In this segment, we round up the best albums released each month. From Horsegirl to Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory, here are, in alphabetical order, the 10 best albums of February 2025.
Baths, Gut
It’s one thing to write music from the stomach versus the heart, as was Will Wiesenfeld’s intention for Gut, his first Baths album in seven years. It’s not a guarantee the songs will actually hit like that. In Gut’s case, though, there’s really barely any separation between the philosophical and the guttural, the feeling and its translation, eschewing the fear of being lost in both. Since releasing his first album under the moniker, Cerulian, in 2010, Wiesenfeld’s work has always been characterized by an unshakeable and downright mimetic physicality, boundless in its erosion of boundaries between real and fantastical worlds. But the self-released Gut – which features live drums on more than half its tracks – is newly unfiltered and unruly in a way that carves a path forward for the project. The intricate nature of his music is still there, but its elasticity serves to stretch the feeling until it gnaws and bubbles through the body. Gut strikes, excites, and soothes in almost equal measure; it’s stomach music, to be sure, but it can’t help but speak to the heart. Read our inspirations interview with Baths.
Cryogeyser, Cryogeyser
“I’ll see you at the edge of changing something/ My only stand on me is my impatience/ Maybe it’s best to walk away in silence,” Cryogeyser frontperson Shawn Marom sings on ‘Blew It’, a hlighlight off the Los Angeles trio’s self-titled LP. Produced and engineered by drummer Zach CapittiFenton, the album follows 2021’s timetetheredtogether, marking the longest gap between albums – and a newfound focus on lyrical and vocal acuity. Far from quietly fading out, the longing in these songs come blazing out, Marom not only holding ground amidst the dizziness but turning shoegaze’s typical sludge of emotions into something more concrete, even hopeful. It’s proof of the band honouring patience in their craft without compromising on loud catharsis.
Heartworms, Glutton for Punishment
After appearing on Speedy Wunderground’s Quarantine Series, Heartworms teamed up with labelhead and producer Dan Carey for the riveting 2023 EP A Comforting Notion, recently following it up with her debut full-length, Glutton for Punishment. Like any release from a band with similar origins, the record might be lumped as post-punk but easily defies this categorization. Invoking tales from her childhood, military history (a longstanding fascination), and raw feeling, Orme is a nuanced songwriter and nimble performer who conjures but isn’t afraid to break open tightly-wound song structures; to dance and wreak havoc atop the most minimal beats. The album may revolve around our personal and historic thirst for punishment, but in Heartworms’ world, aggression can sound gentle and fiercely illuminating. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Heartworms.
Horsegirl, Phonetics On and On
You don’t always know what Horsegirl are singing about, but you know someone in the group does. Perhaps more than anything, their sophomore album, Phonetics On and On, delights in and charms through its deceptively childlike and unwaveringly playful language, which spins choruses out of practically every variation of “da da da.” Having moved from Chicago to New York between albums, the trio enlisted musician/producer Cate Le Bon to pare down and declutter the sound of 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance while amping up the absurdity in the subtlest places. Through the uncanniness and restraint, though, shines naked emotionality. “It’s oh so plain to see,” Nora Cheng sings at the very end, “How often I think sentimentally.” Whether repeating or tangling up the same words, Horsegirl make you want to sit down and listen. Read the full track-by-track review.
Ichiko Aoba, Luminescent Creatures
Luminescent Creatures takes its name from the closing track of Ichiko Aoba’s previous effort, 2020’s Windswept Adan, an enchanting and richly rendered record that expanded both the Japanese singer-songwriter’s palette and audience. Working with arranger Taro Umebayashi and creative director Kodai Kobayashi, Aoba’s ambitious vision for that project included a script for an imaginary movie, telling the story of a girl who is exiled to Adan Island. By the end, Aoba wrote in the album’s companion book, “the body of the girl had vanished instead, transformed and reborn into a variety of living things.” That may leave the island uninhabited by humans, but Aoba has no trouble furthering the fantastical journey, breathing music into all other life forms that permeate the universe she’s built around it. Inspired by her visits to Japan’s Ryukyu Archipelago, she augments her field research with vivid imagination and luscious orchestration, so that the immense can feel improbably immersive. “Inside each of us there is a place for our stars to sleep,” Aoba sings on ‘Luciférine’, diving beyond a place, beyond sleep, into dreams. Read the full track-by-track review.
Masma Dream World, PLEASE COME TO ME
Before it became a way of invoking a world of spirits and ancestors as Masma Dream World, singing was, for Devi Mambouka, a means of communing with nature. The name of the project alludes to a dream she first had when she was six, in which she walked through a nightmarish landscape, lost in a veil of smoke and darkness; demons erupted at the sound of her voice, but what terrified her the most was that it was a voice she couldn’t hear. In America, Mambouka began a new kind of musical and spiritual journey, getting deep into meditation, Hindu mysticism, and Vedantic texts. Sounding by turns meditative, tortured, and exultant, the follow-up to her 2020 debut Play at Night transmutes the abyssal language of devotion and the divine feminine through cavernous electronics, spine-chilling noise, and a powerful voice that succumbs to forces beyond her control. It makes the void sound like an embrace, and the embrace immortal. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Masma Dream World.
Oklou, choke enough
Oklou‘s debut LP, choke enough, is eerily enchanting yet damn near impossible to pin down. The French-born, London-based vocalist and producer, born Marylou Mayniel, may have been honing in her leftfield stylings for a decade now, but the way she flavours every trace of genre on choke enough – which finds her working with A.G. Cook, Danny L Harle, and co-producer Casey MQ – gives it the feel of an instant avant-pop classic. As giddily lush and Y2K-infused as it is dreamily ambient – but above all vaporous – the record zones in on the experience of decentering from one’s self, the way it stretches over a period of years and the glimmers of life peaking through the cracks. It’s an album you can’t help but get lost in, yet it never totally loses itself, anchoring in a world of in-betweens.
Squid, Cowards
Life on the road has shaped Squid’s worldview – and worldbuilding – but they won’t write a song about touring. Not exactly. The way it’s broadened their perspective bleeds through the characters, settings, and influences behind the art-rockers’ third album, Cowards, which pares down the knotty textures of 2023’s O Monolith. It begins as a relatively straightforward, or straightforwardly manic, catalog of evil, but its framework slowly becomes more slippery, oblique, and widely evocative. It’s unhinged and prickly, like trying to pick the salt out of the ocean, before zooming out and plunging in. “And we just play our songs/ To the sea,” Ollie Judge sings on the very last song, suddenly shifting the gaze back to the group, or society as a whole. “And hope that nothing comes/ And washes us away.” Read the full track-by-track review.
Youth Lagoon, Rarely Do I Dream
After finishing his tour in support of 2023’s Heaven Is a Junkyard, Trevor Powers stumbled upon a shoebox of home videos from his childhood in his parents’ basement. It’s no surprise, given his textured, self-reflective approach to songwriting, that audio samples from the tapes would end up on his next album as Youth Lagoon, Rarely Do I Dream. Powers’ most powerful tool, however, isn’t nostalgia but juxtaposition, which he employs to harden the line between the innocence of childhood and the violent currents of today, between juvenile dreams and intoxicated fantasies, obliviousness and imagination; and to diffuse it, too. The record also finds Powers making some of his most dynamic – and dynamically sequenced – songs to date, which only underlines the thematic contrasts. For every pillowy melody and irresistible chorus, there is a tragic story that’s hard to chew, characters with murky backgrounds, memories that can’t be erased. It’s relentless and revitalizing – proof that whatever Powers does next might look to the past, but will hardly look like the thing that came before. Read the full track-by-track review.
