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25. Ruen Brothers – Awooo (Yep Roc)
Going all the way back to their earliest EP (Point Dume) and single (“Aces”), both released in 2015, the Ruen Brothers have fused a variety of musical genres (a little rockabilly here, some country twang there, a touch of alt-rock) into a unique sound drenched with atmosphere. The brothers have gone even further into the mystic to create their moody and evocative new album, Awooo. Given the general mood of the album, it’s no surprise that ghosts show up at the end. “Seeing Ghosts” finds Henry intoning, “You’re seeing ghosts if you’re seeing me.” It’s an appropriately ghostly ending to the thoroughly haunted record. – Rich Wilhelm
24. Katy Pinke and Will Graefe – Patterns (Glamour Gowns)
Katy Pinke, whose sophomore album, Strange Behavior, was released earlier this year, and Graefe – a highly skilled guitarist who’s worked with Okkervil River, Kesha, Orville Peck, Sam Wilkes and more – conceived the idea of a covers project during a series of duo gigs before recording a series of songs live to tape “in a single-day burst of inspiration”, according to the press notes. The result is refreshingly simple: Pinke on vocals and Graefe on guitar.
While her first two records showed a gifted songwriter at work, she’s also known as a tremendous interpreter of other people’s songs: Strange Behavior included a breathtaking cover of Blossom Dearie’s “You Are There”, which stopped me dead in my tracks when I heard her perform it in a tiny Boston-area club a few months ago. She and Graefe do not disappoint here. – Chris Ingalls
23. Wilder Maker – The Streets Like Beds Still Warm (Western Vinyl)
Wilder Maker’s The Streets Like Beds Still Warm is, in Gabriel Birnbaum’s words, “the inverse of the typical songwriter record”, as the dreamy nature of the music, culled from improvisation, is notably set apart from Wilder Maker’s contemporaries. The record beautifully drifts in and out, and, like its protagonist, seems unconcerned with deadlines or run times, simply walking the streets and taking whatever characters or adventures come to mind. – Chris Ingalls
22. Adeline Hotel – Watch the Sunflowers (Ruination)
As the leader, brainchild, and sole consistent member of Adeline Hotel, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dan Knishkowy approaches each new release as an opportunity to present a new (or modified) version of his stellar band. The new Adeline Hotel record, Watch the Sunflowers, draws on elements from previous releases but remains a fresh-sounding album with tons of great, beautifully arranged ideas. While it doesn’t provide direct answers or a clear picture, the abstract yet enjoyable sounds that emerge are richly rewarding and characteristic of the deep, emotional pull of Adeline Hotel. – Chris Ingalls
21. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – The Purple Bird (No Quarter)
Will Oldham, usually performing as Bonnie Prince Billy, has spent his prolific career exploring new approaches to old styles, often partnering with new collaborators. The Purple Bird suggests that Oldham doesn’t sound restless if he remains busy and curious. The new primary collaborator this time is David “Ferg” Ferguson, a Nashville producer, engineer, and musician. Ferguson receives some songwriting credits and had a hand in creating this record, but it still sounds like Oldham (as much as that means anything). Rather than sounding like a modern Nashville record, The Purple Bird comes across as a comfortable spot for Oldham, well built on Americana traditions without sounding stodgy or artless. – Justin Cober-Lake
20. Colin Miller – Losin‘ (Mtn Laurel Recording Co.)
Asheville, North Carolina-based Colin Miller’s Losin’ was written after the death of his close friend Gary King, who was a father figure to Miller over the past several years. Asheville luminaries Wednesday also paid tribute to King on “Gary”, a highlight of their 2021 record Twin Plagues. That space, the tension between needing to move on and not yet knowing how, is a central theme of this collection. He says that if he stays in the place he and King shared, he will die in silence there. This collection of songs is the alternate plan. There’s something hopeful Miller is reaching for here, even in the darkest places, that makes Losin’ endlessly replayable. Put it on and remember the good times with those you have lost. – Brian Stout
19. El León Pardo – Viaje Sideral (AYA Records)
Jorge Emilio Pardo Vásquez, also known as El León Pardo, calls Cartagena, Colombia, home to one of the richest musical regions in South America. On his latest album, Viaje Sideral, the trumpet player wades mystically through the deep trough of gems the region has on offer. However, this is not an LP of hardcore Champeta or Afro-Colombian Bullerengue.
