What the world needs in December is more year-end lists, so let’s get the ball rolling with my favorite international albums. This is getting harder every year, because I keep on finding more and more stuff that I love. This year there were over 730 albums featured on the new music weekly posts and that thing keeps on expanding to different horizons. I was even more into instrumental jazz-y stuff than ever before and kind of would have liked to include things like Phi-Psonics, Brian John McBrearty, Scree, Laurie Torres on this, but maybe I’m not ready yet and stuck with my usual americana and power pop. Even then I often struggle to fit in my pop faves. For example I think Dandy Boy Records had a great year and I liked everything they released, but still only managed to put one here. Oh and of course I didn’t listen all 730 well enough to consider them, but there was at least 20-30 albums more that I so would have liked to squeeze in and many of them were on the various versions of this list. But 100 is already way too long, so I forced myself to get there somehow. There’s not a lot of big names, because I think my goal in this music world is to shine light to the underground and that drives my listening habits too. There’s a bunch of great big country/americana albums, but I’ve barely listened them so far so doesn’t make much sense to include them here.

There are again some sort of ranking. I know many of you hate them and I kind of agree. Music is love, not a competition. But this list is again so long that I assume most won’t have the time to check out everything and might want to know what were my biggest favorites. So the numbers are there but they are mostly arbitrary and I didn’t take a whole lot of time on them. Especially after the first 20 or so it could have easily been only alphapetical.

As usual, the list is entirely subjective. I have zero desire to make an objective list of best albums or try to figure what will stand the test of time. This is just a snapshot of how I felt about 2025 music in December 2025. Even my own list might look a lot different in a few months. There’s no small blurbs, because I’m too lazy and I don’t think many would even read them. I didn’t add bandcamp or YouTube embeds, because well a hundred of them, would make this page super slow and most likely it would crash at least on mobile devices. There’s a Tidal, YouTube and Spotity playlist though, if you want an easy way to listen to my picks.

Tidal playlist
Spotify playlist
YouTube playlist

But I don’t think you came here to read pointless ramblings, so here’s the list.

100 FAVORITE ALBUMS 2025

In many ways this was a year of Hectorine for me. I love when something just hits me out of the blue and I become borderline obssessed with the music. Hectorine’s Arrow of Love did just that. It caught me off guard and I think I listened it more than anything else. It even opened a whole new world to me and in the summer I found myself listening some early 80s pop like Judie Tzuke, because of it. Love that album so much.

But still Anna Tivel. Oh my. What a remarkable and special album from one of my favorite songwriters in the world. Poignant poetic songwriting and so beautifully arranged and played. Absolutely love both the songwriting and the way it sounds. The album breathes and every note finds my heart. A whole lot of love to everyone involved in the making of this work of art. It moves me deeply on every listen. My favorite album of the year is Animal Poem by Anna Tivel.

This is the last one for 2025. It’s a grind to compile this every weekend, so I need a little breather and this is always the best time to do it, because there’s less new releases. I know there will be some so I try to feature them when I return in January (week 2 or week 3). I’m not sure will this return in the same shape, form or platforms. This is a good time to ponder that stuff too. But someway somehow somewhere music curation will continue. Anyway, back to the new releases of the week. Well two weeks, because I missed last week due to a family event.

Album of the week(s) is from April, but I fell badly for this Ruth Parker album today. Thanks to Grayson Haver Currin whose insta story led me to this amazing album. Other album gems came from Matthew Dunn, Tulpa, Daudi Matsiko (EP), 0 Stars, Ronnie D’Addario, Melody’s Echo Chamber, Mesa, Richard Allen (EP), Have Gun, Will Travel (EP), The Gunshy, Rambler Kane (EP), The Saints, Julia, Julia, Joel Henry Little and Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter. A couple other bit older ones that I missed (as an addition to Ruth). Zach Romeo album I picked from New Commute and Danny Ayala and Tchotchke from Daisyalbums on insta. So credit to them.

