The Best of The Hot Half Dozen in 2025
*****NEWS FLASH: SPOTIFY CATALOGUE STOLEN, UPLOADED TO FREE SITE. Multiple outlets are reporting that a pirate‑activist group associated with Anna’s Archive has scraped and is distributing a massive copy of Spotify’s catalog.According to Anna’s own blog, the group “backed up Spotify,” extracting both metadata and music files and releasing them via public torrents as a “preservation archive.” They claim the dataset includes about 86 million audio files—around 99.6% of all Spotify listens—plus detailed metadata for roughly 99.9% of artists, albums, and tracks, totaling about 300 terabytes. Coverage in outlets like Billboard and Yahoo frames this as Spotify’s entire or near‑entire music library being scraped and leaked online, with Anna’s Archive positioning the project as cultural preservation rather than piracy.NEWS FLASH*****
Music Sin Fronteras
It is customary for music writers to list their top 5 or ten songs of the year. Since I also write The Hot Half Dozen, I will follow the custom this year, but for a half dozen songs.
It has been, to me, a great year for music. The year 2025 has felt like one of those years where there was just too much good music to keep up with. Big albums have landed across pop, indie, hip‑hop, and more experimental corners. I am almost overwhelmed by how much top‑tier stuff landed in my mailbox, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube every week. Glancing through my Hot Half Dozen columns for 2025, it’s striking how many releases are bunched up at the high end.
What really makes it exciting is how many of the names bubbling up are new or at least newly prominent, and how many are Mexican, Latin, or even international. The big legacy artists like Taylor Swift are still there, but lists and conversations keep circling back to fresher voices from indie scenes, Mexico, and less traditional markets, which makes the year feel less like a victory lap for the same old stars and more like a genuine reset. A lot of these artists don’t fit neatly into the US/UK major‑label pipeline, and that outsider energy gives 2025’s releases a sense of discovery rather than déjà vu. I love it.
On a global level, it feels like borders matter less every month. Maybe it is because I am in Mexico and surrounded by top-shelf Mexican and Latin music, but Latin music and Afrobeats keep interweaving, throwing off hybrids that are no longer “niche experiments” but chart movers, and it’s getting harder to say where one scene ends and another begins. Add K‑pop acts doing world tours as a matter of routine and fast‑growing markets in Sub‑Saharan Africa and Latin America, and you get the sense that the center of gravity for pop is finally, truly moving beyond the old Anglophone axis.
Financially, the story is a bit two‑sided. On paper, recorded‑music revenues keep hitting new highs on the back of paid streaming, and stadium‑level live music seems to be in a kind of golden era. But underneath that, touring has become brutally expensive, with surveys showing most independent artists can’t make the numbers work, even as global revenue graphs tick upward. So yes, 2025 is a good year for music in terms of what you can actually hear—and for the biggest players’ balance sheets—but it’s also a year where the structural strain on working musicians is harder than ever.
That all being said, what are my picks for the best songs or albums for 2025? I focus mostly on indie artists, which skew heavily male – 65%-70%. But in listening to 100 or more songs a week, I find that the best, most creative music is actually female-led. So many of the male rock bands sound alike – so much so that when I listen to a dozen or so of them without looking at their names, I can’t tell them apart. So my list skews female-heavy, as well as Latin-heavy.
By far my favorite artist this year was Zóra, especially her cover of “Ain’t No Sunshine”. Many have covered this song, but no one, including the song’s writer, Bill Withers, has put the depth of emotion, angst, and love into it that Zóra has. I could listen to it all day. And her other songs.
Also for sheer emotion is Gaby Moreno, the Guatemalan-American singer/songwriter, especially her video/song “Lamento”, about returning to her childhood home in Guatemala and finding it destroyed by a rising sea. The video by Diego Contreras are heart-wrenching. The images are unforgettable and the music/narration will stay with you for a long time.
Patricia Vonne is on my “best” list for cross-cultural blues rock, especially her song “Guitarras y Castanuelas”, which combines the castanets of Spanish flamenco with hot blues guitar She’s currently recording her 10th album for a 2026 release. She has released a new live album and a holiday album. And her recent film, “Cold Dark Hollow,” has won a slew of awards at Cannes, Parris New York, etc. This girl rocks in multiple languages,cultures, and media.
Another girl who really, really rocks in Samantha Fish, blues guitarist extraordinaire. Her rise in blues rock has been a slow-burn evolution into one of the most formidable guitar voices of her generation. Coming out of Kansas City’s bar circuit, she earned her reputation the old-fashioned way—road-dog touring, incendiary live shows, and a string of records that kept stretching the boundaries of blues into rock, soul, and Americana. Her most recent album, “Paper Doll” (2025), feels like the payoff for all that groundwork. In it, her big guitar captures the wild, dynamic energy of her stage performances while sharpening her songwriting.
Elston Torres made my list this year, but not for the classic love songs that have beguiled me (and many, many women) for years, but for his new song “Para Hoy” recorded with Los Reggae Monks. He brings his optimism, fun spirit, and musical excellence to the song that puts it head and shoulders above the many reggae tracks I received all year. He has quietly built one of the most respected careers in Latin alternative and bilingual pop with a dozen-plus albums. He has picked up two Grammy nominations (one Latin, one general), two BMI songwriting awards, and at least six Billboard Top Ten songs, including the Latin chart‑topping “Todo El Año”.
Wrapping up my Best of the Hot half Dozen Best is The Warning, the three sisters from Monterrey who are one of the hottest alt rock/heavy rock bands on the continent. The Warning’s rise from three sisters posting Metallica covers on YouTube to one of the fastest-rising rock bands on the planet has been remarkably fast and organic. Daniela, Paulina, and Alejandra Villarreal’s albums like ERROR (2022) and Keep Me Fed (2024) established them as a serious force in modern hard rock, blending post‑grunge crunch, prog‑ish shifts, and hooky choruses. They manage to feel classic and contemporary at the same time—with tight musicianship, huge choruses, and the ability to carry the flag for arena rock to a younger audience. Their popularity has exploded to the point that they are now selling out major venues and being talked about as standard‑bearers for a new generation of heavy rock, women‑fronted bands.
So that’s my 2025 – hope yours was as good as mine.
Banner: The Warning performing in Burlington, Ontario in 2022 (L–R: Alejandra, Paulina, and Daniela Villarreal Vélez). Creative Commons.
Patrick O’Heffernan
