The Best Albums of 2025 (So Far)

Best of 2025 (So Far)

I am starting to feel like these “time to rank things” lists pop back up on me quicker and quicker each year. We are once again halfway through the year, and that means it’s time to reflect on the best albums of the year (so far). Below, you will find both our combined staff top 30, as well as individual lists from our contributors and moderators. We hope you’ll find something new to love.

Note: You can share your own list in our music forum.

Read More “The Best Albums of 2025 (So Far)”

This week’s most played. MovMou season is in full swing. Couple other 👀 albums on there too. More thoughts soon.

Jason Tate
Jason Tate

A take I’m test driving: Everybody Wants Some is The Sandlot for us grownups.

Just checking in on my most played albums of 2025 so far. Whole lot of The Ataris. Whole lot of Lagwagon. A bunch of staples, some new classics, and a few surprises for me. Our “best of the year (so far)” feature will run on the website early next week.

June delivered a Turnstile summer. Sunny weather. Hannah’s birthday. A visit to Hannah’s mom’s new puppies. Some great music pulsating throughout (and I know we’re just getting started). Onto July we go…

June 2025

This week’s most played.

That Moving Mountains album is … man, oh, man, special. The kind of album that’s going to cross from summer to fall to winter for me and just cement itself as part of the year kinda special.

People R Ugly has been a super fun pop-punk find. Love it for a run. And, Scott Sellers remains one of the best at what he does.

Jason Tate
Jason Tate

Loved it on first listen yesterday. Adored it on my run last night. And now, iced coffee in hand, sitting on the couch doing some Saturday morning computer errands, and it's hitting perfect. 

The sign of one of those albums that sticks with me.

Listen: https://chorus.fm/share/alb...

Loading

There are mail days and then there are good mail days. This one is up there in the upper echelon. I’ve been wanting to add these to the collection for a very long time.

YouTube Channel Recommendation: Low End University

YouTube

I posted about Low End University yesterday on the homepage, and since then have gone down the rabbit hole of watching a whole lot of his videos breaking down (and getting into) a bunch of punk classics. Great channel. Highly recommend. Great insight and a genuine delight as he discovers a genre dear to my heart. A handful of my favorites so far:

The Best Time to Start a Blog, Is Now

Adam Mastroianni:

The blogosphere has a particularly important role to play, because now more than ever, it’s where the ideas come from. Blog posts have launched movements, coined terms, raised millions, and influenced government policy, often without explicitly trying to do any of those things, and often written under goofy pseudonyms. Whatever the next vibe shift is, it’s gonna start right here.

The villains, scammers, and trolls have no compunctions about participating—to them, the internet is just another sandcastle to kick over, another crowded square where they can run a con. But well-meaning folks often hang back, abandoning the discourse to the people most interested in poisoning it. They do this, I think, for three bad reasons. 

One: lots of people look at all the blogs out there and go, “Surely, there’s no room for lil ol’ me!” But there is. Blogging isn’t like riding an elevator, where each additional person makes the experience worse. It’s like a block party, where each additional person makes the experience better. As more people join, more sub-parties form—now there are enough vegan dads who want to grill mushrooms together, now there’s sufficient foot traffic to sustain a ring toss and dunk tank, now the menacing grad student next door finally has someone to talk to about Heidegger. The bigger the scene, the more numerous the niches.