While there are indeed a few hints of raw Cumbia or Afrobeat-inspired experiments found on vintage Discos Fuentes or Discos Machuca releases, Pardo often carves out new corners while slipping in a few nods to pre-colonial indigenous musical concepts, soaking them in reverb and gussying them up with slippery grooves. – Bruce Miller
18. Nathan O’Flynn-Pruitt – Songs From Behind a Mountain (Figure & Ground)
A dozen years ago, Nathan O’Flynn-Pruitt was touring with Chicago street music legend Little Howlin’ Wolf. He began to lose confidence in the guitar feedback projects he was working on, so he pulled up stakes and moved to rural Humboldt County, California. Without an experimental scene to speak of, O’Flynn-Pruitt began concentrating on acoustic guitar and vocals, re-learning how to sing and eventually releasing his debut album on Lily Wen’s Figure & Ground label. The primitivist leanings of Songs From Behind a Mountain are often disarmingly raw, making the record a deeply intimate listening experience. The album is a rich tapestry of rough edges. – Chris Ingalls
17. Jessica Risker – Calendar Year (Island House)
Calendar Year, the new album from Chicago-based psychedelic folk songwriter and musician Jessica Risker, evokes a timeless, dreamy vibe that sounds like it could have come from this year or maybe even 1972. The songs are impeccable, but the arrangements have an indefinable quality that is both comforting and mysterious. Coming off a seven-year hiatus from her debut album (I See You Among the Stars, which followed her stint from 2011 to 2018 when she made albums under the moniker Deadbeat), Risker released the new album from songs she wrote in 2020. However, she hesitates to call it a “pandemic record”. – Chris Ingalls
16. Thin Lear – A Shadow Waltzed Itself (Metropolitan Groove Merchants)
Witnessing the artistic arc of Matt Longo, recording as Thin Lear, has been a fascinating activity over the past five years. In 2020, the New Jersey-based singer-songwriter released Wooden Cave, a matchless collection of elegant chamber pop that seemed to fuse the collective inspiration of Leonard Cohen, Harry Nilsson, and Randy Newman, among others, earning rave reviews and spots on year-end best-of lists. Last year, his EP A Beach of Nightly Glory reiterated those influences while also reflecting his newfound status as a father. With A Shadow Waltzed Itself, Longo continues to tread much of the same sonic territory, but with a darker edge and more sinister themes. – Chris Ingalls
15. Marissa Nadler – New Radiations (Sacred Bones / Bella Union)
While much of Marissa Nadler’s music is inspired by personal events, she tends to cloak her feelings in narrative and metaphor. In the case of New Radiations, Nadler returns to themes of departure and escape to explore the infinite complexities of decaying relationships. In album opener “It Hits Harder”, she transforms the end of a relationship into a small airplane flight into the mountains, the bird’s eye view providing some much-needed clarity and perspective.
New Radiations may be intimate and personal, but it’s more of a short story collection than a diary. That is to its credit, as it makes the material more universal, more relatable. If someone hasn’t had the experience of watching a relationship dwindle in the rearview, they can still pick it up for its story of female aviators and solo flights, cosmonauts and rocket scientists. – J. Simpson
14. Lisa Harres – Time As a Frame (Independent)
The Berlin-based, multidisciplinary artist Lisa Harres brings their poetic sensibility to their debut album, Time As a Frame. Some albums are purely records, others are worlds—Time As a Frame is firmly in the second camp. Across nine songs and three interludes, Harres sets oblique imagery to sparse, classical-inspired arrangements, bolstered by orchestral flourishes—the result: a spellbinding record of elusive beauty and staggering depth.
