This 10 Finest International Records of the Year 2025

Looking back on the musical landscape of international music that pushed boundaries. We explore ten remarkable albums that defined the year in music.

10. Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty

An album consisting of a single, extended movement of cyclical percussion may not appear the most accessible musical proposition. However, south Asian drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar converts this insistent rhythm into a unexpectedly magnetic work. Leading an trio of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive dialect throughout the record's ten parts. The work draws from Steve Reich's phasing motifs combined with classical Indian rhythmic patterns, everything tethered in the recurrence of a continual, thrumming figure. As the album progresses, this refrain begins to emulate the ceremonial rhythm of devotional music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's unique percussive realm.

Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Remember I Forget

Following an eight-year break, Lebanese vocalist and composer Yasmine Hamdan returns with a mournful set of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-sung, dub-influenced style that cemented her status in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's vocal delivery is gentle and introspective, singing tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a wavering, yearning vibrato over north African synth lines and clattering electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is lean and subtle, yet this simplicity creates the perfect environment for Hamdan's expressive lyricism to take center stage. It is that justifies the long anticipation.

Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down

Mexican producer Debit specializes in haunting reworkings of historical sounds. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she turns her attention to the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected take of the rhythmic Latin American dance music genre. Debit slows this sound down to a crawl, running its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm through layers of murk and static to produce a new, sinister rhythm. Sometimes atmospheric and discomfiting, Debit converts the exuberant party music of cumbia into a lasting, spectral echo.

Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!

Sensory overload is the operative word for the output of São Paulo producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of alarms, pummeling bass tones and shouted lyrics over the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the energetic sound of urban celebrations. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the energy, incorporating everything from techno kick drums to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his unruly bruxaria mix. The result is a especially manic and punishingly loud forty-minute sonic journey. Surrender to the cacophony and Vieira's bold productions become unexpectedly exhilarating.

Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco

Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco beats and Punjabi folk melodies is a reissued gem. Produced by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an unusually captivating blend of the synthetic sound of early synthesizers and drum machines with her melismatic Indian classical vocal technique. Drum machine patterns mimics the wavelike tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines doubles the classic 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 driving funky bass rhythm. It's a dancefloor fusion created more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.

Number Five: The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor

Mongolian vocalist Enji's delicate fourth album, Sonor, expands on her jazz-influenced sound to deliver some of her broadest music to date. Stepping outside her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's selection of pieces travel from the gentle jazz-pop melodics of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and twanging guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay close, drawing the listener into the warm soundscape of her distinctive voice.

Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa

Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work alongside her group fuses the electric jangle of the electrified saz with woozy keyboard and classic soul melodies. It's a 1970s throwback sound grounded in Yıldırım's strong falsetto and shaped by producer Leon Michels' warm, tape-saturated sound. However, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 60s classic Ceylan, the group ventures into dynamic new territory. They develop slinking, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that impart a fresh, quirky spin to the Anatolian psychedelic style.

Number Three: Lido Pimienta – La Belleza

Gregorian chants, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings all come together on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's remarkable fourth album. Arranging music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse everything from the liturgical vocals of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim