A quick rundown of my favorite Finnish EPs of 2025. Again subjective and order is not important. Probably also forgot something. I’ll add a song from these to the end of the Finnish albums playlist, because it probably does not make sense to make separate playlist of half a dozen songs. Especially the top 2 were among my favorite Finnish releases this year and basicly could have shared the top spot. They are very different too and show the two sides of this blog. Una Harnett is beautiful and haunting folk music and Kismet is fast and sweet punk rock power pop blast. Love them both, but went with Una Harnett this time around.

Continuing the year-end routine. This time a quick rundown of my favorite EPs of 2025. Again numbers but pretty arbitrary. Entirely subjective too. I think a few would have been long enough to be considered as albums too, but I think I’ve seen them mostly referred as an EP. So they are here. It’s less crowded here anyway. Apologies if someone thinks they are on the wrong list. What really matters is that they are great. I hope I didn’t forget something important. I went through the old blog posts and searched stuff that I marked as an EP. But there was at least a couple that I hadn’t marked as an EP and those almost flew under my radar when compiling this. There might be more. But yeah, these often get overlooked a bit, but they shouldn’t. There were some really wonderful ones this year. A handful of these were on heavy rotation all year long.

There’s again Tidal, YouTube and Spotify list, if you want an easy way to listen to these.

Tidal playlist
Spotify playlist
YouTube playlist

The Zorthian Tapes by Alex Amen is the EP of the year. Beautiful songs and seventies west coast type of sounds. Absolutely loved it. One of my favorite releases this year even if I include albums.

Next up my favorite Finnish albums of 2025. Same as before. There’s numbers but they are mostly arbitrary. Music is love, not a competition. I changed them like a million times, so could have a gone with alphabetical list too. Again entirely subjective list of things I loved in 2025. For example Aili Järvelä is a glaring absence, because if I tried to make an objective list I would probably consider VUORI as the album of the year. It’s really spectacular on its own way, but it’s not really in my wheelhouse. For example Rättö & Lehtisalo, Tinyhawk & Bizzarro, Oiro Pena and Lyyti kind of fall into the same bracket. Impressive albums and while I do like them, they are still not the closest thing to my heart. And other way around, it’s probably borderline mad that ITE EEROLA is really high, because it’s an album made in three days, has six songs and three of them are not that special. But Reetta is my favorite songwriter and I love the other three songs probably more than anything else on this list. Also Juovat is a really short blast of 21 minutes, but I love most of those minutes so it made the cut. It was super crowded at the tail end of this list though and there are several others that were on various versions of this list. I’ll probably add a large bubbling under section to the playlist at some point.

If your own favorite didn’t make the cut, make your own list. I’d love to read them and it’s kind of sad that there’s not a whole lot of Finnish music aoty lists available anymore. I know these are somewhat silly and pointless, but still a good way to find things I’ve missed. I’m just one man who looks at things from his narrow perspective plus I have giant holes in my knowledge all over the field. So more lists the merrier.

I won’t add embeds here, because too many of them will make the page load forever or even crash on mobile devices. Below you’ll find a Tidal, Spotify and YouTube playlist, if you want an easy way to listen. ITE EEROLA is only on the Tidal version, because they’ve done what we all probably should and have left Spotify. It didn’t seem to be on youtube either.

Tidal playlist
Spotify playlist
YouTube playlist

FAVORITE FINNISH ALBUMS OF 2025

That was hardly a surprise to anyone who has followed this blog. The Finnish album of the year is Muistatko kuka on Kristiina? by Kristiina. I guess I do have my favorites, because Anna Tivel on the international part was also a repeat offender. It just has been nothing but love since I heard the first single Hai few years ago. Such a special band and the new record is again wonderful.

What the world needs in December is more year-end lists, so let’s get the ball rolling with my favorite international albums. This is getting harder every year, because I keep on finding more and more stuff that I love. This year there were over 730 albums featured on the new music weekly posts and that thing keeps on expanding to different horizons. I was even more into instrumental jazz-y stuff than ever before and kind of would have liked to include things like Phi-Psonics, Brian John McBrearty, Scree, Laurie Torres on this, but maybe I’m not ready yet and stuck with my usual americana and power pop. Even then I often struggle to fit in my pop faves. For example I think Dandy Boy Records had a great year and I liked everything they released, but still only managed to put one here. Oh and of course I didn’t listen all 730 well enough to consider them, but there was at least 20-30 albums more that I so would have liked to squeeze in and many of them were on the various versions of this list. But 100 is already way too long, so I forced myself to get there somehow. There’s not a lot of big names, because I think my goal in this music world is to shine light to the underground and that drives my listening habits too. There’s a bunch of great big country/americana albums, but I’ve barely listened them so far so doesn’t make much sense to include them here.

There are again some sort of ranking. I know many of you hate them and I kind of agree. Music is love, not a competition. But this list is again so long that I assume most won’t have the time to check out everything and might want to know what were my biggest favorites. So the numbers are there but they are mostly arbitrary and I didn’t take a whole lot of time on them. Especially after the first 20 or so it could have easily been only alphapetical.

As usual, the list is entirely subjective. I have zero desire to make an objective list of best albums or try to figure what will stand the test of time. This is just a snapshot of how I felt about 2025 music in December 2025. Even my own list might look a lot different in a few months. There’s no small blurbs, because I’m too lazy and I don’t think many would even read them. I didn’t add bandcamp or YouTube embeds, because well a hundred of them, would make this page super slow and most likely it would crash at least on mobile devices. There’s a Tidal, YouTube and Spotity playlist though, if you want an easy way to listen to my picks.

Tidal playlist
Spotify playlist
YouTube playlist

But I don’t think you came here to read pointless ramblings, so here’s the list.

100 FAVORITE ALBUMS 2025

In many ways this was a year of Hectorine for me. I love when something just hits me out of the blue and I become borderline obssessed with the music. Hectorine’s Arrow of Love did just that. It caught me off guard and I think I listened it more than anything else. It even opened a whole new world to me and in the summer I found myself listening some early 80s pop like Judie Tzuke, because of it. Love that album so much.

But still Anna Tivel. Oh my. What a remarkable and special album from one of my favorite songwriters in the world. Poignant poetic songwriting and so beautifully arranged and played. Absolutely love both the songwriting and the way it sounds. The album breathes and every note finds my heart. A whole lot of love to everyone involved in the making of this work of art. It moves me deeply on every listen. My favorite album of the year is Animal Poem by Anna Tivel.