Our 10 Best Worldwide Albums of 2025

As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the international sounds that defied expectations. Presenting a selection of ten remarkable albums that characterized the year in music.

Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty

The concept of a 40-minute, uninterrupted piece built on repetitive drumming might not seem the most accessible listening experience. Yet, Indian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this persistent pulse into a unexpectedly magnetic work. Leading an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a complex percussive vocabulary over the record's ten sections. The work draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, each grounded in the repetition of a continual, driving refrain. The longer one listens, this refrain starts to mirror the hypnotic repetition of ritual music, pulling the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive world.

Number Nine: Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget

Following an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a melancholy album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced sound that made her a staple in the region's indie music scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's voice is gentle and ruminative, delivering tender melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop groove of Vows. During more energetic moments such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a trembling, yearning vocal technique over Maghrebi-inspired synth melodies and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and understated, yet this austerity creates the perfect setting for Hamdan's expressive lyricism to resonate. This is a record that justifies the long anticipation.

8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas

From Mexico electronic artist Debit has a knack for uncanny reworkings of historical sounds. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a decelerated, dub-inflected interpretation of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit decelerates this sound to a near-halt, filtering its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm through sheets of murk and noise to generate a novel, foreboding beat. At turns ambient and unsettling, Debit converts the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, spectral memory.

Number Seven: DJ K – Liberator Radio!

Maximalism is the key term for the records of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira layers a cacophony of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the longstanding Brazilian genre of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of urban celebrations. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira ramps up the intensity, throwing in everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably hyperactive and deafeningly intense forty-minute listening experience. Give in to the noise and Vieira's bold productions become strangely liberating.

6. The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a newly appreciated treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks offer an remarkably compelling combination of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and drum machines with her ornate classical Indian singing style. Electronic percussion echoes the rolling tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines parallels the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, Latin-inflected grooves comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a up-tempo walking disco bassline. It's a dancefloor fusion delivered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.

5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor

Mongolian vocalist Enji's soft latest record, Sonor, expands on her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her broadest music yet. Stepping outside her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the soft jazz-pop melodics of downtempo number Ulbar to the German spoken-word lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-inflected cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a ensemble rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still personal, inviting the listener into the gentle soundscape of her distinctive voice.

Number Four: Derya Yıldırım and Her Band – If There Is No Tomorrow

Inspired by the psychedelic tradition of Turkish psychedelia established by groups such as Moğollar, Turkish-born, Germany-based singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek merges the metallic twang of the amplified traditional lute with dreamy Mellotron and classic soul melodies. It's a nostalgic vibe rooted in Yıldırım's powerful falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on Turkish standards such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group finds vibrant new territory. They create slinking, downtempo grooves and soaring vocals that give a new, quirky spin to the Turkish psych sound.

3. The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Gregorian chants, Eastern European folk melodies and symphonic arrangements merge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's stunning fourth album. Arranging music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated reggaeton-inspired beats of the brass and woodwind-led El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim