Power poptimists rejoice, with synths this obnoxious there’s no shame left to lose. Embrace the crucifix of amps, emblaze your crop-top with a font tackier than brat and get down like it’s 2007 round Ed Banger’s. Debbie Sings, we party.

Sincerity and satire have never been paired so beautifully together before. Simultaneously grotesque, enthralling and hilarious, Christ Dillinger’s tribute to self-professed racist and America’s greatest ever wrestler foregrounds the ugly reality of who our entertainers are.

God knows a.m. or is it p.m.? All that matters is the beat, the next beat and the space compressing and decompressing between. The right combination of venue, crowd, sound system and track selection allows techno to work its magic and enrapture its audience. With Forgotten Gods, Surgeon shows that he sure knows all the conjuring tricks.

The best contemplative pieces offer fertile soundscapes to plant new ideas and watch them grow. Each listen may sprout vastly different shapes, but the shadings of light and dark stay the same, providing set twists for thoughts to navigate, as sounds move us from one space to another. Finely balanced, richly rewarding.

Percussion, repetition, cycles of saxophone, spoken word, repeated, spoken word, cycles of saxophone, contemplations, again, percussion, contemplate. See? Percussion, repetition, cycles of saxophone, spoken word, repeated, spoken word, cycles of saxophone, contemplations, again, percussion, contemplate. See.

Breezy summers may evoke a certain care-freeness; what worries burden sun-kissed faces? But long evenings allow old emotions to blow in, linger and settle. Memories sharpen and resolutions to uphold past promises restore. For Eden.

It is dark outside already. Dusk is closing in on a dreary day, spent jogging across wet leaves and wandering Viking graves. Clouds stretch past the horizons, and beyond. There is a certain serenity to be enjoyed. Crackle of rain, hiss of wind, the irrefutability of the season.

The liminal spaces in between our digital and non-digital realities remain under-explored, though recently a couple of groups in and around Copenhagen have set down a few poufs in the gaps between CPH and tucked–away Internet snugs, grabbed a guitar and made themselves at home. These new Enos make Music for Internet Airports – and it’s bloody good.

Oxis may claim there is something fishy at play here. But to the contrary. Nostalgia is a simple longing for simpler times, evoked here by a simple ditty. A fleeting wish, which slips away as quickly as it appeared.

Terrifying infernos broiling with energy beam their light and brighten our skies. During the long Scandinavian summer, the brilliance imbues positivity. Sun Up, chin up – it’s all going to be alright.

From softly strum guitars, dulcet yet powerful strings and a voice which drifts and glitters, Joanne Robertson weaves together the most invitingly hearty and dazzling gown to curl up in and feel the waves of time crashing gently by.

Each weekend, organs around the world sound to announce the arrival of the bride and the impending nuptial union. Here, the organs sound a warning, or perhaps they ruminate on the unidirectionality of love. It’s complicated, either way.

The strains of desire can cripple a budding romantic’s heart by tearing their inner world this way and that. In momentary swirling flashes though, the tensions can align and all pull together in the same direction towards one simple desire. Let’s Make Out is less an invitation, more a crying out for resolution.

An instant classic love song reimagined for the ballroom, to slow dance to under flickering chandeliers. Clairo’s breathy vocals fill the air, intertwining with the dreamy electric guitar and Smerz’s calm collected delivery. The effect builds and builds, as powerful as any ballad, before disappearing away behind thick veils into digital noise.

Chest out, feet fleet, Tyler’s ready for a brawling. Run if you can. With Tyler this livid, singing nursery rhymes about murder, you better pray it wasn’t you who hurt his feelings. On his momma’nem.

With a surgeon’s precision, Hekt sculpts a banger. The drops’ smoothness belies their ridicularity. Whether or not Hekt was grinning to himself whilst wielding the scalpel is irrelevant, his artistry cannot be denied.

The art of subtlety is perhaps the one core commonality binding the Copenhagen scene. Stripped back sketches hint at the opportunities beyond the void. Flicks of melody call forth orchestral arrangements of Wagnerian proportions. But a moment later, the daydream shifts, and we’re back in our bedrooms accompanied only by our own thoughts.

