This 10 Finest International Releases of 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide music that pushed boundaries. We explore ten exceptional albums that defined the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
A continuous, 40-minute suite of cyclical drumming may not appear the most accessible listening experience. Yet, Indian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar transforms this driving beat into a strangely alluring piece. Directing an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a complex percussive dialect across the record's 10 movements. The work references Steve Reich's phasing motifs as well as classical Indian rhythmic patterns, each grounded in the repetition of a persistent, thrumming motif. As the album progresses, this refrain evokes the trance-inducing cycles of ceremonial music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive universe.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an hiatus of eight years, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful set of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-tinged style that made her a staple in the region's indie music scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is quiet and ruminative, singing tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop beat of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a wavering, longing vibrato against Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is sparse and understated, yet this minimalism provides the ideal setting for Hamdan's expressive lyricism to resonate. It is truly deserving of the wait.
8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico electronic artist Debit excels at eerie reinterpretations of traditional music. For her latest release, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the rhythmic Latin American dance music genre. Debit slows this sound to a near-halt, filtering its characteristic synths and syncopated rhythm through veils of distortion and noise to produce a new, foreboding groove. Periodically atmospheric and uneasy, Debit converts the exuberant dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, spectral afterimage.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the key term for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a onslaught of alarms, explosive bass tones and screamed lyrics over the longstanding Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the propulsive sound of neighborhood block parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, adding everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a particularly hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the noise and Vieira's brash productions become oddly liberating.
6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued masterpiece. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually captivating fusion of the synthetic sound of early synthesizers and drum machines with her melismatic Indian classical vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mirrors the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines parallels the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, bossa nova rhythm is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a driving funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered over a decade before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
5. Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia singer Enji's delicate new release, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her broadest music yet. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces veer from the soft Norah Jones-esque melodics of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a ensemble rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still personal, inviting the listener into the tender acoustics of her singular voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record alongside her group fuses the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a retro-70s aesthetic anchored in Yıldırım's powerful high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They develop sinuous, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that give a new, unconventional twist to the Turkish psych sound.
3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings converge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary latest work. Arranging music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
