Albums of the Year 2025: Our Top Picks

These are our Albums of the Year 2025 selections so far, spanning jazz, hip-hop, funk & soul, electronic, ambient, and folk-rock. We’ve selected five key releases from each genre, along with a sixth pick highlighting an album from Aotearoa in every category.

This is just a small selection—our full AOTY 2025 list will be out at the end of the year.

Explore the list and feel free to share your own favourites in the comments!

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Some titles are currently available at Stack Records — www.stackrecords.co.nz. If any titles go out of stock, flick us a message and we’ll see if we can hunt down more copies.