For the past two decades, Pretty Make Girls Make Graves' "Speakers Push the Air" has been my song. A song about the power of music, written from the perspective of a 20-something looking back on the teenage years of musical epiphany, when everything felt new and thrilling and terrifying and invincible and mine. What makes "Speakers" so cool isn't just its yelped call and response, its hydraulic ping-pong riffs or even its brink-of-the-world urgency, but its earnestly uncool sentiment: To remember something you held onto so dearly, to slap that feeling onto the present, to move forward with that sense of wonder. 

And for the first time ever, I got to witness Pretty Girls Make Graves perform that song. I cried. I thrashed in place. I filmed myself screaming along, and sent the video to a select few who understood what that meant. The weekend was full of moments like that, with farflung friends meeting together at an emo festival in Las Vegas, of all places. 

I try to hang onto musical memories like that, sometimes out of desperation to feel anything besides the dread of the world right now, but more often to carry that over to everything else I do — that (e)motion radiates. Below are the albums and experiences that witnessed my gratitude and adjusted my attitude in 2025. —Lars Gotrich

P.S.: If you're new here, hi! Just some housekeeping: For my mixtapes, I use Buy Music Club, which allows you to make playlists out of Bandcamp audio. 

THE MUSIC I MEANT TO WRITE ABOUT IN 2025

I didn't do much Writing About Music in 2025, for this newsletter or for work! I've missed it. My new role at NPR Music, series editor of Tiny Desk, kept me busy, as did family life and trying to live in Washington, D.C., during a (still ongoing, seemingly no end in sight) occupation. Still, there were some records I kept coming back to — not necessarily the ones you saw on other year-end lists, but had a certain je ne le choix des Vikings. 

These are them, them are those, in no particular order, with a mixtape to match.   

SEXFACES, Bad Vibes OST: A Hyped to Death punk comp bleeding fuzz, a Stooges live bootleg hemorrhaging peanut butter, that one Sonic Youth cover of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" 11 times in a row, but somehow meaner and grosser each time. One of the best bands to come out of D.C. in a minute. 

BIRTH (DEFECTS), DECEIVER/MIRROR: Noise rock for noise rock nerds by noise rock nerds. There's a certain kind of toxic goo mutation happening here: Bleach-era Nirvana hooks, grueling Cherubs-style riffs, a persistent clang and skree of too many late nights listening to Japanese noise. In an alternate universe, these are left-field hits of a radio station that only spurts to life when everything's gone to hell. 

Ente, Voltarei A Ser Parte De Tudo: Free-spirited psych-rock from Rio de Janeiro that pulls upside-down moves from Sonic Youth, Unwound and Caetano Veloso, but invites a certain melodrama à la And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. 

Mariscos, 10 canciones para ir y volver: Somewhere between dusk and a few bottles of red wine past midnight lives this dreamy mix of samba and post-punk via Bogotá. I came home late one night, still blissing out from a Silvana Estrada concert, and listened to "Garotinha" 4 times in a row. 

Monograf, Occultation: Folkloric post-metal that fills a SubRosa-shaped void in my heart. Beautiful, devastating music rooted in Norwegian folk melodies and instruments. 

Nobody Jones, Love from a Distant Star: If there are honky tonks in space, I hope they play Nobody Jones. "I’m so lonesome, I could get high" vibes. 

WICCANS, PHASE IV: Blood boiling hardcore from Denton, Texas. To be honest, I'd forgotten about them — such are the short lives of hardcore bands and shorter memories of a hardcore fan — but here we are eight years later with a thrashy, psychedelic hardcore record shot through a snarling bit of Southern rock swagger. Ambitious, yet unpretentious pit anthems. 

The Ophelias, Spring Grove: To me, this delicately-woven indie-pop band has always felt like a warm hug after a long day. Spencer Poppet leans into the wistful with a witchy wink — embracing doubt, keeping the outcome mysterious, but staying sweet throughout.    

The Ex, If Your Mirror Breaks: This record rips front to back, no skips. Neck-breaking rhythms, jagged and jittery guitar interplay, surreal optimism. More than 40 years in, no compromises, no bullshit from one of the most radical post-punk bands in existence. 

Verity Den, wet glass: I can get grumpy about the cyclical nature of indie rock (cough Geese is just blog rock v2 cough), but then double back on a band that picks up on the fringes of that sound. Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, Flying Saucer Attack — those touchstones are all here, moody and blissful, yet Verity Den, for my money, nuzzles its own way into the scuzz, smartly marrying texture and melody as equals in a noisy din. 

