Welcome to the sound of public radio in 2025. Our list of the best 125 songs of the year was curated by more than 60 writers and DJs across the NPR Music Network, and runs the gamut of sounds, scenes and styles. (Don't call them genres!) If the playlist (which you can add to your collection here) feels chaotic at times, that's somewhat by design. NPR Music's mission is to broaden the scope of your fandom and introduce you to an array of musicians that algorithms wouldn't know what to do with.
Our list is unranked, presented in alphabetical order, and you can look at it in two ways: A distilled version of our top 25 songs, or the complete list of 125 picks. Dig around for a new favorite, and spend some time reading the passionate, pithy capsules accompanying each song — context breeds crushes. Plus there's nothing artificial about any of them.
Bad Bunny
"BAILE INoLVIDABLE"
"Mientras uno está vivo, uno debe amar lo más que pueda," Jacobo Morales challenges before this track explodes into big band glory, invoking a question that has perplexed and propelled generations of salseros: Can heartbreak catch you if cut to the beat of chest-thumping clave and tumbao? In improvised moments, musicians perform nuanced replies. The song comes alive in a complex expression of communal pain, revealing the answer. "You taught me to love," the chorus laments and, worse, "You taught me to dance." In salsa, there's no getting over that. —Anamaria Sayre, NPR
Bon Iver
"Everything Is Peaceful Love"
From the beginning of the first single from SABLE, fABLE, Justin Vernon digs deep to deliver his finest without getting lost in the usual dense production loops. This indie soul-pop track is an instant classic with warm, layered production. Its simple message feels believable rather than cliché — that we're all surrounded by love. —Kyle Smith, WYEP
Tyler Childers
"Bitin' List"
I nearly choked laughing the first time I heard Childers' poisonous IOU. Certainly the only song of 2025 to include the lyric "seizure-fraught spinal rot," "Bitin' List" imagines a scenario in which contracting a fatal, brain-inflaming, fury-inducing virus would occasion an opportunity for carefully planned payback as a final act. You really have to piss someone off good to earn ire this specific and elaborately conceived. —Jacob Ganz, NPR
Lucy Dacus
"Ankles"
A portrait of intimacy that takes many forms — from raw sexuality to a collaboration on crosswords — "Ankles" floats on a bed of gorgeous, haunting strings. It's a deep and expansive examination of true romance, but it wouldn't be a Lucy Dacus song if it didn't have at least a little bit of ambivalence: "How lucky are we," she sings, "to have so much to lose?" —Stephen Thompson, NPR
Dijon
"Yamaha"
Dijon does his best Prince impression, if the ghost of Prince was resurrected through the warping circuitry of a motherboard. "Yamaha" is at once a straightforward expression of desire and an ode to desire itself. "I'm in love with this particular emotion," Dijon sings, deconstructing his own feelings with the same eccentric verve that he does the sounds of popular music. —Amelia Mason, WBUR
Fust
"Spangled"
The ghost buildings of the American South, disappeared by redevelopment, echo with lost voices. North Carolina's Fust goes fully anthemic in this elegy for a torn-down hospital sung by a soul who once lay in one of its adjustable beds. "I feel like a sparkler that's been thrown off a roof," he wails, invisible and transcendent, as the guitars rise like a monument. —Ann Powers, NPR
Geese
"Taxes"
Geese was a cult phenomenon in 2025. Even Nick Cave said "all worry is laid to waste" when listening to the rock band. Here, lead singer Cameron Winter is a martyr, begging for crucifixion over the banal act of filing his taxes. The band rips the sky open, hitting the punchline. —Justin Barney, Nashville Public Radio
S.G. Goodman
"Snapping Turtle"
No song this year was more brutally honest, or more sublime, than this one, which takes Laurel Canyon-style confessional songwriting to the hollers of Kentucky. A childhood scene of cruelty and punishment underpins a rageful lament about what and who gets stuck in the small towns whose exit lanes lead nowhere. "Small town is where my mind gets stuck," sings Goodman, surveying the damage, wondering what it takes to heal. —Ann Powers, NPR
HAIM
"Relationships"
"What's all this talk about relationships?" feels like the question an alien would ask if it came to Earth and didn't get what was going on. But after listening to HAIM's "Relationships," I am also that alien, wondering what the word even means, what the thing even means, what the real deal is with relationships as the song jerks forward and back, questions itself then speeds forward, just like, well, a relationship. —Zoe Kurland, Marfa Public Radio
Marc-André Hamelin
Tip
This brilliantly executed musical puzzler asks us to "name that tune" throughout its gently rollicking nine minutes. With utmost taste and a sly, precise performance by pianist Marc-André Hamelin, composer John Oswald has seamlessly stitched several dozen colorful threads of classical, pop and jazz themes into this piece. From Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata to "Nature Boy," I spot around 20 references, but it seems like just the tip of the iceberg. How many do you hear? —Tom Huizenga, NPR
Jim Legxacy
"Stick"
"No More 'I Love You's'," but make it drill? Delivering on the genre collectivism of his "Black British music" rallying cry, the ascendant U.K. rapper is an aerial dancer here, whirling between half-sung catch phrases on a ribbon of hummed chords and never seeming to touch the ground for long. —Daoud Tyler-Ameen, NPR
Kehlani
"Folded"
