It’s the end of the year, and many of us are busy reflecting on the albums that impacted us most in our walk through it. Many of these albums will be ones we return to in the years to come, the experience of them evolving with our changing lives.
Encountering an album to remember in the years to come is great, but how much better is it when it’s an artist that is flying under the radar? Connecting with artists lesser known to others makes it all the more personally meaningful. Therefore, we’d like to shout out some more under the radar releases this year that might just give you that wonderful sense of personal discovery.
Here is my humble Top Ten list of under the radar releases this year: from underground hip-hop, to swamp rock, to dive bar country, and beyond!
10. Dewey Kincade and the Navigators – The Dark Ages
Kicking our list off is the fantastic blues and swamp rock act Dewey Kincade and The Navigators. The Dark Ages distinguishes itself on this list with the quality of the performances. Kincade has been set alight on this LP. He belts out each track on this thing with passion and conviction, channeling a lot of the personal themes on the album along the way. Equally impressive are the Navigators. They imbue The Dark Ages with a sound as rich as it is electrifying, perfectly keeping pace with Kincade. All of the energy is for a purpose, being used to express the album’s ideas about the frustrations of modern American life. The album is engaging, thought-provoking, and a triumph for Kincade after years of performance and hard work.
9. Snooper – Worldwide
A punk act based in Nashville, Tennessee, Snooper provided us one of the year’s most humorous and eclectic rock records of 2025 with Worldwide. The song topics have a wild variety, from driving a new company car to hologram mind tricks. Whatever the songs are about, lead vocalist Blair Tramel addresses it all with an infectious sense of humor. Sometimes her vocals even lean towards spoken word. They have a rhythmic (as opposed to melodic) value, and it’s a perfect match for this album’s manic energy and performances. If you like some oddball energy with your rock and roll, then Snooper is the band for you. We, for one, adore this crazy punk act and can’t wait to see where they go next.
8. Sparkle Carcass – Maraschino Chevy
One of the easiest winners in our review catalogue this year is Sparkle Carcass with Maraschino Chevy. At roughly thirty minutes in length, this album is a lean and accessible dive into some good ol’ fashioned honky tonk country. It shows its appeal almost immediately, with the opener “Texarkana Moonlight” being a splash into a very vintage mix of blazing guitar riffs, steel guitar, and vocalist Cody Palmer’s bluesy delivery. It’s very much all killer no filler, with every track (minus an epic closer) getting straight to the point and having a great time doing it. And don’t worry: if you’re feeling a little down, the band isn’t afraid to get a little melancholy, either. While the album has songs about the joy of getting back home, it also has songs about broken romance, disillusionment, and drinking alone at the bar. So no matter how you’re feeling, give Maraschino Chevy a spin for a quick and enjoyable slice of country music.
7. Navy Blue – The Sword and the Soaring
“I’m sittin’ in the sunlight of the spirit / This life too beautiful to hide what I’m feelin’” declares Navy Blue: one of the most hopeful and revelatory rappers in the underground scene today. Underground hip-hop (and underground music in general) can often wield a darker edge that helps to distinguish itself from the mainstream. Rappers with a darker shade in their style, such as Earl Sweatshirt and Billy Woods, can even rub against the boundaries of horrorcore with their sound. These artists are unique, but Navy Blue distinguishes himself further on The Sword and the Soaring by making an underground rap album that focuses on renewal, growth, and overcoming trauma. Navy Blue’s pen is sharp on this LP, writing bars that hit hard and give new ways of seeing his own existence after the loss of his father. For underground rap fans, this is an essential listen.
6. Matt Moody – The Misery County Line
The Misery County Line is an album that beautifully “skates the line between cerebral and geographical dissatisfaction” (see the interview we did last November). Based on Moody’s experience in LA, The Misery County Line articulates the dissonance between mind and space within urban American life. Of all the albums we reviewed this year, Moody’s work ranks as some of the most intimate and emotionally intelligent, bringing serene melodies with an emo-rock sense of honesty and confrontation. The album is very lush, featuring a mix of electric and acoustic guitar work that will scratch the itch of many indie singer-songwriter music fans.
