8 New Releases You Need to Hear This Very Minute [February 2025]
New year, new music to nourish your body and soul.
After a brief hiatus to ensure I started the new year focused on the “new me” (i.e., getting myself down to five cups of coffee a day, not six), here’s the first of my monthly new release round-up write-ups for 2025.
For new or recent subscribers, I publish these posts at the beginning of every month to give you the lowdown on the best recent releases that have entered my eardrums during the previous 30 or so days. In this edition, there’s a healthy dose of alternative rock, pop, electronic, and an early contender for Album of the Year. Seriously.
If you have a new release that’s stuck with you in the past month, please share it in the comments! I always love hearing about what you’re hearing. I often bulk up my listening list with your recommendations, so keep them coming.
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Let’s go:
1. “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” by Bad Bunny
Genre: Electronic, Pop, Musica Tropical
Label: Rimas
Release Date: January 5, 2025
Vibe: 💃
Bad Bunny, the most streamed Latin artist in the world, was riding so high on 2023’s Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana that he took a step back sonically. Intermittently compelling but more bloated and paranoid than anything else, he seemed on the precipice of jumping on the same hedonic treadmill as Drake or Taylor Swift. Thankfully, he avoided that fate on his latest, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.
An ode to his Puerto Rican roots, this album owes as much to salsa and dembow’s sonic traditions as it does to modern club trends or Latin pop aesthetics. There are bass-heavy earworms aplenty on this tracklist, but more surprising are the softer, sultrier touches, like on “TURiSTA” and closer “LA MuDANZ.” Add another notch to the W column for Bad Bunny.
2. “Who Let the Dogs Out” by the Lambrini Girls
Genre: Punk, Noise Rock
Label: City Slang
Release Date: January 10, 2025
Vibe: 🤘
The best punk rock records are the ones that hold nothing back. There’s a misconception that such albums can only exist in need-to-know underground circles tucked away from the prying eyes of mainstream audiences. However, this sterling debut from the Brighton duo Lambrini Girls proves you can make an in-your-face LP that’s as catchy as it is ferocious (and ferociously funny).
Clocking in at a lean 29 minutes, these breathless tracks connect by making their emotionally charged subject matter relatable on a personal level. Everything from workplace harassment and police brutality to beauty standards and unchecked male chauvinism is covered here, with lyrical content that’s consistently elevated by Phoebe Lunny’s powerful lead vocals.
If nothing else, Who Let the Dogs Out proves that punk rock is far from dead. In fact, artists like Lambrini Girls make me bullish on the genre’s future.
3. “The Human Fear” by Franz Ferdinand
Genre: Alternative, Rock, Post-Punk
Label: Domino
Release Date: January 10, 2025
Vibe: 🎸
To a degree, the tepid public response to The Human Fear, the latest from Franz Ferdinand, indicates that music consumers may be overdosing on nostalgia bias. I’ve read several reviews that, in one way or another, express disappointment in this album because it doesn’t recapture the electricity of songs like “Take Me Out.” Should that be the measuring stick? It’s not perfect, but overall, Human is a solid and occasionally great rock reinvention.
Tracks like riff-tastic opener “Audacious,” the Bolan-adjacent “Night or Day,” and the gorgeous “Tell Me I Should Stay” prove the band still plays with boundless energy and, more importantly, a sense of fun and discovery. They’re not resting on their laurels, even if the production sands down some of the record’s rougher edges. It’s an album that’s grown on me.
4. “Perverts” by Ethel Cain
Genre: Ambient, Electronic, Experimental
Label: Daughters of Cain
Release Date: January 8, 2025
Vibe: 🥶
And now, for something completely different—Ethel Cain’s follow-up to her critically lauded 2022 debut, Preacher’s Daughter, Perverts. Almost nothing that made her previous release so admired translates on this new “EP” (in parentheses because it’s nearly 90 minutes long), except for the minimalist drone aesthetic that’s more of a focus here.
That reality shouldn’t deter you, however. What you’re left with is an engrossing, sometimes unsettling listening experience unlike any I’ve had in several years.
Full of strange, pitch-black compositions heavy on sonic texture and intrigue, this record invites you to establish an emotional dialogue with it, to bring part of yourself and your life to the table as you hear each new surprise. Once I let my guard down and allowed myself to meet it on its level, I found it utterly hypnotic. Discussing themes and lyrics would spoil some of that effect, so I won’t go into more detail.
My only advice is to block off some time and listen to Perverts in one sitting. Only then can you commune with it fully.
5. “Balloonerism” by Mac Miller
Genre: Hip-Hop, Jazz Fusion, Experimental
Label: Warner
Release Date: January 17, 2025
Vibe: 🥲
I have a love-hate relationship with posthumous records. Are they essential artistic legacy building blocks, nakedly cynical cash grabs, or some combination of both? These questions bounced around inside my skull as I made my way through Balloonerism, the second Mac Miller record released in the aftermath of the rapper’s untimely death in 2018.
