “I’m A Pretty Showboy.”
- Pink Pantheress releases a double remix album — that’s her 2025 LP Fancy That remixed twice. Chosen here is the track “Noises” featuring Miami rapper JT, which pulls PP’s signature jungle beats way out into the foreground.
- Hackney, England rapper and songwriter Labrinth is back from a two-year hiatus with head-nodding stunner “Orchestra,” featuring thematically-appropriate horn and strings sections working in tandem to propel an elephantine beat.
- Aussie art-rock duo Teenager has an interesting history, as it began as a collaboration between Empire of the Sun founder Nick Littlemore with (then lesser-known) singer Phillipa Margaret “Pip” Brown, who was encouraged by Littlemore to release her own solo stuff as Ladyhawke. This endeavor worked, and now, having established herself as a successful solo artist, the duo reunite for a double-strength Teenager record, this time sharing equal billing.
- Tia Corine asks “Was Hannin” with Wiz Khalifa in a shoulder-bobbing example of perfectly cooked synth-hop.
- Hi Top Fade, the new LP by Chicago hip-hop duo The Cool Kids (Sir Michael Rocks and Chuck Inglish) releases this week, and single “95 South” adds on personnel A-Trak (founder of the Canadian Fool’s Gold label) and Washington-state beatmaker Sango to resurrect mid-90’s bootie music, an endeavor which brings a tear of joy to the eye of this curmudgeonly reviewer. Respect!
- F***ing madlad Mobb Deep teams up with Nas and Jorja Smith to add a sick-a** hip-hop beat to f***ing Adadio for Strings by Samuel f***ing Barber and the godd*** results are predictably f***ing dope as s***.
- The Vices get it. We don’t want cleverness or allegory, don’t need glam or prog influences, or precious examples of what complex musical ideas or riffs you’ve been experimenting with for the past twenty years. Nay, for 2025’s aughts-garage-rock revival, we just want music we can commit criminal mischief to, and theoretically be able to enter into evidence at our defense trial and have the judge maybe — just maybe — dismiss the case.
- Blawan’s “Sonkind” is maybe the closest I’ve heard to a perfect merging of amorphous, dubstep-style, electronic effects work and vintage proto-metal songwriting. Blawan is a “producers’ producer” and as such, should be studied at the Académie de Production.
Recommended LPs: This is a stacked week. Almost every album containing a single from this weeks’ playlist is worth a full listen, so explore.
As always, Enjoy!
-Martin
LINKS: