Albums of the Year and a fond farewell to 2025

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Friday 12 December 2025

Good morning everybody! Sad news, this is the last Now Hear This newsletter of 2025. GOOD NEWS: I'll be back and (hopefully rested) to bring you more music updates, tips and playlists in the new year. A big thank you to everyone who's followed The Independent's music coverage this year!

Let's crack on then: this week we shared our Albums of the Year 2025 list, going through the records that shocked and awed us. The last Good Vibrations episode of 2025 is out next week on 19 December starring the legend KT Tunstall, talking about the 20th anniversary of her breakthrough album Eye to the Telescope, her early years as a starving artist, and that famous Jools Holland performance. She also did the best Chrissie Hynde impression I've ever heard.

Music I love this week: well, it's all getting a bit Christmas-y, I've had the Steeleye Span version of "Gaudete" on repeat for a couple of days, but I'm also tuned into this little Dry Cleaning EP, Let Me Grow and You'll See the Fruit, "Antidote" from LA's industrial rock band HEALTH, Headie One's "Bellingham", "Leave the City" from Girl Tones, and the smooth and silky "What Will They Say" from rapper Samara Cyn, love that.

That's all folks, have a wonderful holiday, whatever you're up to, and wishing you all a very happy 2026!

Roisin x

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ON THE RECORD

To avoid using your voice simply because it's uncomfortable? It's just so sad to me, because you're avoiding a very important part of you and what makes you human

Aurora to The Independent, December 2025

I'm not afraid to be vulnerable

Jon Bon Jovi to The Independent, read the full interview this Sunday

My parents had what we call a shotgun wedding. They were just kids doing the best they could

Stephen Wilson Jr to The Independent, November 2025

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Tracks of the week

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1. "What Will They Say" - Samara Cyn

2. "Leave the City" - Girl Tones

3. "Antidote" - HEALTH

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Q&A

Spotlight on... Pedestrian Band

Hello! Tell me about yourself

Pedestrian Band has always been about the three of us - we're very close friends and in a way the music and the image of the band more generally have always been an expression of our relationship with each other. We write all the songs together, so each of our parts are sort of structurally integral to the others, rather than over the top of one other. Weirdly we often find that the bass provides the rhythm on a track, and the drums play more of the role of a rhythm guitar or a keyboard or something. We've always thought that if you can occupy the space somewhere in the middle of alternative and accessible you can make music that has the best elements of both. The risk obviously is that you entirely miss the point of both and achieve nothing, but I suppose we just have to have confidence in ourselves to piece it together in a way that makes sense to people that aren't us.

The initial idea of Pedestrian Band was that everyone is a Pedestrian whether they like it or not, and that we're just 3 of them in a band together. That idea has morphed and changed a bit, but we still incorporate a lot of imagery of urban infrastructure and street art - things you see every day that seem quite ordinary when you've got used to them. Lyrically too, the idea of responsibility and place within society is quite central, and a lot of the time the themes are quite explicitly political.

What are the inspirations and influences behind your music?

It's usually the mentalities of different artworks and art forms that we pull from for our music rather than the aesthetics. We take a lot of inspiration from comedy and visual art, thinking about their approaches to telling a story or making a point, and in many cases subverting people's expectations and playing with that line. We like to think that whether we cross the line or not that we're doing it deliberately, and that people can tell. It's a bit like being in on a joke in that way.

Musically, we've always been drawn to some of the more technical approaches, and often ones that are deliberately arbitrary - bands like Sonic Youth and The Jesus Lizard. There's also been a lot of math rock and hardcore influence on music in recent years, especially around us in London, and that really appeals to us but it can often feel like a showcase rather than a work of art. For us, there has to be a point to each song, like a nucleus - both in the lyrics, inspired by people like Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake, and in the song itself and the instrumentation. If we find ourselves covering ground we've already covered while we're writing we'll always try to recognise that and push it in a different direction. In a way it's partly creating, partly discovering in as much of a structured and deliberate way as possible.

I guess the fundamental idea of the band is to infuse this quite mathematical way of approaching writing with melodies and lyrics that stick with you or can mean something to someone.

What do you have lined up for the rest of the year and beyond?

We feel like this year we've figured out much more who we are as a band, especially as a three piece - how to write and arrange, and even perform to make the most of that. So we're really looking forward to exploring that more and pushing it around a bit to see what happens.

We're working on our second EP at the moment with an amazing producer called Shuta Shinoda - he's really understood the balance within the band, and the arrangements especially, so we're really excited to keep working on that next year and put it out into the world.

We would also very much like to headline Glastonbury and/or sell out Wembley stadium for 10 nights on the spin, so if anyone knows anyone please put a word in.

Geordie Greig

Editor-in-chief

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