Tough as it is to define “emo” in 2025, “overlooked” feels like a much bigger challenge.
First off, “overlooked” to whom? On the one hand, the music critic community is more expansive than ever and no matter how seemingly obscure a genre or geographical region felt even two years ago, it’s probably being covered somewhere in depth and detail. If you know where to look, that is. On the other hand, that same fractionation somehow amplifies the consensus by the time year-end lists start to publish (at this rate, by mid-November in 2026). As everyone tends to their niche, a few big names emerge stronger than ever and at this point, it can feel like every indie band that isn’t Geese or Wednesday has been overlooked by comparison.
So I tried to keep the definition simple, if still overly personalized: It doesn’t matter if the following records were released on a major or major indie, if the artist was subject to rave reviews or profiles, if they released albums in the past that were very much not overlooked. If I saw them appear on any major year-end list, they’re probably out. If I saw them being bemoaned throughout the year as underrated or underappreciated, I left them out as well (i.e., Greet Death’s phenomenal Die In Love). But they can’t be too obscure either. Every album you’re about to see here has something in common with any indie album you’d see on a Most Overexposed list and could give you something that sounds fresh enough to sustain you in the netherworld where, at least musically, 2025 is no longer happening and 2026 has yet to fully exist.
Baths — Gut
Perhaps I’m operating off an outdated stereotype of music critics rather than the current iteration, but whenever I read someone talking about “the club” in their review, it strikes me as an abstraction rather than a physical place — a catch-all image of glamor and hedonism that skimps on the awkwardness and anxiety that come before, after and even the “during.” All of that stuff is handled by Will Wiesenfeld on Bath’s provocative fourth album Gut, a record that earns the usually facile “unapologetically queer” accolade in that it’s outright and explicitly about his sexual conquests — the cruising, the fleeting ecstasy, the humiliating hangovers in dingy basement apartments, the dread of still doing these things in your 30s when everyone else is settling down. Fifteen years after starting out as a post-Dilla chillwave project on Anticon., Gut is the latest remarkable evolution of Baths’ sound, welding contemporary post-punk influences (GIlla Band, Protomarytr) to the electro-pop template of 2017’s Romaplasm, a truly singular work from a singular artist.
Ben Bondy — XO Salt Lif3
First off, no relation to Spotify AI victim AA Bondy. Prior to XO Salt Lif3, this Berlin-based artist was primarily working in ambient, but similar to Claire Rousay, he’s transitioned to a sorta-emo thing. And by that, I mean there’s noodly, Midwest riffs, heart-on-sleeve lyrics, and drowsy vocals… with the occasional amapiano beat, as evidenced by the opening “Bend,” which makes me think of a more successful version of what Tame Impala was trying to do on songs like “Oblivion.” If this is a pivot and not an artistic cul-de-sac, I can’t wait to hear what’s next.
Clairaudience — Letters From Emptiness
Despite an unwieldy, evocative name, here’s a band that’s nearly impossible to find unless you know exactly what you’re looking for — Googling “clairaudience band new york” immediately brings up a long-running, Brooklyn-via-Melbourne four-piece who are inspired by a bunch of ’80s and ’90s indie pop faves like The Chills and Luna. Promising stuff, but not who we’re talking about here. “Clairaudience” is also a New York-based label that describes itself as “a seminal DIY experiment in recording underground music,” and judging from its Bandcamp, they veer more towards neo-soul and house. Somewhere in the middle of the first page is the Brooklyn band responsible for one of the most striking shoegaze releases of 2025. Amidst all of the Hum and Slowdive worship and the post-They Are Gutting A Body Of Water experimentalism, Clairaudience work in zero-gravity reveries that recast Kranky’s early aughts output as an untapped resource for a dronegaze future. Even better: the nine-minute epic “The Act Of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes,” one of the only examples of breakbeat-driven shoegaze that doesn’t sound like watered-down Curve.
Coatshek — Sound Bath
A running tally of Pitchfork’s best albums throughout 2025 featured Coatshek, with RIYLs including, but not limited to, “the erotics of liminal spaces” and “quoting Barthes as foreplay.” Pretty heady stuff for an entirely instrumental record, at least until you find out that it grew from a commission to make “mixes for an imaginary queer bathhouse.” Sheki Cicelsky instead created original material set to a tempo “optimal for sauna sex” (107 BPM, in case you’re wondering). That’s the hook and it’s essential to the album’s creation and narrative. And it can be appreciated as the best 1994 Warp album of 2025, ambient techno that recalls Aphex Twin and Autechre at their most plush. And so I’m left to wonder if Cicelsky would take it as a compliment of their versatility or an abject failure of artist intent that I’ve let Sound Bath wash over me as I cook, take the trolley, or relax after work.
Head North — Winner!
In 2017, Head North put out a great album (The Last Living Man Alive Ever In The History Of The World) that was a kinda meta-analysis concept record about being in a struggling emo band. And, as these things tend to happen, struggling emo bands from Buffalo don’t come out to the West Coast much and I sorta lost track of them when the album didn’t catch on outside of Twitter. That, and they released a grand total of one song over the next eight years. And, wouldn’t you know, when Head North finally returned this year with Winner!, it was a kinda meta-analysis concept record about living out your dreams when the dreams become smaller and sadder. Except this time, they’ve leaned into a “cosmic rock” where the latter part of their descriptor applies more to the mindset than the robust, hooky indie of “Evaporated” — far away enough from their earlier, SideOneDummy-esque material to justify me leaving it off the emo list.