The big one from Finland is the new Joni Ekman album, but there’s a whole lot to love. There’s albums from Ani Harmi and Timo Kämäräinen plus EPs from Satu Lii and Hyvät Hevoset. Plus singles from Kissa, Ne Lintuizet, Sin Cos Tan, RULES, Pauliina Kokkonen, Hissun Kissun, Anna Inginmaa, Felix Alexander Lybeck, Muuan Mies, Pambikallio, Joonas Holmen + The Lossy Codecs and Kuusikoski. Oh and Teini-Pää single, which is not on Spotify. Another good reason to ditch Spotify, because it’s a wonderful song.

International single of the week(s) is the new Stripmall Ballads song. Other early faves came from Dana Sipos, Courtney Marie Andrews, Tenderness, Sleepy Pearls, The Delines, The Lemon Twigs.. again just to name a few.

That’s all for now. Like, share, follow and all the usual promotional nonsense. It all matters. Thank you to all who followed this new music adventure this year whether it was regularly or occasionally. I appreciate you. The new music weekly will be on hold until January, but there will be a lot of year-end lists during the next 1-2 weeks. I hope to get most of them done fairly soon, so I can take it easy around the holidays. I probably make some Christmas playlist too or add new tunes to the old ones, because I didn’t want to put them to this one. I might have even missed some, because I thought they were Christmas songs. I guess I might have also accidentally include one that is a Christmas song, but it wasn’t so obvious. But I’ll share that on social media when I’ve done it. So far I’ve only listened to Melissa Carper’s album. Back next week with the eoty stuff. Love.

Oh and do buy the vinyl/cd/download. Spotify and other streaming services are perfect for these introductory purposes, but try to buy at least the music that matter the most to you

I’ll make the playlist on Spotify and then transfer it to other platforms. This means a few tracks might be missing from the from the other platforms, if they are not available there. Oh and there’s a bunch of older episodes on my Spotify profile, if you miss an episode or want to revisit.

Toning this down a bit for the remainder of 2025. I plan to do one more this year. I might be too busy next weekend, so maybe I’ll skip that one and do one more during the weekend 6 and 7th of December. It’s Thanksgiving in the US next weekend anyway, so I think it will be a fairly slow release week so I might as well skip that one instead of trying to force it Sunday night or something. Somewhere along the way there will be AOTY lists. Might be even before the next new music weekly, but might be much closer to Christmas too. I have no idea when I’m ready with those.

Haley Heynderickx & Max Garcia Conover is the album of the week. Avry Truex released an album of demo tapes and I love them. A bit of a Woody Guthrie start for this week’s playlist, because Avry’s song is for Woody and Haley & Max album was inspired by the life and music of Woody Guthrie. Other big album releases of the week came from Ryan Necci & The Buffalo Gospel, Sharp Pins, Jacob Furr, Tobias Jesso Jr, Sam Blasucci (EP or Movements 1), Joseph Shabason & Thom Gill, Red River Dialect, Glyders, Magic Fig and Sam Salmon.

New Paha Lucia album leads the Finnish part of this. We also have an album from Kuumaliima and singles from The New Tigers, Ylva Haru, Luhtaniitty, Susanna Leppänen, UTU, Joni Ekman, Torrances and Raivo Jackson.

The international single of the week is the new one from Hailey Davis. Absolutely loved it. She used to perform under the moniker Lady Apple Tree and made onechord.net’s EP of the year some time ago. Somehow I had completely missed that she has signed with Fire Records and performs under her own name now. Well good thing I got the memo now that the second single arrived. The first one is great too, so check it out if you dig the new one. Other early favorites came from Gladie, Noble Hobo, Hank Bee, 54 Ultra, Esther Rose, Adelyn Strei… again just to name a few.

That’s all for now. Like, share, follow and all the usual promotional nonsense. It all matters. Most likely back with these two weeks from now. Maybe a tiny chance of one next weekend, but I doubt I have the time/energy. Love.

Oh and do buy the vinyl/cd/download. Spotify and other streaming services are perfect for these introductory purposes, but try to buy at least the music that matter the most to you

I’ll make the playlist on Spotify and then transfer it to other platforms. This means a few tracks might be missing from the from the other platforms, if they are not available there. Oh and there’s a bunch of older episodes on my Spotify profile, if you miss an episode or want to revisit.