This Ten Top Worldwide Records of the Year 2025

Looking back on the musical landscape of international sounds that pushed boundaries. Presenting a selection of ten exceptional albums that defined the year in music.

Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already

An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive drumming might not seem the most accessible listening experience. Yet, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a strangely alluring album. Leading an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a intricate percussive language across the record's ten sections. The album channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich combined with traditional Indian musical phrasing, all anchored in the reiteration of a ongoing, pulsing motif. The longer one listens, this refrain starts to mirror the ceremonial rhythm of ceremonial music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive universe.

9. Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember

Following an eight-year break, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful collection of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-tinged aesthetic that established her as a fixture in the Middle Eastern independent music landscape since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and introspective, singing tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop beat of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a trembling, yearning vocal technique against Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and rattling electronic percussion. The album's sound is lean and subtle, yet this simplicity creates the ideal environment for Hamdan's expressive lyricism to take center stage. It is that justifies the long anticipation.

8. Debit – Desaceleradas

Mexican producer Debit has a knack for eerie reimaginings of archival audio. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the rhythmic Latin American dance music genre. Debit drags this sound down to a crawl, running its characteristic synths and syncopated rhythm through layers of distortion and static to produce a new, sinister rhythm. At turns ambient and unsettling, Debit converts the exuberant dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, spectral memory.

7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!

Sensory overload is the defining principle for the music of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a tumult of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This emulates the driving sound of favela street parties. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the energy, adding everything from driving techno rhythms to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a especially manic and punishingly loud forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the noise and Vieira's brash productions become strangely exhilarating.

6. Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered treasure. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an remarkably engaging fusion of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her fluid Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synthesiser melody replicates the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Elsewhere, bossa nova rhythm takes center stage on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a up-tempo funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.

Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor

From Mongolia vocalist Enji's gentle new release, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-influenced sound to offer some of her most wide-ranging music so far. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks travel 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 sprightly, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a full backing band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, inviting the listener into the warm acoustics of her distinctive voice.

4. Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow

Drawing on the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek merges the distinctive buzz of the electrified saz with woozy keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a nostalgic vibe grounded in Yıldırım's powerful high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. However, on classic Turkish songs such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group reaches vibrant new territory. They develop smooth, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that lend a new, unconventional interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.

3. Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Sacred music, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse everything from the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim