The Ten Best International Albums of 2025

As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the international sounds that expanded horizons. Here is a countdown of ten exceptional albums that characterized the year in music.

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

A continuous, 40-minute suite of insistent drumming might not seem the most approachable listening experience. Yet, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this persistent pulse into a unexpectedly magnetic album. Directing an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar develops a complex percussive dialect throughout the record's ten sections. The work draws from minimalist concepts from Steve Reich alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, everything tethered in the repetition of a continual, pulsing motif. Over its duration, this refrain evokes the hypnotic repetition of ceremonial music, luring the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive realm.

Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget

Following an eight-year break, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan makes a comeback with a mournful album of songs. She expands on the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced aesthetic that established her as a fixture in the Arab alternative scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is gentle and thoughtful, delivering 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, longing vocal technique against north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The album's sound is lean and restrained, yet this simplicity provides the perfect canvas for Hamdan's expressive songwriting to shine through. This is a record well worth the wait.

8. Debit – Slowed Down

From Mexico electronic artist Debit has a knack for eerie reimaginings of traditional music. For her latest release, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dubby version of the shuffling Latin American musical style. Debit drags this sound down to a crawl, filtering its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm through veils of murk and noise to create a fresh, foreboding rhythm. Periodically ambient and uneasy, Debit converts the exuberant dancefloor sound of cumbia into a enduring, spectral memory.

7. The São Paulo Producer DJ K – Liberator Radio!

Sensory overload is the operative word for the music of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, also known as DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira piles a tumult of sirens, pummeling bass tones and screamed lyrics over the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the driving sound of favela street parties. On his follow-up release, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a especially manic and deafeningly intense forty-minute sonic journey. Give in to the assault and Vieira's bold productions become unexpectedly freeing.

Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Disco Punjabi

Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued masterpiece. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an remarkably engaging blend of the sharp sound of early synthesizers and drum machines with her ornate Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines parallels the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya channels a fast-paced funky bass rhythm. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered more than ten years before the rise of Asian Underground music.

Number Five: Enji – Resonance

Mongolian vocalist Enji's delicate new release, Sonor, develops her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her broadest music to date. Moving away from her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's 11 tracks range from the gentle 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 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a ensemble rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound remains close, pulling the listener into the tender soundscape of her unique voice.

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

Inspired by the 60s heritage of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's new album with her band Grup Şimşek merges the electric jangle of the amplified traditional lute with drifting Mellotron and classic soul melodies. It's a 1970s throwback sound anchored in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. However, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches lively new territory. They craft slinking, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that lend a fresh, unconventional interpretation to the Anatolian psychedelic style.

3. Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Sacred music, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim