Desert So Green

Speed Table

Hannah Lew

Another Twilight

when you rub your eyes, you see things you can’t describe

it’s only begun

Hopeful Woman

Never Left Me

All Hail (Pressure)

Assumption

Rival Males

Skräckfylld Förtjusning

Satán

At a Diner

January

Ghetto Dub

Shapes Unravel

New Imposition

After The Rain, Strange Seeds

The Reader's Lamp

sunn O)))

Glory Black

PLAY ME

NOT TODAY

Hidden Fires Burn Hottest

No Such Place

S/T LIVE LP

Lemon Tree

Fanjiry

Sanctions

Boom Boom

I Used To Go To This Bar

I Know Where Mark Chen Lives

Moder

Darn Den Draumen

Expo '70

No Need To Be Lonely

Future Spring

Sunny, I Was Wrong

The Black and the Blue

Where The Earth Has Teeth

Violent (and just a little bit numb)

Gaza Is The Moral Compass

Sarah Page - Spring Is Here

Overspace & Supertime

Hexagonal Eyes (Diverity Trepaphymphasyzm)

All Things Might Spill

Drying of Frozen Soils

Fear Of

DOG POUND

Click on album artwork to play the music.New traditions are hard to keep. They take time to develop, to love and live in and through. The speed of our world isn't kind to the slow and steady pace of repetition.&nbsp;&nbsp; Here's a tradition that I started six years ago: Name a song, released in January, to set the tone for the year. Previously, I've picked "One at a Time" by Lisel, "The Sun is Setting on the World" by Hatzihristos Apostolos, "milk crates" by Pigeon Pit, "After the Storm" by Yasmin Williams and "The Wilderness / The Color of Gold" by Luxury. What they share in common is the unease, ambition, hope of combination within me at that moment in time. (I have always worn my music on my sleeve.) I didn't exactly agonize over the 2026 edition; it already feels like we've experienced an entire year in just 21 days, so choosing a song for this little project wasn't exactly top of mind. But, as I often say, music has a way of finding you when you need it.&nbsp; Szymon Wójcik's "it's only begun" is a little on the nose, isn't it? Despair, an inclination I have to fight within myself, is right there in the title. For the first two minutes, an electric guitar with an exquisite, obsidian tone strums sparse, discordant notes as skittering cymbals and low drones from a tuba fill the dust around them. And then Sarah Flindst sings: "Don't you worry." Hesitantly, but not blithely. The words that follow feel improvised, or at least written in a "first thought, best thought" fashion. Sound first, feel second.&nbsp; The music swells almost like an auditory illusion. In an arrangement that I can only describe as "the noise-rock bummer of Harvey Milk (for chamber ensemble)," strings and brass billow with great bravado, but never burst. What happens ends, yet everything begins again. In that way, "it's only begun" feels exactly like now: overwhelming, mournful and too much at once. And, yet, each time the singer returns to that phrase — don't you worry — a flint is struck. A spark in the dark; it just needs air to breathe. —Lars Gotrich, vikingschoice.org&nbsp;

A bummer noise-rock chamber ensemble, plus towering drone-doom, strange country, all-American krautrock

vikingschoice

I Finally Found My Song to Start the Year

wet glass

sympathizer

Spring Grove

Cumulonimbus

BLACK’!ANTIQUE; ONYX’!

ALIVE & DIRECT’! ft Elheist, Ss.Sylver  [iiye, Keenyn Omari, Blk Deco, Lo Qi, Christopher Williams, Ignabu,  Brian Hargrove, Mickey Session, Nick Hakim, Bae Bro, Fatboi Sharif,  Roper Willams, Apollo Rome]

Love From a Distant Star

Six Hours

In-Correcto 194: 10 canciones para ir y volver

Garotinha

How This All Ends

figment of reality

SEXFACES "Bad Vibes OST" LP

FEED MACHINE

DECEIVER / MIRROR

DESPOTISM

Live in Philadelphia

Back to You

If Your Mirror Breaks

Circuit Breaker

PHASE IV

BELLY OF THE BEAST

Ring of Fire

Kingdom Come

natural

charlie

Big Dreams, Mister

No T-Shirts

The Quiet Sun

Voltarei A Ser Parte De Tudo

pogo

Broadsides

Foggy Mountain Breakdown // Ground Speed

Tender / Wading

Fracking Starlite

Occultation

The Prophet

I didn't do much Writing About Music in 2025, for this newsletter or for work! I've missed it. My new role at NPR Music, series editor of Tiny Desk, kept me busy, as did family life and trying to live in Washington, D.C., during a (still ongoing, seemingly no end in sight) occupation. Still, there were some records I kept coming back to — not necessarily the ones you saw on other year-end lists, but had a certain je ne le choix des Vikings.&nbsp; These are them, them are those, in no particular order, with a mixtape to match. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://newsletter.vikingschoice.org/archive/do-you-remember-what-the-music-meant/">Here's what I have to say about each album</a>.&nbsp;

Some records I kept coming back to — not necessarily the ones you saw on other year-end lists, but had a certain je ne le choix des Vikings

The Music I Meant to Write About in 2025

Los Thuthanaka

Huayño “Phuju”

The Bestiary

SERPENT

The Quartet

Part 2 Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto

Desarraigo

Sunwise

A' Chailleach

West Virginia Snake Handler Revival   “They Shall Take Up Serpents”

Don’t Worry It’s Just a Snakebite (What Has Happened to This Generation?)

Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark

Bleak Night In Rabbit's Wood

everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much

of the always puzzle of living and doing

RYAN DAVIS & the Roadhouse Band "New Threats from the Soul"

New Threats from the Soul

<a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.npr.org/2025/12/11/g-s1-99860/best-albums-of-2025-lars-gotrich">Here's what I had to say about each album</a>.* Silvana Estrada's gorgeous album&nbsp;Vendrán Suaves Lluvias is not on Bandcamp, but can be found on plenty of other streaming platforms.&nbsp;

This is the year-end list I made for NPR Music, now available as a mixtape.

Top 10* Albums of 2025

Hoodoo Telemetry

Meditation On The Last Time I Saw Arthur Rhames

kwaNTU

Wemfana

Ipsa Corpora

Thank You, Guitar

Amen Family

Four Amplifiers

Prodigal Son

Palmyra

Orcutt Shelley Miller

A Star Is Born

Cavejaz

Vila

Cantos Yoruba de Cuba

Sumu Gaga

Same Air

Belville

Mama Killa

We Will Be Millions

No New Summers

Good Directions

Awlaⱪta / Afar 离

Music for Writers

Park Entrance

Live at Jerry's

Bezoar

Anxiety Tutorial

Time Indefinite

Star of Hope

Whisker Fatigue

Beelzebufo

I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away

Houndstooth

Unraveling In Your Hands

Why Keep Still?

Traveling Light

Easy Living

Os guardiões da magia

A Trick of the Light

Cracking the Jaw

Moving Through Light

There is a house in the distance (enter these rooms)

watergh0st songs

Slow Dance

Ghost/Spirit

Satellite

On a Widow's Outfit

TAKAAT - Is Noise, Vol. 1

Ishumar

The Big E

What's Wrong

Tidawt

Abarid

Far Driven Sun

Unicorn Song

Velours Dévorant

This Changing Sky

Bombos y Cencerros

ají de pollería

Improvisations for nylon string guitar Part IV

Bobcat Turnaround

Figure In The Dune

The guitar will never die. And I, for one, take great comfort in that fact that I can neither confirm nor prove, just know in my heart. On the last episode of NPR's All Songs Considered for&nbsp;2025, I take host Robin Hilton through an exceptional year in guitar music. From Gwenifer Raymond's beautiful and brash fingerstyle to Rafael Toral's stretched-out jazz standards, not to mention William Tyler's glitched hymns and Vernon Reid's ecstatic shred, there's so much diversity to be found in six strings.&nbsp;Here is the expanded mixtape, featuring fingerstylists, power trios, experimentalists and shredders. Just click on an album cover to start the music.&nbsp;Image sourced from the&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://pdimagearchive.org/images/4b7edf3c-c7eb-4b0e-9e39-399ad679af6d/">Public Domain Image Archive / Internet Archive / New York Public Library</a>

My favorite fingerstylists, power trios, experimentalists and shredders of the year. 

Best Guitar Music of 2025 

DOGA

siestas ahí

Twilight Override

New Orleans

Perpetual Adoration

Un chant d'amour

Ce n'est pas ici, ce n'est pas ailleurs

KROK

Крок / Krok

Midnight Slaughter

Echo of Being / Grace in Rot

Grace in Rot

In-Correcto 210: Ofrenda

A la intuición

Balloon Balloon Balloon

(I Wanna) Be Your Girl

Songs of Hope for Gaza

Carolina Wren

Haram – ليش الجنة بيتبلش في الجهنم؟ Why Does Paradise Begin in Hell

Until the Last Breath – ل آخر نفس

Just a few things, then let's get into this week's mixtape… Thanks to y'all, we raised $300 in donations for <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-chris-the-next-chapter-of-big-ego">Chris Schlarb's GoFundMe</a>! My short-lived label Thor's Rubber Hammer was very much patterned after Schlarb's old label Sounds Are Active, so all proceeds from a week's worth of Thor's digital catalog — plus 2 test pressings of I Heart Lung's Interoceans, which <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://newsletter.vikingschoice.org/archive/the-drone-jazz-record-that-never-was-can-now-be/">never got an official release on vinyl</a> — was my way of giving back for many years of friendship and inspiration. Love you, dude. I recently guest hosted an episode of <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.npr.org/2025/09/26/nx-s1-5553535/the-best-new-albums-doja-cat-mariah-carey-robert-plant">NPR's New Music Friday podcast</a>. I dip in and out of Wilco and its many offshoots, so among the 5 records discussed, I was pleasantly surprised by the unexpected treasures within Jeff Tweedy's triple (!) album Twilight Override. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/buff-soul?srsltid=AfmBOoogK92jrQXXmvuj7knmhZxX-ojZ6iYFvfemJRtF0azXAmcD10ym">Moa Romanova's graphic novel </a><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/buff-soul?srsltid=AfmBOoogK92jrQXXmvuj7knmhZxX-ojZ6iYFvfemJRtF0azXAmcD10ym">Buff Soul</a>&nbsp;is, ostensibly, about the rock and roll lifestyle (sex, drugs, etc.), with illustrated appearances of Melvins' Buzz Osbourne and the Butthole Surfers' Jeff Pinkus, set during SXSW. But, really, the story navigates shifting dynamics within friends as they realize this kind of excess isn't built to last.&nbsp; I'll be at the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.bestfriendsforeverfest.com/">Best Friend Forever festival</a> next weekend in Las Vegas. If you're there, come say hi! Or scream with me when Pretty Girls Make Graves plays one of my favorite songs ever. Or cry with me during Mineral's (alleged) last show. I’m hoping to enjoy some Thai food at Lotus of Siam while I’m there.&nbsp; Oh, and one last thing: I’ve got a gig! My friends and I will play Cranberries songs as The Boo-berries for a Halloween benefit show in D.C. on Oct. 24 at Haydees Uptown. Proceeds benefit MSMA. —Lars Gotrich

Good Luck's mathy pop-punk, Shallowater's slowcore twang, Panopticon's epic black metal, Weston Olencki's deconstructed Americana.

Into the Void