This Ten Best International Releases of 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of global music that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten exceptional albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive drumming could sound like it isn't the easiest listening experience. Yet, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar transforms this persistent pulse into a hypnotically captivating work. Directing an trio of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive dialect across the record's 10 movements. The album channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the recurrence of a continual, thrumming motif. The longer one listens, this refrain begins to emulate the ceremonial rhythm of ritual music, drawing the listener deeper into Korwar's distinctive percussive realm.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget
After an hiatus of eight years, Arab vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a contemplative set of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that made her a staple in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is quiet and introspective, singing tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she adopts a quivering, yearning vibrato over electronic lines with North African flavors and clattering electronic percussion. The production is minimal and subtle, yet this austerity creates the ideal environment for Hamdan's emotive compositions to take center stage. This is a record well worth the wait.
8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
Mexican producer Debit specializes in eerie reinterpretations of archival audio. For her latest release, Desaceleradas, she zeroes in on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the shuffling Latin American dance music genre. Debit drags this sound to a near-halt, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm via veils of distortion and noise to generate a new, menacing rhythm. Sometimes ambient and unsettling, Debit converts the celebratory party music of cumbia into a persistent, ghostly echo.
7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Maximalism is the operative word for the music of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Coining his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a cacophony of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the driving sound of urban celebrations. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the energy, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a especially frenetic and deafeningly intense forty-minute sonic journey. Submit to the assault and Vieira's unapologetic productions become strangely freeing.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist 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 present an remarkably engaging blend of the synthetic sound of early synthesizers and programmed drums with her ornate classical Indian vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a driving funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion created more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.
5. Enji – Sonor
From Mongolia singer Enji's soft latest record, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her most diverse music to date. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs range from the soft jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a sprightly, funk-inflected cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a ensemble rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still personal, pulling the listener into the tender acoustics of her distinctive voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – Yarın Yoksa
Channeling the 1960s legacy of Turkish psychedelia pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group merges the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy keyboard and R&B-inflected lines. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's powerful high register and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. But, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds dynamic new territory. They create sinuous, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that give a new, unconventional twist to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Catholic requiem mass music, Eastern European folk melodies and orchestral strings merge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable fourth album. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse 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. It is Pim