Kitchen — Blue Heeler In Ugly Snowlight, Grey On Gray On Gray On White
Even as I have less time than ever to give a spin to an unfamiliar artist, I always respect both the unfamiliar artist who makes a 20-song, 77-minute behemoth and the people who recommend it to me. What self-belief on both accounts! Especially when the first song itself is 7 minutes and is the slowest, sparest thing on the whole album. Though Kitchen, the project of prolific Rochester-based artist James Keegan, had built up a cult audience prior to 2025 (explored in this admirably in-depth Stereogum profile), it’s perhaps the audacity of Blue Heeler In Ugly Snowlight, Grey On Gray On Gray On White, title and all, that allowed it to break through to a wider audience that was ready for something that jammed Duster, Microphones, and the entire Orchid Tapes catalog into one syllabus.
Nyxy Nyx — Cult Classics Vol. 1
When This is Lorelei released Holo Boy a few weeks back, I found myself newly appreciating its clearest antecedent, Car Seat Headrest’s Teens Of Style — with all due respect to artists who are constantly flooding their Bandcamp page with new music, sometimes a newbie just needs a place to start. The title of Cult Classics Vol. 1 implies that Nyxy Nyx have done something similar; featuring members of Midwife, Knifeplay, A Sunny Day In Glasgow (!), Luna Honey, and Sun Organ, this Philly collective had spent the past decade scattering sludgy slowcore and shimmering shoegaze over several dozen releases. But Cult Classics Vol. 1 is tongue-in-cheek, a reference to this being their first true “studio album” and, thus, the most accessible and focused collection yet, something meant to reach beyond those who already consider Nyxy Nyx a “supergroup.” No album of 2025 captured every band of the feel-bad rainbow quite like Cult Classics Vol. 1.
Real Lies — We Will Annihilate Our Enemies
Over the past decade, Real Lies established their reputation with fascinating, minor variations on the same idea — what if “Weak Become Heroes” was the only song The Streets ever made? Lest that sound overly narrow, there’s been something of a subgenre emerging in the wake of their 2014 single “North Circular,” aging blokes (or sampled versions thereof) speaking of their formative rave experiences over throwback rave beats. At least for me, a sheltered suburban American during the peak crossover of electronica, this stuff is irresistible; I think of my high school friends with whom I used to play GoldenEye 007 while listening to Tool all of a sudden started getting into Chemical Brothers, going to raves, and applying to University Of Vermont. Oh, to have followed their path for at least a couple months rather than working at Jewish summer camp!
And yet, We Will Annihilate Our Enemies initially slipped past me upon its release, as it did so many others; Perhaps their consistency worked against them a decade into the game. And it surely is a nostalgic work — there are multiple references to White Pony tattoos, in a surprising bit of transatlantic cultural exchange (full disclosure, I later discovered that vocalist Kevin Kharas edited an all-Deftones issue of Vice). But the difference this time is that Real Lies aren’t just doing a sprechgesang about anthems, they’re making their own; What else would you expect of songs called “Down And Out (Where E-Girls Dare)” or “I Could Join The Birds”? I hope this little subgenre lasts long enough for artists to make songs about the first time they heard Real Lies.
Tape Trash — EDEN
Remember Indiecast? If so, this trope should sound familiar: the cognitive dissonance that comes when music is tailored so close to your personal tastes that it’s actually repulsive at first. And with that, here’s the RIYL list for Tape Trash’s debut album EDEN: “Bloc Party, Japandroids, Jimmy Eat World, Mew.” Oh, and it’s on Tiny Engines, a label that at one time could claim The Hotelier, Mannequin Pussy, Wild Pink, Spirit Of The Beehive, Strange Ranger, and Peaer on their current roster and has continued to thrive in a post-emo revival landscape. Again, nothing could be more my shit and yet… I’m honestly at a loss trying to think of one Japandroids-influenced (or even Japandroids-esque) band that had staying power beyond its first impression (Steve already gave his Beach Slang post-mortem and, minus the drinks with Pulitzer Prize winners, it’d be pretty similar to mine).
Here’s the thing about EDEN: Yes, there are plenty of hot-wired guitar riffs that remind me of Bloc Party and Mew (or, specifically, the Mew song that featured Bloc Party) and whoa’s and emo sentimentality. But there’s an important, often overlooked semantic component to “RIYL” — this music will appeal to you if you like these bands, even if they don’t often sound much like them. And Tape Trash, above all else, captures the pent-up energy of their touchstones at their best, creating a record of dingy anthems that make for the best example of celebration rock (the genre, not the album) in 2025.
Teethe — Magic Of The Sale
As much as one can expect a slowcore band to be “next up,” Teethe seemed to have that juice — In the five years since their self-titled debut, the Denton band built up a word-of-mouth buzz, opened for Ethel Cain, and signed to Winspear, a label that has an enviable track record with soft-focus indie rock (Wishy, Slow Pulp, Winter). And Magic Of The Sale was up to the task, reminiscent of a subgenre I call “DreamWorks-core” after that brief period in the late ’90s when DIY heroes like Sparklehorse, Built To Spill, and Elliott Smith were making elaborate studio epics with major-label funny money. And yet, it lands here because it’s not like your favorite slowcore bands were making year-end lists in the ’90s either.
