Top 5 Albums of March, 2025

Long-awaited releases and delightful discoveries abound.

Yes, the rumors are true: I’m still battling a horrific case of writer’s block. This past month was littered with stellar releases which have been ceaselessly spun in my personal rotation, however I once again myself unable to come up with anything substantial to say. Thankfully, this monthly series is here for me — a benchmark to keep the creative juices flowing and the audience engagement alive.

Like I said, March was a fairly incredible month for new music. In the mainstream realm, names like Lady Gaga and Playboi Carti finally delivered on years of anticipation. Things were equally exciting on the indie/underground front, with several of my personal favorites dropping absolute excellence. This list was surprisingly competitive, but I’m never going to complain about having to re-listen to hours of exceptional new music. As always, the following order is purely alphabetical, and I seriously recommend checking out each and every record I’ve listed (but, like, especially this time).

Now, without further ado…

Only Dust Remains - Backxwash

Coming off a conceptual trilogy of critically-acclaimed albums, Zambian-born and Montreal-based rapper/producer Backxwash’s latest LP is a self-immolating rebirth. While no stranger to genre-bending experimentations (see the heavy metal despair of 2021’s I Lie Here Buried), Only Dust Remains is a relatively conventional rap record. Well, emphasis on the “relatively” — these tracks are still unbridledly creative and brimming with fiery manifestos. Backxwash’s vocals are insistent and impossible to misinterpret, spilling frustrations on queerness, capitalistic greed, and the genocidal culpability of the Western world. She pairs this with decidedly melodic production, pulling from a globe-trotting array of samples flipped in a fashion not unlike 2009 Clams Casino. Only Dust Remains is a revelatory journey, an ego-death informed by the harsh equalization of actual death.

Favorite Track: Undesirable

Dan’s Boogie - Destroyer

Full transparency: this album was guaranteed a spot on this list from the moment it was announced. While not an artist I’ve gushed about extensively on this particular blog, Destroyer — AKA the passion project of Vancouver indie rocker Dan Bejar — is quite possibly my favorite musical act of all time. For his fourteenth studio album, Bejar and longtime collaborator John Collins channel 30 years of lived experiences into a half-lit dreamworld of infinity-mirrors and oasitic mirage. The ethos behind Dan’s Boogie is beautifully uncertain — an old man’s stroll through a park he can’t quite seem to recall. Bejar’s poetry is fittingly meandering, wisping through shimmering bursts of instrumentation with his trademark brand of winking charisma. As a diehard supporter, it’s the best Destroyer has sounded in years, and I simply can’t overstate how much I’m going to revisit this one before the year’s over.

Favorite Track: Cataract Time

La Brea - Hesse Kassel

If you think that the debut album from Santiago-based sextet Hesse Kassel sounds a lot like Black Country, New Road, you’re not wrong — it’s an influence the band is painfully privy to. Take it from frontman Renatto Olivares: “Life isn’t lived based on ten songs about airplanes” (Pardon my terrible Google translation). La Brea is a bristling distillation of the artistic angst that comes with recording your first album, funneled into eight tracks of instrumental interplay and abreactive catharsis. The mood of these songs is undeniably grim, but there’s an elemental elegance to their execution. Like a storm-cloud glowering on the horizon, the thunderheads of Hesse Kassel’s compositions sound their best when they’re at the brink of release. It’s an unforgettable first impression for a band to make, and is easily one of the year’s most thrilling and emotionally tangible albums thus far.

Favorite Track: En Tiempo Muerto

MAYHEM - Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga has embodied many things throughout her career (diva, fashionista, Ryan Murphy muse), but the true through-line of her work has always been her sheer, uncompromising showmanship. Suffice to say, for any Little Monsters dissuaded by her recent acting forays, MAYHEM is a call-to-arms direct from the Mistress herself: report to the nearest dance-floor, Gaga is back. Like the title implies, this record is a crash-course through Gaga’s boldest proclivities. There’s throbbing industrial rhythms, Prince-ified jams, confessional ballads — all bolstered by some of the stickiest hooks of the decade so far. It’s impossible to deny how well MAYHEM evokes Gaga’s most beloved works, but the real strength of this LP lies in how satisfyingly it sates our universal desire for pop at its biggest and bravest.

Favorite Track: Vanish Into You

Tonky - Lonnie Holley

As a world-renowned sculptor, poet, and musician, Lonnie Holley’s art has always been about scavenging from his past. The 75 year-old Alabaman’s seventh LP is no different, taking its title from a nickname Holley earned as a child immersed in the seedy barrooms of various honky-tonks. It’s this same childlike spirit which Holley imbues into Tonky, a wide-eyed and loving perspective that quells the scars of unimaginable abuse by striving to live a life free of its traumatic influence. The soundscapes here are sweeping and sentimental, delicately composed and powerfully eked through Holley’s painfully raw vocals. Gathering an intergenerational roster of avant-garde collaborators (billy woods and Saul Williams are standouts), Tonky bridges the past and the present by acknowledging the spiritual lifeline which has carried one man — and with him, all of us — through the entirety of human existence.

Favorite Track: Strength of a A Song (feat. Alabaster DePlume)