Time As a Frame features an otherworldly aesthetic that, at its most ethereal and insubstantial, evokes PJ Harvey’s White Chalk—though without the ghosts, the devils, and damnation. Yes, Harres is far too innocent to be having the devil wandering into their soul, unlike Harvey, who has no qualms with receiving muses in all forms. However, Harres is not ingenious, and Time As a Frame is not without its melancholy. – Jack Walters
13. Sami Galbi – Ylh Bye Bye (Bongo Joe)
There’s nothing plastic or inauthentic about Sami Galbi’s debut for the Swiss label Bongo Joe. It’s as earthy as a DIY block party, sweltering with the scent of street vendors and the sound of battery-powered sound machines. Coming from a background in anarchist punk squats, Galbi approaches his unique take on North African folk music and international club pop with revolutionary vigor, leaving you a sweaty, breathless, exhilarated mess by the time it’s all said and done.
Although it’s rooted in real life and a folk sensibility and fired with a punk rock spirit, there is nothing archival or archaic about Ylh Bye Bye. Any of its three-minute bangers would sound as at home in a modern Middle Eastern dance club as it would at a wedding party. – J. Simpson
12. Milo J – La Vida Era Más Corta (Sony)
Perhaps the only unsurprising thing about his new album is his voice: a clean, direct, meslima-free, grounded baritone which sounds almost weightless. Here, Milo J’s timbre finally gets room to breathe. Divided into two discs, this project leaves no room for remixes or collages. Genres such as tango, chacarera, and Argentine folk are presented in their purest form. There’s no heritage-baiting or pop accessibility-chasing here.
In a way, what Milo J does in La Vida Era Más Corta compares to what Rosalía did in El Mal Querer(the Spanish singer’s stunning flamenco album released in 2018): it’s a display of youth inserting itself in an ancient landscape with more pride in its history than anxiety to modernize it. Thus far, among the most well-shaped Spanish-language albums of 2025, La Vida Era Más Corta arrives at a moment when Latin pop stars with global exposure are embracing their roots with more pride than ever, and Milo J does that for Argentina gorgeously and sincerely. – Ana Clara Ribeiro
11. Kayatibu – NI HUI – Voices of the Forest (Da Lata Music)
It’s not every day that the rich tones of a remote Amazonian commune find their way up the sonic ladder to a global audience. The Indigenous Brazilian music collective Kayatibu bring us to the nucleus of their world on their stunning sophomore record, NI HUI – Voices of the Forest. It’s an album of encounters—between human societies, humans and animals, plants and humans—proudly infused with the life force of the Amazon. In the midst of increasing existential threats to Indigenous life and land in Brazil and worldwide, Kayatibu stand at the frontlines of cultural preservation. NI HUI is an encounter worth staying for, and it delivers on its mission to convey the voices of the forest, including those of its people. – Adriane Pontecorvo
10. James Yorkston – Songs for Nina and Johanna (Domino)
James Yorkston is working once more with soft-voiced ex-Cardigans frontwoman Nina Persson, following on from 2023’s highly acclaimed The Great White Sea Eagle. He’s also recording with Swedish DIY collective the Second Hand Orchestra in Stockholm again, as he did for his previous two albums. On this new project, though, he’s adding to the mix the pure voice of Johanna Söderberg of First Aid Kit. She’s agreed to be his Emmylou on four of the ten sensitive and heartfelt songs on Songs for Nina and Johanna.
With such a combination of talent, then, how could Yorkston possibly go wrong? Well, essentially, he doesn’t. He is, after all, heading up what might conceivably be called a Scottish/Scandinavian supergroup, with all members playing distinctive roles in making music that is full of intimate charm, wit, and candor. Yorkston’s the songsmith with the wilting voice and the acoustic guitar. – Adam Mason
9. Moonrisers – Harsh & Exciting (Easy Eye Sound)
Moonrisers’ debut album, Harsh & Exciting, is a stirring invocation that finds Libby DeCamp and Adam Schreiber using instrumentation as their primary storytelling tool. Relying on DeCamp’s 1930s Slingerland May Bell parlor guitar and Schreiber’s century-old calfskin drum kit, Moonrisers craft a hypnotizing experience.
The contributions of bluegrass musicians Tim O’Brien and Chris Scruggs add subtle layers of mandolin, pedal steel, and banjo, enhancing the album’s musical complexity. Consequently, Moonrisers effectively fuse various musical influences without adhering to traditional conventions or a single genre. This genre-blurring approach combines tradition and innovation to evoke emotional responses and vivid imagery musically. – Elisabeth Woronzoff
8. Ethel Cain – Willoughby Tucker (Daughters of Cain)
It’s hard not to be disappointed that Hayden Anhedonia doesn’t want to be a pop star. It was made abundantly clear with the menacing drone of January’s Perverts, a statement so defensive and subsuming that it seemed possible she’d prefer to see her star extinguished than deal with the prying eyes of obsessive fandom.
However, Perverts ended up being somewhat of a fakeout, a vengeful flood of the world she’d created and the pesky little creatures that had shown up in it. In its wake rose Willoughby, a narrative prequel to her surprise smash debut, poised to redefine what the Ethel Cain project is actually about: walking the line between tenderness and vulgarity, folk storytelling for a crass and tacky world.
Graciously, Hayden allows herself some earworm melodies again, but keeps the BPM to a drunken dirge lest anyone get any ideas. She opens the door with “Nettles” and “Fuck Me Eyes”, then traps you with 15-minute character studies that you can’t look away from. She has her cake and eats it too. The relief of Willoughby is the potential of Ethel Cain realized on new terms: rich stories of violence sung through gauze, a siren calling over doomed waters. – Nick Malone
7. Derya Yıldırım – Yarın Yoksa (Big Crown)
Derya Yıldırım is no easy artist to pin down, and neither is Yarın Yoksa, the new release from her and Grup Şimşek, the ensemble she leads, comprising keyboardist Graham Mushnik, guitarist and bassist Antonin Voyant, and drummer Helen Wells. With a title meaning “if there is no tomorrow”, it’s devoted to yesteryears and the now.
Born into Hamburg’s sizable Turkish diasporic community, Yıldırım draws on folk songs and themes from her ancestral homeland, as well as her own deeply personal sentiments and experiences of love, loss, and oppression, while weaving together bağlama melodies and funky grooves that offer irresistible retro touches to a gripping album. – Adriane Pontecorvo
6. Yasmin Williams – Acadia (Nonesuch)
Guitarist Yasmin Williams has never quite fit a simple story. She came to the guitar first through video games, moved from electric to acoustic, and developed a solo fingerpicking approach that wouldn’t settle into familiar styles. Folk would show through, but little of the American primitive that a listener might expect, and a variety of international and unrelated domestic influences would help her travel unique paths.
She had a sort of breakthrough in early 2021 with Urban Driftwood, a multidimensional release that came out of COVID-19 and was inspired in part by the political protests in the area. She performed thoughtful, bright compositions that offered relief and revealed her growing proficiency as a writer alongside her formidable technical skills. Almost four years later, Williams expands her work further for Acadia, drawing on a range of influences and incorporating a variety of guest musicians for a full sound that proves to be her best and most ambitious work yet. – Justin Cober-Lake
5. Elana Sasson – In Between (PKMusik)
Rarely is “beautiful” the most accurate or informative descriptor for anything, especially music. Even so, something is striking about In Between, the latest work from singer and composer Elana Sasson, that is hard to describe any other way. Sound, sentiment, and intent all work in exquisite aesthetic and affective concert here, the layering of these aspects giving the album multiple dimensions that are sincerely beautiful from start to finish.