Pink Siifu, BLACK’!ANTIQUE; ONYX’!: The tape so nice that I bought it twice — the rare deluxe version worth the re-admission. This rapper can swing from blasted noise to stank groove without missing a beat. 

Marshall Allen's Ghost Horizons, Live in Philadelphia: There were two great Marshall Allen solo albums in 2025: New Dawn as the space-age swing band victory lap, and Live in Philadelphia. I returned to the latter often, a double-LP odyssey featuring a 101-year-old avant-garde icon cutting up with weirdos more than half his age and younger. Functions like a mixtape of the century's adventures in sound… and imagines the next one. 

Molasses, The Ring of Fire: Daniel Bachman recommended this wonderfully bizarre album to me at the very beginning of 2025. Mountain music beamed from faulty transistor radios, where jigs are danced on noise tables. 

Weston Olencki, Broadsides: On a similar wavelength of noisy deconstruction, from a different American locale, the bluegrass standards, old hymns and buzzing cicadas on this droning meditation of the South spoke to me deeply. Without so much as a word, there's a reckoning and a reconciliation at play, of the home you knew and the home you know.   

Sarah Hennies & Tristan Kasten-Krause, The Quiet Sun: Patience. Time. Things I don't always have, but need reminders to make space for. Sarah and Tristan's music — separately, and now together — often works in this mode, but here rewards deep listening with the clang and drone of bells and bass. Simple, yet exquisite sounds. 

Good Luck, Big Dreams, Mister: In a year where we lost Bad Moves, it felt right for the return of Good Luck. Bright melodies buoyed by mathy guitar licks, punky harmonies and big smiles in the face of an unkind world. 

Terraplana, natural: Everything's shoegaze now; it's boring. However, this Brazilian bummergaze band gives me hope that all is not lost. Sure, there's some pedal board worship, but mostly these are songs with melodies that stick, nuanced textures that support the momentum of the music and a killer rhythm section mixed just as prominently — if not more — than the tuneful wash of guitars.

Nuvolascura, How This All Ends: Apocalyptic screamo with late '90s metalcore riffage. This stuff is feral, yet impressionistic — you can zoom into a mathy groove, then step back to take in the chaos.    

M. Sage, Tender / Wading: You can find starlight right here on Earth: mirrored on still waters, humming at arm's length, caught in pinspot.  

TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2025

While we're here, let's just do the other lists, too! I was asked to make a straight-up, top 10 albums of 2025 for NPR Music, so here they are in mixtape form, for ease of use.  

Gwenifer Raymond, Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark
Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, New Threats from the Soul
Peter Brötzmann / John Edwards / Steve Noble / Jason Adasiewicz, The Quartet
Los Thuthanaka, Los Thuthanaka
Pastor Chris Congregation, West Virginia Snake Handler Revival "They Shall Take Up Serpents"
Silvana Estrada, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias
Brìghde Chaimbeul, Sunwise
Yara Asmar, everyone i love is sleeping and i love them so much
Habak, Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto
Castle Rat, The Bestiary

The one album that very nearly made the oh-so-official top 10 was Hayley Williams' Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. I'm not sure why it didn't; listing is weird and stressful, but I do it anyway. Hayley's on another level with this one, a crazyquilt mixtape of someone at the peak of her songwriting powers. 

Some reissues and archival releases, for good measure:

Ida, Will You Still Find Me
Tiny Vipers, Illusionz Vol. 1 (1997 - 2004)
Hüsker Dü, Miracle Year
Steve Reich, Collected Works
Swiz, Complete Discography

THE BEST GUITAR MUSIC OF 2025

I'm on NPR's All Songs Considered podcast to talk about the year in guitar — the fingerstylists, the shredders, the experimentalists, the power trios. Here's the expanded mixtape.  

Gwenifer Raymond, Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark
Hayden Pedigo, I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away
Liam Grant, Prodigal Son
Nathan Salsburg, Ipsa Corpora
Ofir Ganon, Same Air
Dylan Aycock, No New Summers
Buck Curran, Far Driven Sun
Cameron Knowler, CRK
James Blackshaw, Unraveling in Your Hands
TAKAAT, Is Noise, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2
Orcutt Shelley Miller, Orcutt Shelley Miller
Bezoar, Bezoar
Editrix, The Big E
Toru, Velours Dévorant
Ava Mendoza / Gabby Fluke-Mogul / Carolina Pérez, Mama Killa
Rafael Toral, Traveling Light 
Laura Snowden, This Changing Sky
Mamer, Awlaⱪta / Afar 离 
Walter Zanetti, Cantos Yoruba de Cuba
João Luiz, Os guardiões da magia
Chuck Roth, watergh0st songs 
William Tyler, Time Indefinite
Madala Kunene & Sibusile Xaba, kwaNTU
Golden Brown, Whisker Fatigue 
Fabiano do Nascimento, Cavejaz
Steve Gunn, Music for Writers
Tashi Dorji, Improvisations for nylon string guitar Part IV
Vernon Reid, Hoodoo Telemetry 
Eli Winter, A Trick of the Light 
Willie Lane, Bobcat Turnaround
Cyrus Pireh, Thank You, Guitar
Ahmed Ag Kaedy & Will Guthrie, Tidawt
Emily Robb, Live at Jerry's
Jorge Espinal, Bombos y Cencerros
Jules Reidy, Ghost Spirit  
Daniel Bachman, Moving Through Light
Mat Ball, Four Amplifiers

THE BEST GUITAR PEDALS OF 2025

I've been playing the guitar for most of my life, but only recently gone down the rabbit hole of pedals. These were my favorite new-to-me purchases, though none of them were released in 2025, I think. 

Land Devices HP-2: A dirt pedal based on the harmonic percolator design. Can get real loud and fuzzy, but shines (and rings) best at a low gain; this became the basis of my pedal board's whole personality. 

Glowfly Pyroglyphs: Not really a shimmer verb or an octave pedal, but also not really a glitch — somewhere between, and yet not. A weird pedal that stretches my imagination. 

Mattoverse Inflection Point: Tremolo is my favorite effect besides fuzz, so, yes, I have a few in my collection already. This one packs a lot of modulation into a small enclosure, with a (crucial) knob to add spatial dimension to these waveforms. 

Montreal Assembly PURPLL: Not my first synth pedal, but definitely feels like a gateway to modular synthesis. Can make its own drones, but more fun once you build a simple guitar loop and twist and flick the knobs to discover alternate zones. I've barely scratched the surface of what this machine can do. 

Haggtronix Cerebral Specter: Analog delay with a demon inside. 

Farm Sweet Leaf Fuzz: Remember the Noisy Cricket gun from the Men in Black movie? This is that, in pedal form. A robustly loud, no-knob fuzz in a tiny box. Paired with the Cerebral Specter, it's a doombringer. 

THE BEST LIVE SHOWS OF 2025

As ever, live music is my life's blood. I'm extremely lucky that I get to see and produce Tiny Desk concerts at my office a few times a week, but these are the 2025 sets at festivals, in houses and at venues that stood out most. (And, yes, I saw Deftones twice!)

Jorja Smith @ The Anthem, March 13
Ida @ Black Cat, March 27
Deftones @ Capitol One Arena, April 6
Nuvolascura / Birth (Defects) @ Rhizome, May 3
Bob Mould @ Black Cat, May 7
AC/DC @ Northwest Stadium, May 12
Metallica @ Northwest Stadium, May 28
Swiz @ Positive Force 40th Anniversary (St. Stephen's), June 20
Bad Moves' farewell show @ Black Cat, July 26
Tara Clerkin Trio @ Rhizome, Sept. 8
Deftones @ CFG Bank Arena, Sept. 11
TV On the Radio @ Lincoln Theatre, Sept. 17
Ganavya @ Songbyrd, Sept. 22
Habak @ 618, Sept. 26
pg. 99 @ Punks for Palestine (St. Stephen's), Oct. 4
Mineral's farewell show @ Best Friends Forever, Oct. 10
Pretty Girls Make Graves @ Best Friends Forever, Oct. 11
Jimmy Eat World @ Best Friends Forever, Oct. 12
TAKAAT @ Rhizome, Nov. 7
Orcutt Shelley Miller @ Comet Ping Pong, Nov. 8
GWAR @ Nevermore Hall, Nov. 18
Silvana Estrada @ 9:30 Club, Nov. 21
Gwenifer Raymond @ Rhizome, Dec. 5