A Few Underrated 2025 Albums You Should Check Out

Good morning!

Today Sam Colt and I are each sharing a few more of our favorite 2025 records…ones that might’ve been overlooked or deserve more time in the spotlight.

We are so back.

Welcome to the latest installment of our (not so) new series! For those of you who may have missed previous editions, here’s a bit of context:

In this monthly series, Sam Colt and I will each share our picks for artists and/or titles that haven't received their due. You'll recognize Sam's name from our On Repeat and Friends Best of Series, and also our Top 100 of all-time series last fall. These posts will adopt the latter's format; I will make my case for my three picks and my reaction to Sam's. Sam's page will do the reverse.

In the inaugural post, we noted that successive editions would narrow things down slightly. Maybe a specific genre…maybe a specific era…maybe a specific…well, who knows!

“There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do” is a great line from an admittedly heavy song by Jim Croce (and, as it turns out, a prescient one in his case). When it comes to records, it never feels like I have enough time to listen to all the ones I want to, to write up the ones I hope people will love, etc. Real life is really good at getting in the way of the things we want to do. This is obviously a great problem to have, but still…

As noted before, I’ve taken some steps to remedy that. I left quite a few records on the table this past year, and come December, I’d like to be able to tell you that things went differently in 2026. We’ll see how it goes.

But it’s not just me that’s been wrestling with this. My partner in crime, Sam Colt, is in the same boat, and for our first installment of the year, we figured we’d at least try to fix that by shining a light on a few releases that either got by us or we ran out of time on.

When you’re done here, remember to check out Sam’s take at This Is a Newsletter!

Let’s get to it!

KA—

The Tubs- Cotton Crown

The home screen of my phone is blank. I have every app tucked into a folder titled “Kitchen Sink.” This