In Between is indeed a rarity, and Elana Sasson and her quartet perform with the depth it takes to anchor the beauty of their output in artistic and personal truth. Beauty does not automatically make music good or interesting; good and interesting music is not always beautiful. In Between sits at the unlikely nexus of all of these things. – Adriane Pontecorvo
4. Clara Mann – Rift (state51)
The UK-based multi-disciplinary artist Clara Mann’s debut album, Rift, barely lets the light in, but, when it does, it’s a glorious light. The narrator drives along rain-blackened roads without explicitly saying what she is leaving behind—heartbreak, confinement, loneliness are all contenders—which endows the rough-hewn record with a haunting subtext: an unspoken and phantom-like past.
Rift is a driving album, so much so that you feel as if you are beside the narrator in the car, traveling along English country lanes—memories shoot by like road signs—discussing if the journey will lead to self-discovery? If the past is as infinite as the road? It’s heartbreaking until, through the fissures of despair and longing, the slant of sunlight hits the steering wheel.
Like eminent folk artists, say, Anna Briggs or Shirley Collins, Mann makes you believe in the song, in the narrator’s tale, before turning it back around to the subject to make them believe in their own story. In other words, Mann inhabits tracks like an actor, whose mask reveals and conceals their interior world. However, without visuals, she conveys this through tremulous quivers, Joan Baez-esque vibratos, and caesuras. In fact, Mann has a supple voice that cuts you from the inside without words having to register. Oh, Mann should—you’d think—be a good driver after Rift. – Jack Walters
3. Violeta Parra – Las Últimas Composiciones de Violeta Parra (Vampisoul)
Perhaps no nueva canción singer-songwriter in Chile was more important than Violeta Parra. A movement with a broad definition from a region with a maybe even broader definition, nueva canción arose from the same confluence of revolutionary activist movements that spawned so many of the 1960s and 1970s most important musical genres. Tied to progressive movements of Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, nueva canción emphasized local folk sounds. Indigenous instruments and melodies intertwined with acoustic guitars from the European side of the Atlantic accompanied lyrics of resistance and social justice.
Every iteration of Las Últimas Composiciones de Violeta Parra is a good one. Garcia’s lush arrangements are works of art in and of themselves, beautiful, elaborate frames for Parra’s creative brilliance. There is, though, an intimacy to listening to the album as Vampisoul has produced it in this latest printing. –
Adriane Pontecorvo
2. Richard Dawson – End of the Middle (Domino)
Richard Dawson finds his way out of a labyrinthine trilogy of albums (Peasant, 2020, and The Ruby Cord) with an Ozu-inspired collection of songs about the dramas of domestic life. Though the arrangements here are dialed down to a comparative whisper, End of The Middle reveals how the memory and minutiae of what transpires between four walls can be so momentous as to have ongoing generational effects.
The singer welcomes characters from previous songs and sees others born and die. Sally Pilkington, a welcome presence on dozens of albums across Dawson’s varied discography, has a scene-stealing verse on “More than Real”, a song that may signal Dawson’s next musical direction. Longtime fans will easily spot connections between these sketches of home(s) and the dense narratives of Dawson’s past work. Yet End of the Middle is also an ideal entry point for those only now discovering Newcastle’s finest folksinger. – Thomas Britt
1. Jade Bird – Who Wants to Talk About Love (Glassnote)
It’s been four years since Jade Bird‘s last full-length release. She has plenty to say. That doesn’t mean she knows the answers. As the title suggests, she’s ready to chat. The songs are filled with internal dialogue and are often told in the second person as if she is having a conversation with her listeners.
More importantly, the British-born singer-songwriter crafts compelling art from her emotional experiences. The lyrics are simultaneously intimate and intense, insightful and poetic. Jade Bird passionately delivers the material. Her insights come off as poetic revelations. “Is this what dreams are made of? / Being so in love, I can only break your heart,” she croons in a pained voice after “Dreams”. – Steve Horowitz
The 25 Best Folk Albums of 2025
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