"Folded" is infectious, and Kehlani is showing us all that her R&B bag is full of music that makes us feel something. The multi-layered track makes you reassess your own love life, as you dissect the lyrics for this ambiguous love. "Folded" has set the tone to expect nothing less than R&B supremacy in 2026. —Jason "SugaBear" Harris, The Drop (Rocky Mountain Public Media)
Natalia Lafourcade
(feat. El David Aguilar)
"Como Quisiera Quererte"
Cancionera translates to "singer," but it's also the name of Natalia Lafourcade's alter ego and an achingly beautiful collection of songs that sway between jazz ballads and Mexican boleros. "Como Quisiera Quererte" pulses along to a classic Mexican waltz, and this story of tragic love is so artfully done that Lafourcade's name should now be mentioned alongside the most iconic of Mexican bolero songwriters. —Felix Contreras, NPR
Ledisi
"BLKWMN"
A powerful anthem honoring the strength, resilience and emotional depth of Black women. Ledisi celebrates the historic and ongoing fight for dignity, love and visibility, acknowledging both pain and triumph. The song insists that Black women deserve respect, recognition and freedom to exist fully, boldly and unapologetically. —Bella Scratch, The Drop (Rocky Mountain Public Media)
Madison McFerrin
"Never Felt Better"
On her sophomore album, independent artist Madison McFerrin encompasses the passion, transformation and rebirth that Scorpio season is known for. The sensual house beat, paired with her unmistakable vocals, layered harmonies and seductive lyrics get your body moving and make you notice that Madison made it through "on the other side." —Margarita Azucar, KALW
Metro Boomin
(feat. Quavo, Breskii, YKNIECE and DJ Spinz)
"Take Me Thru Dere"
Rising from the smoldering ash of prolonged RICO trials and premature deaths did not come easy for Atlanta in 2025. The city had to get scrappy. More dirty bird than mythological phoenix. It took a retro reinvention by way of ATL's futuristic past, plus a slew of young, bout-it women shouldering the load, to take us thru dere. Leading the home team in assists is Metro Boomin and Quavo, but this baptism by fire — and all 12 million-and-counting YouTube views — belongs to Breskii's rallying cry of a hook and YKNIECE's twerk-positive, all-booties-matter verse. Yup. Atlanna dun dunn it again. —Rodney Carmichael, NPR
Nourished by Time
"Max Potential"
Nourished by Time confronts their fear of the future in this resounding anthem of 2025. Looking for answers in the past, the Baltimore artist samples Labi Siffre's "Saved." When man's desire fails, Marcus Brown resolves "Max Potential" may be found in the return of what they know to be real: love. —Carolann Grzybowski, Radio Milwaukee
Oklou
"blade bird"
The French artist oklou's album choke enough is full of eerie, nostalgic electronica, but its last song, "blade bird," is a grounded outlier and also its best. A twisted acoustic lullaby, the song's image of a bird with a blade held to its feathers as an allegory for not stifling those we love in a relationship lingers long after choke enough's end. —Hazel Cills, NPR
RAYE
"WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!"
In a word? Irresistible. Perfectly executed on record and whenever performed by RAYE with her sharp backing vocalists and bevy of horns, this song combines 20th century girl group elegance with early aughts Amy Winehouse realness to empathize with the modern yearner jaded by dating and waiting for their person. —Celia Gregory, WNXP
Rico Nasty
"ON THE LOW"
Has there been a more potent combo of a G-rated chorus and blush-worthy bars? The DMV rapper, who has been known to call herself "Trap Lavigne," is Disney material one second and Skinemax the next. Throw in the hook's Satriani synths and you have a pop-punk-rap song that feels like a new chemical compound. —Otis Hart, NPR
Zach Top
"Between the Ditches"
The latest addition to country music's time-honored confessional canon. Like George Strait and Keith Whitley before him, Top delivers sentiment that transcends the years in a simple, emotive and meaningful telling of a hard-lived life ("I've been woke up by more than one guard rail"). —Jessie Scott, WMOT
Wednesday
"Townies"
When you flee your hometown, there's a tendency to forget what's in your rearview mirror. But if you stick around, you might find yourself extending an olive branch to your high school frenemies and even your teenage self. North Carolinian Karly Hartzman captures that sentiment here with catchy, country-influenced storytelling and the rock-star ability to stretch the word "died" into nine syllables. —Elle Mannion, NPR
Hayley Williams
"True Believer"
Rage has always been in Hayley Williams' songwriting toolbelt, but never wielded with such an exacting long view. Over unsettling production that recalls Nine Inch Nails, Paramore's frontperson weeps and seethes for Nashville, a city built on religious systems that still justify colonization and racism. A modern Southern gothic masterpiece. —Lars Gotrich, NPR
yeule
"Dudu"
Nat Ćmiel has always been an enigma on-mic, their emotional identity merged hazily with the machines that warp and crush their voice. "Dudu" inverts the formula: vocals raw and out front, but singing a childlike hook with a Casio's cold resolve, smearing messy heartbreak scenes into the shape of a nursery rhyme. —Daoud Tyler-Ameen, NPR
Brandee Younger
"Gadabout Season"
In a continually updated interpretation of jazz — and of the harp within that context — this lilting tidal flow displays that of a restless seeker set on the discovery of new frontiers. Younger merges Alice Coltrane-inspired cosmic swirls with precise, pop-like bursts to boldly tip-toe around a modern framework. —Liz Warner, WDET
Listen to all of our 125 favorite songs of 2025 on the streaming platform of your choice here.
Graphic illustration by David Mascha for NPR.
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