5. Miffle – goodbye, world!
Here’s an especially obscure and left-field release for our readers. Miffle is an ambient electronic musician based in Warsaw, Poland. Her approach centers around taking tape loops, samples, and some bare instrumentation that can be mangled so as to sound fuzzy and a bit brash (much like wind in a snow storm, hence the song titled “digital blizzard”). Despite being a very digital creation, the album feels organic, as if it was just picked up through waves sent through outer space. This is an album that operates on the boundaries of what music can be. Foregoing traditional song structures, goodbye, world! instead favors atmosphere and texture that still has the power to evoke a response in the listener. This is an album that we’ve returned to repeatedly this year, fascinated by the way it manages to evoke sensations of beauty despite its abstract nature.
4. McKinley Dixon – Magic! Alive!
One of the most overlooked artists in the rap game right now, Mckinley Dixon has been making epics that would convince you he’s a world recognized talent. His previous album Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? began his new pursuit of creating Jazz rap with large-scale live backing arrangements. Magic! Alive! is all that in more, being a meditation on life and death on top of all the complex instrumentation. It’s an album that will impress, shock, and excite with how easily it competes with other classics in its respective sub-genre. Especially notable are Dixon’s rap performances. He is fully animated and engaged on this album, often matching and bonding with the energy of arrangements that would overpower another rapper. Long-recognized and acclaimed artists such as Kendrick Lamar have gotten credit for similar merits, and it’s time Dixon received his own praise.
3. Aidan Robinson – love yourself or die !
Aidan Robison ranks for us as one of this year’s most pleasantly surprising local singer-songwriters. There is no gimmick to Robinson’s songwriting, no attempt to advertise himself as someone wildly unique and new. Instead, what Robinson brings to his debut album, love yourself or die ! (reviewed by us last November), is a witty pen, a wonderful batch of folky session musicians, and some wonderful vocal talents (he used to yodel back in the day). Robinson’s record is funny, quirky, and at times moving in its humility, perceptiveness, and imagination. It’s an album where the devil “throws firecrackers on the road” and strange occurrences come up while buying cigarettes at the gas station. It is the pleasure and beauty of folk all wrapped-up in Midwest suburbia.
2. DOOM GONG – MEGAGONG
Listeners enjoyed a lot of great new psych-rock this year, with new releases from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets alike. Lesser known, however, is DOOM GONG: a psych-rock band with new levels of ambition in song structure and soundcraft. Their new album MEGAGONG (which we reviewed back in September) pushes psych-rock to a level of complexity that would make many progressive rock bands jealous. Whether the band plays it more relaxed on the beautiful synth passages of “Never Crossed My Mind” or punishingly noisy on “Annihilator,” they impress with their technical mastery and attention to detail. If you like your rock noisy, winding, and boundary-pushing, DOOM GONG is the band for you.
1. Ninajirachi – I Love My Computer
After a strong run of dance mixtapes, Australian dance and hyperpop artist Ninajirachi finally released her debut album, I Love My Computer, this year. The album was a big breakout release for her, and it’s easy to see why. I Love My Computer touches on the Gen-Z experience of the digital world with a joyous perception and precision.
From a purely musical standpoint, it’s a gorgeous (and hard-hitting) album, but it has more to say than most dance records. The lead single, “Ipod Touch,” is an excellent example, being about the experience of finding an obscure song and the private wonder that comes with it. “Sing Good” is also a highlight. It articulates the uniqueness of being able to become a musician just from making a song by singing into your phone. Most of all, the album is a tribute to, rather than a criticism, of the digital world, choosing to focus on the joys and surprises of it rather than its detriments. Ninajirachi’s imagination and insight lands her the top spot on this list.
Featured photo: Ninajirachi