There is an undeniably Romantic edge to Rønnenfelt. Elements of another age, when da Vinci was at large or Bataille wrote of eroticism – Rønnenfelt may feel most at home ‘hanging ’neath the Sistine Chapel ceiling in the air’. But it is his urgency to capture the moment which truly makes his music timeless.

The strength of feeling which coarses through me when Doom Bikini plays easily outstrips my ability to coherently express the strength of those feelings. james K has created a pop masterpiece with verses which glisten, even better bridges which ratchet up the tension, and diabolical choruses. It is so so so good.

Little of world events has seaped through to the cultural soundscape of 2025. A vanguard of Kneecap and Bob Vylan is not exactly quite like God Save The Queen, I Feel Love, or hell even whatever that first The X Factor single was called, in capturing the sign of the times. Perhaps the turbulence, speed and incomprehension of today is at fault. However, Soli City’s clipped up musique concrète-ish piece shows how it is possible to still strike a course through the noise.

In music, 2025 was the year of love. brat summer well and truly over, this wasn’t love in the sense of hooking up, having a good time or loving labubus or Limp Bizkit or whatever, it was inner peace and contentedness with those still dear after post-after-party clarity. Seasides, snuggles, Sunday evening Saturdays.

Love has rendered the dazzling acrobatics necessary to navigate the fault lines in in|FLUX superfluous. Anna B Savage’s virtuosic vocals have gained maturity and tenderness. With lullabies gentle enough to lull a bull, this is the true power of love.

It is cruel to tear lucre apart into separate pieces. Indeed, the intial drop as one continuous sixteen-minute track in addition to the perfunctory numeric track names very much suggests that Blunt & co. intended lucre to be savoured whole.

That being said, 7​’s moody optimism shines, whether stand-alone or as a coda. Though 5 may adorn Premier League footballers’ playlists, and 1 breezes past with Rønnenfelt’s languid da​s, lucre​’s heftiest piece, allowed the space to flourish, best exhibits Blunt’s prowess as a producer and Rønnenfelt’s ability to exude emotion from each syllable, vowel and utterance. Longing strings, warm guitars, clean percussion and drawled vocals have struck up a tune often enough – but never quite like this.

I was loath to place the same artist twice upon this list, but allowed it in the case of Rønnenfelt due to one of the tracks being a collaborative effort. No such excuses for james K. Not even the excuse of different projects or separate albums can save me. The strength of the music, however, can.

Trance as pop, breakdown as chorus, guitars as cool again, somehow. Friend is stellar throughout – and there exist valid claims for Doom Bikini to be the better song. But no other track of 2025 affirmed the importance and poignancy of life as consistently for me.

Dive into the irisdescent bubble gum synths, frolick amongst the honey-dipped vocals, bathe in the warmth of romance, baby, I won’t even be mad at being adressed as baby. The lusciousness of the mid-range and the infectiousness of the slightly off-kilter stabs of bass leave you craving for more and more. House at its finest evokes an irresistible high. Paired with pop, the temptations just grow.

You know it, I know it, any self-respecting music-lover knows it, Smerz have fashioned a love song for the ages. The rest of the list is completely subject to the whims of my opinion, but You got time and I got money is hands down the best song of the year. I was loath to give two entries to the same artist or album, but You got time and I got money easily merits its double appearance, and potentially warrants an additional third – it is simply that good.

Love can be disarmingly simple, as simple as ‘I like your shoes, I like these clean t-shirts on you’. It might even render us incapable of formulating correct sentences, see ‘I wanna talk much’, and dut-dut-du-ing arpeggios instead. But there is nothing banal about love.

Three weeks ago my partner and I sat in a sauna with the good company of three friends, staring out at an ink-black Limfjord. Ripples on the surface were illuminated only by a lightbulb or two along a lonely pier. Our thoughts and bodies oscillated between the heat of the sauna and the coldness of the water. Bliss set in, nothing else could pierce the fierce tranquility we were wrapped in. Nothing else could possibly matter. As when the keys kick in, the kick and snare, and Catharina Stoltenberg’s voice washes over.