At first, I worried that this LP would devolve into an unfocused mess quickly. At times, the overall vibe of these songs is loose and improvisational to the point of sounding half-baked. But, the more this music sits with you, the better it gets. It closes with an early contender for the year’s best song, “Tomorrow Will Never Know,” a 12-minute opus that serves as a bittersweet, utterly spiritual reminder of how influential Miller was at his apex.
Content warning: Some of the subject matter is dark and unsettling, so if you’re not into the idea of communing with an artist who was working through a dark, depressed period in his life, maybe steer clear of this one.
6. “Humanhood” by the Weather Station
Genre: Alternative, Rock, Jazz Fusion
Label: Fat Possum
Release Date: January 17, 2025
Vibe: 🫢
The latest record from the Tamara Lindeman-fronted Canadian group, Humanhood, grapples with exactly what it says on the tin—what it means to be alive. The songwriting navigates uncertainty, fear, and, ultimately, hopefulness in a record that sounds like it’s continuously shifting under your foot as you listen. It’s a record about universal adult themes, written for and by grown-ups who are going through it.
What floored me was how it blurs the lines between genres, folding in elements of 70s rock and folk (the closing track features more than a passing nod to giants like Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon), and the kind of quirky art-pop that’s entrenched itself in the alternative scene in recent years. Lindeman stands at its center, processing pain and personhood in equal measure. It’s an early contender for my “best of” list.
7. “Can’t Rush Greatness” by Central Cee
Genre: Hip-Hop, UK Drill
Label: Columbia
Release Date: January 24, 2025
Vibe:
If you’re unfamiliar with Central Cee’s work or, by association, the rise of UK drill as a subgenre with global appeal, it’s no overnight success. Emcees like Stormzy and Skepta may have whetted North America’s appetite for crossover rap acts from the other side of the Atlantic, but on Can’t Rush Greatness, it’s a 25-year-old West Londonder who looks poised to carry the torch into a potential post-TikTok-music-ecosystem.
Building on the success of his 2022 mixtape 23, his brand of rapid-fire braggadocio brims with the confidence and control of someone with far more industry experience, including some of his big-name co-stars. Thematically, this album is about a man who knows he deserves this star-making moment but is also clearly taking the opportunity seriously. You get the idea that Cee has internalized the notion that with great power comes great responsibility.
8. “Eusexua” by FKA Twigs
Genre: Electronic, Trance, Pop
Label: Atlantic
Release Date: January 24
Vibe:
I have a feeling Eusexua, the third studio album from British shapeshifter FKA Twigs, will be compared to Brat in several critical circles. I can see why—the 90s nightclub aesthetic underpins each track, which vacillates between humid dancefloor heaters and even steamier early-morning comedowns (or come-ons, depending on your mood). But, as an admitted Brat skeptic, I found Eusexua far more dazzling than its arguable predecessor.
The more I heard, the more I was wowed by her vocal range, which effortlessly shifts from soaring emotional proclamations to slippery, kinky invitations. The production team has a lot of fun with how malleable her voice is, folding it in on itself several times and giving songs added percussive thrust by chopping and sampling it in surprising ways.
With odes to trance, dubstep, drum and bass, UK garage, grime, and many other genres, Eusexua is a masterful melting pot of a record I strongly suspect I will have in heavy rotation for the rest of this year and beyond.
Which of these records have you heard recently? What’s in your rotation when it comes to new music? Sound off in the comments!
I'm enjoying that Franz Ferdinand album Matt. Some really good tracks!
Some great picks here Matt! I haven’t given the new Franz Ferdinand enough time yet. Need to go spend some more time with it.
Perverts just didn’t do it for me, which is disappointing. I can’t speak to the album’s artistic value, it may really be something phenomenal. But what I’m looking for in music nowadays are albums I can listen to from start to finish, I don’t really want “challenging listens” in my life right now, but to each their own.
Really enjoying the Weather Station album and like what I’ve heard of the new FKA Twigs but I haven’t spent enough time with it yet.
Probably the most pleasant surprise on your list was Central Cee. I’d heard of him in an article on The Guardian but never listened to him. That track was enthralling and compelling enough for me to give the whole album a listen.
Here are some of the other January releases I’ve spent the most time with:
• Anna B. Savage - You & i are Earth
• Dax Riggs - Seven Songs For Spiders
• Rose City Band - Sol Y Sombra
• Prism Shores - Out From Underneath
• Dusqk - Sanctuary OS
• Circa Waves - Death & Love, Pt. 1
• The Laughing Chimes - Whispers in the Speech Machine
• Brooke Combe - Dancing at the Edge of the World
• Nyron Higur - self-titled
• Decius- Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience)