The 15 Best Album Debuts of 2025 (So Far)
aka The Wax Museum Freshmen Class of 2025! Liner notes and vinyl pressings inside.
There’s something about a debut album that hits different. It’s the urgency, the flaws, the wild energy of a band discovering itself in real time. I’ll take that over a polished career record any day.
Last year brought us standouts like Wishy, Friko, Mk.gee, The Last Dinner Party, and Sprints. This year’s class is just as stacked. Some are louder. Some are weirder. All arrive with purpose.
So let’s get to it. With apologies to XXL, this is The Wax Museum Freshman Class of 2025. Fifteen debut albums worth your time, your turntable, and maybe even your end-of-year list.
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The Wax Museum Freshman Class of 2025
Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube
Here’s a playlist of my favorite song from each album by our Freshman 15, clocking in at exactly one hour. The best hour of your week? Many are saying it.
Saya Gray - SAYA
Get Vinyl: Clear | Black
If I’m handing out Rookie of the Year honors right now, Saya Gray’s name is etched on the trophy. SAYA is a wild, genre-resistant debut that slips between psych-folk, art-pop, and glitchy prog like it’s second nature. Every track feels like a different room in the same house. No two people will have the same favorite track, usually a sign you’re hearing something special.
Ribbon Skirt - Bite Down
Get Vinyl: Cloudy Clear
Bite Down is the kind of debut that grabs you by the collar and dares you to flinch. Fronted by Anishinaabe singer-guitarist Tashiina Buswa, Ribbon Skirt fuse post-punk tension with riot grrrl snarl across nine urgent tracks. The album was produced by Scott Munro and partner Marlaena Moore (Munro is the guitarist in Preoccupations, who dropped the excellent Ill at Ease this year), so the pedigree runs deep. Buswa’s lyrics are poetic and pointed, delivered with a force that recalls Wet Leg’s swagger and Blondshell’s charm. Bite Down hits hard and lingers long, a breakout debut from a band that already sounds like a force.
High. - Come Back Down
Get Vinyl: Yellow
North Jersey’s High. have delivered one of the year’s most addictive shoegaze albums with Come Back Down, a record that proves you don’t have to sacrifice melody to drown in reverb. Unlike many of their peers, High. put hooks front and center, wrapping big, fuzzy guitar swells around sharp songwriting and tender lyrics. The songs move with a narcotic sway, each building toward a big, emotional payoff. “Flowers” is the stunner, a love song that lifts the whole album higher. Easily one of the year’s most replayable debuts.
John Michel & Anthony James - Egotrip
Get Vinyl: N/A
I don’t know who John Michel and Anthony James are, but they’ve come out of nowhere to make one of the best hip-hop debuts of the year. Egotrip sounds like two friends dared each other to make a classic, then actually pulled it off. It blends jazz rap warmth, conscious hip-hop bars, and East Coast grit with a focus and confidence most major-label acts couldn’t fake with a million-dollar budget. The beats hit hard, the lyricism is sharp without showboating, and even the interludes crush. It's not on vinyl yet, but give it a minute. Records this good don’t stay digital only for long.
Uwade - Florilegium
Get Vinyl: Orange Vinyl, Signed Insert | Cream
Even if you don’t think you’ve heard Uwade before, you probably have. That’s her voice opening Fleet Foxes’ Shore, calm and assured like she’s been doing this forever. She first caught their attention with an Instagram cover of “Mykonos,” the kind of cosmic coincidence that rarely happens to an artist.
Instead of fading into guest-vocal limbo, she hit the road with Sylvan Esso and the Strokes, then made one of the year’s most striking debuts. Florilegium, Latin for “gathering of flowers” and “anthology,” is just that: a graceful, genre-hopping blend of soul, folk, and West African rhythm, all grounded by her luminous voice and literary sense of self.
Marshall Allen - New Dawn
Get Vinyl: Transparent | Black
It feels absurd to include Marshall Allen in a Freshman Class roundup, but rules are rules. At 100 years old, the Sun Ra Arkestra saxophonist just released his first solo album, New Dawn, making him the oldest debut artist in history. That’s not a punchline; it’s a Guinness World Record, beating the previous titleholder by over a decade. The album is raw, cosmic, and deeply alive, a spiritual free-jazz dispatch from someone who’s been bending sound since the Eisenhower era. Watch out for this promising newcomer.
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Mei Semones - Animaru
Get Vinyl: Pink Marble
If there’s a more charming album this year than Animaru, I haven’t heard it. Mei Semones’ debut is a dazzling fusion of samba, math rock, and chamber pop, stitched together with sweeping strings, lyrics in English and Japanese, and guitar work that feels both effortless and virtuosic. Semones doesn’t just blend genres, she makes them dance with each other. It’s beautiful and confident in a way that most debuts only hope to be.
Sea Lemon - Diving For A Prize
Get Vinyl: Apple Red | Coke Bottle Clear (Both Sold Out) | Black
If you’re a Wax Museum regular, you know I’m a sucker for dream pop, and Sea Lemon’s Diving For a Prize hits that sweet spot between shimmer and shadow. The debut from Seattle’s Natalie Lew is full of swirling reverb, hushed melodies, and just enough unease to keep things interesting. Lew’s lyrics play like short stories where fantasy and anxiety collide. With production from Andy Park and a feature from fellow Seattleite Ben Gibbard, the album floats somewhere between Loveless and Plans. Naturally, she’ll be opening for Death Cab this summer.
Slow Joy - A Joy So Slow At Times I Don't Think Its Coming
Get Vinyl: Black
Slow Joy’s debut album A Joy So Slow At Times I Don’t Think It’s Coming builds on the emotional foundation Esteban Flores laid with last year’s EP, written as a way to cope with the loss of his mother. That sense of grief and reflection is still front and center, filtered through a blend of emo, grunge, and shoegaze. Produced by Mike Sapone (Oso Oso, Taking Back Sunday), the album balances catharsis and clarity, with thick guitars and sharp hooks that never drown out the feeling. “Gruesome” is a standout, driven by a riff that nods to “Sunday Bloody Sunday” while tapping into the modern bite of Turnstile and Militarie Gun. Flores turns personal pain into tightly constructed songs that hit with both weight and melody.
Teen Mortgage - Devil Ultrasonic Dream
Get Vinyl: Party Splatter
Teen Mortgage’s Devil Ultrasonic Dream is 11 tracks of fuzzed-out, two-person fury that sounds like it was recorded in a basement lit by a strobe and a busted lava lamp. The Washington, D.C. duo channels garage punk, surf sleaze, and satanic panic into something raw and cathartic. There’s a purposefully unpolished vibe here, with blown-out riffs and motor-mouthed verses cutting through the wall of sound. Released on Roadrunner Records, the album plays like a noisy middle finger to the rat race, the algorithm, and whatever moral panic we’re in now. These songs rip, and they know it.
Charm School - DEBT FOREVER
Get Vinyl: Green with Gold Specks
Let’s continue the financial anxiety and American decay vibes with DEBT FOREVER by Louisville punk rockers Charm School.
I love what they did with their vinyl release — they pressed 100 copies on clear, money-green wax with gold speckles, and each package includes a custom art-adorned $1 bill. Oh, and one lucky buyer will score a $100 bill tucked inside.
jasmine.4.t - You Are The Morning
Get Vinyl: Girlbath | Black
Manchester singer-songwriter Jasmine Cruickshank, known as jasmine.4.t, wrote her debut You Are The Morning while navigating homelessness and the emotional fallout of coming out as trans. Produced by boygeniuses Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, the album is raw, catchy, and emotionally direct, like a pep talk whispered through tears. Jasmine is the first artist signed to Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records, and she’s backed here by an all-trans band, which only deepens the record’s core message: community doesn’t just catch you when you fall, it hands you the mic.
Maddie Jay - I Can Change Your Mind
Get Vinyl: Crystal Clear
On I Can Change Your Mind, Canadian Maddie Jay transforms emotional chaos into a lush, slow-motion spiral. Shaped by themes of addiction, isolation, and codependence, the album plays like soft-focus synth-pop with teeth. Maddie’s vocals float over hazy backdrops that are unpredictable and immersive. While not every song lands with equal weight, the production is sharp and inventive, with jazzy grooves and clever interludes. A vulnerable, stylish debut.
Melissa Mary Ahern - Kerosene
Get Vinyl: Black
Melissa Mary Ahern’s Kerosene is a striking debut shaped by grief, sobriety, and a hard-won sense of clarity. Written in the wake of her brother’s passing and her journey into recovery, these songs flicker between past and present, laced with vintage soul, hushed balladry, fuzzy guitars, and lyrics that feel pulled straight from a personal journal. While Kerosene tackles heavy themes, it’s far from a downer. A moving, memorable first chapter from an artist with plenty more to say.
Mandrake Handshake – Earth-Sized Worlds
Get Vinyl: Silver Glitter
Let’s end the playlist with a proper trip. “Hypersonic Super-Asterid,” the lead single from Mandrake Handshake’s debut Earth-Sized Worlds, is an eight-and-a-half-minute stoner-pop jam that introduces the London collective with confidence and ambition. Across the album, they blend psych, dub, krautrock, and space pop into a sound that’s loose but never messy. Despite the band’s size, the songs stay focused and cohesive, full of left turns that feel purposeful rather than indulgent. Earth-Sized Worlds covers a lot of ground without losing the thread. It’s playful, strange, and easy to get lost in.
Hey friends, thanks for tuning in! I’d love to hear what you’ve currently spinning; drop your favs in the comments or reply to this email.
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Happy collecting, and catch you all next week!
Thanks for the new sounds. I feel Substack is in the past when it comes to music, when it should be focusing on the new material.
Saya & Uwade's albums are phenomenal!