Every month, Uproxx cultural critic Steven Hyden makes an unranked list of his favorite music-related items released during this period — songs, albums, books, films, you name it.
1. Wednesday — “Elderberry Wine”
A kinder, gentler side of Wednesday. After the barbed-wire story songs of 2023’s Rat Saw God, Karly Hartzmann and the crew are back with this fulsome slice of country pop. It’s sort of a love song and sort of a daydream about escaping a small town. “Sometimes in my head I give up and / Flip the board completely,” Hartzmann sings, though that gently sighing pedal-steel lick softens the desperation a little. If this song is teasing an album — there’s no announcement yet, but one presumably looms on the horizon — it’s an interesting zag from “Bull Believer,” the furious bovine-sized rocker that previewed Rat Saw God. That song felt like a line in the sand; “Elderberry Wine,” meanwhile, is a warm-hearted invitation.
2. Florry — Sounds Like…
The Philadelphia band Florry first came across my radar in 2023, upon the release of their third album, The Holey Bible. Led by singer-songwriter Francie Medosch, who started the project when she was a teenager, Florry is part of the same country-rock solar system that includes Wednesday and MJ Lenderman (whose 2022 LP Boat Songs was put out by Florry’s label, the rising indie Dear Life Records). What set The Holey Bible apart was its ragged, blown-out sound. It was more like a bootleg of studio jams than a normal “proper” album. The aesthetic was summed up by the title of the first single: “Drunk And High.” And that carries over to the new Sounds Like…, which is slightly less anarchic but nowhere close to slick.
3. Friendship — Caveman Wakes Up
It’s been a big year for F-word bands. There’s Florry (who I just talked about) and Fust (who I talked about last month) and now Friendship. All of them are part of the Wednesday/MJ Lenderman Cinematic Universe, which is another plus. (You might have seen the video of Friendship singer Dan Wriggens doing “Darkness On The Edge Of Town” with Lenderman earlier this month.) And the drummer and bass player run Dear Life Records, the great indie label that acts as a hub for the scene. Is that enough bona fides for you? How about the album itself, one of the best of 2025’s first half? On Caveman Wakes Up, Wriggens plugs into the same wryly literate indie-country lane that David Berman pioneered in the ’90s, with stories of downbeat struggle rendered with wit and insight, courtesy of a barstool poet’s knowing eye.
4. Counting Crows — Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!
I have written enough on this band to confidently declare that I’m in the top .1 percent of music critics who are pro-Counting Crows. And not just the ’90s stuff, either. I have kind words for the entire catalog. While his songwriting pace has slowed considerably, Adam Duritz is quietly among the most consistent artists of the alt-rock generation. And that carries over to the latest album, which amends a 2021 EP with five (mostly great) new tracks. So, I say this with love: The album title is awful. And so is the cover. Why must you make my advocacy for your later period work so difficult, Counting Crows? Songs like “With Love, From A-Z” and “Boxcars” are as good as the phrase “Butter Miracle” is bad.
5. Alien Boy — You Wanna Fade?
It’s been a while (too long!) since 2021’s Don’t What Know What I Am, which made my best of list that year. But I’m happy to report that these canny Portland power-poppers have justified the wait with an even better record. While Alien Boy is often classified as emo, You Wanna Fade? shows that they’re really just a great pop-rock band with a stealth knack for melodramatic grandiosity. The melodies come fast and furious, but the moody guitar tones ground the music in a kind of magnetic melancholy, like Fountains Of Wayne if they sounded more like Disintegration.
6. The Convenience — Like Cartoon Vampires
My podcast co-host Ian Cohen sometimes talks about resisting bands that seem almost too well-suited to his tastes. It’s a natural critical impulse: Do I really like this thing, or do I like the things this thing is referencing? This thought crossed my mind after hearing The Convenience, a duo from New Orleans who essentially make straight-up “normal guy” indie rock in the vein of Spoon and Parquet Courts. But I didn’t dwell on it for too long. This kind of music always seems easier to make than it actually does, and the craft on Like Cartoon Vampires is just impossible to deny.
7. Home Is Where — Hunting Season
This Florida band has made some of the most thematically ambitious emo records of the 2020s. But songwriter Bea MacDonald has always been a closet Bob Dylan head, though that influence has typically been more theoretical than tangible. Hunting Season marks the point where MacDonald’s Dylan worship becomes more overt. While the delivery of the songs is as impassioned and punk-fueled as ever, the country-flavored instrumentation and MacDonald’s Rolling Thunder Revue-style howl pull Home Is Where in a ragged folk-rock direction. Play it fucking loud, indeed.
8. Goose — Everything Must Go
Jam bands aren’t supposed to make well-crafted albums. But Goose is making a habit of it. Their primary influences (aughts-era indie pop like Vampire Weekend, Fleet Foxes, and Bon Iver, as well as, of course, prime-era Phish) are readily apparent, as is the beefed-up production courtesy of long-time collaborator D. James Goodwin. But unlike Goose’s previous studio LP, 2022’s Dripfield, Everything Must Go also affords ample space for jammy instrumental interludes. (All of the tracks are at least five minutes long.) The result is the band’s heftiest and most satisfying studio effort yet.
9. Eli Winter — A Trick Of The Light
This Chicago composer and guitarist truly gives equal attention to both sides of that equation. The 16-minute album opener “Arabian Nightingale” is a full-on exploration of mood and texture, with Winter’s probing guitar working in conversation with wild saxophone wails. It sounds like an improvised jam, but Winter also writes real songs, which is evidenced by the album’s shorter tracks that are no less expansive even if they seem more, well, composed.