Our Ten Best International Albums of the Year 2025

As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the worldwide music that expanded horizons. We explore ten remarkable albums that shaped the year in music.

Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty

An album consisting of a single, extended movement of insistent drumming may not appear the easiest listening experience. However, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a hypnotically captivating album. Leading an trio of three drummers, Korwar crafts a intricate percussive language over the record's ten sections. The work references the phasing techniques of Steve Reich combined with Indian classical phrasing, all anchored in the reiteration of a continual, pulsing figure. The longer one listens, this refrain begins to emulate the ceremonial rhythm of ceremonial music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive realm.

Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget

Coming off an eight-year break, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan re-emerges with a melancholy album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-language, dub-influenced style that established her as a fixture in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is quiet and ruminative, delivering tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the rumbling trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a wavering, yearning vibrato over north African synth lines and skittering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and restrained, yet this simplicity creates the perfect canvas for Hamdan's expressive songwriting to take center stage. It is that justifies the long anticipation.

Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas

Mexican electronic artist Debit excels at uncanny reinterpretations of historical sounds. For her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected version of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, running its signature synths and off-beat rhythm via sheets of distortion and static to generate a novel, menacing groove. Periodically ambient and discomfiting, Debit converts the celebratory dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, ghostly memory.

Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!

Sheer intensity is the key term for the records of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, who performs as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a tumult of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics over the enduring Brazilian genre of baile funk. This emulates the energetic sound of neighborhood block parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the ferocity, throwing in everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute sonic journey. Surrender to the noise and Vieira's brash productions become unexpectedly freeing.

6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a rediscovered gem. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an strikingly captivating fusion of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her fluid classical Indian vocal technique. Drum machine patterns echoes the undulating tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody doubles the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm is prominent on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya boasts a up-tempo funky bass rhythm. It's a party blend created over a decade before the Asian Underground explosion.

5. Enji – Sonor

From Mongolia vocalist Enji's soft latest record, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her most wide-ranging music to date. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs veer from the soft jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her usual setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay personal, drawing the listener into the warm acoustics of her unique voice.

4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow

Inspired by the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek blends the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a nostalgic vibe grounded in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated aesthetic. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group ventures into dynamic new territory. They craft smooth, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that lend a new, off-kilter spin to the Anatolian psychedelic style.

Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Catholic requiem mass music, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born 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 liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Yet, it is Pim