It’s been a banner year for Singaporean music, which is why we found it so difficult to narrow down our picks for 2025’s best-of lists to just 10 per category. In a year chock-full of fantastic local albums and EPs, these were the cream of the crop that lingered in the hearts, minds and ears of Hear65’s editorial staff.
Hidzir Junaini's picks:
YS - Burn
YS (Leon Wan and Nipuna Jayasekera) shed the slow-blooming patience of Brutal Flowers for something far more feral: a scorched-earth, cut-and-paste collision of trip-hop grime, slacker grit, DIY sound-system culture and raw emotional abrasion. The liner notes describe it as the “evil twin” to their debut — a “darkly mutated world” where paranoia, desire and chaos simmer beneath stuttered breaks and heavy gravity. Tracks like 'Burn' erupt in slow-spinning maximal euphoria, ‘Moth’ slinks through chopped-and-screwed stoner heat, and ‘Switch’, ‘Trying’ and ‘Drift’ pulse with the same haunted intimacy that defines YS’s sonic universe.
yingtuitive - Letters To Self 寫情書
yingtuitive (Hannah Chia) turns memory, longing and diasporic identity into a gentle sonic diary. She explains how creating it became a process of “letting different ideas come together in building an ecosystem, that then ends up taking on a life of its own,” with ambient textures, gamelan-inspired rhythms and field recordings forming part of her palette. In ‘pandan’, she captures “a split soul from living between two places for so long” by recording her aunt cutting pandan stems in Singapore just before a flight home. Across the album she moves with quiet intention — from tracks built in one session when “my brain felt really overheated, and ‘blue’ was the cool of the water that would soothe me” — to meditations on fate in ‘braided cords’, where she says: “I’ve always envisioned fate as this thing that can be pulled, twisted, bent, interwoven.”
Mary Sue & The Clementi Sound Appreciation Club - Porcelain Shield, Paper Sword
With Porcelain Shield, Paper Sword, Mary Sue and The Clementi Sound Appreciation Club conjure a world where ancient oracles clash with modern unrest. Mary Sue describes the project as his most detached yet, saying: “For me, the biggest shift … was realising my role as an artist … I know I’ll never fully belong to hip-hop in the traditional sense, and honestly, I don’t think I should. But that doesn’t mean I can’t contribute. Instead of just borrowing from the genre, I feel a responsibility to add to it.” Embracing tension between strength and fragility, East and West, tradition and rebellion, this album doesn’t just explore dualities — it grounds them in lived identity and musical invention.
yeule - Evangelic Girl Is a Gun
On Evangelic Girl Is a Gun, yeule pushes past digital dream-pop into glitched noise, trip-hop, metal and electroclash. It’s an album of constant evolution — body horror and beauty colliding — shaped by themes of transformation and self-possession. Heavy and heavenly, abrasive and intimate, it’s a thrilling addition to yeule’s ever-expanding cyber-mythology.
Subsonic Eye - Singapore Dreaming
Subsonic Eye refine their jangly indie-rock sound with newfound urgency and emotional depth. Singapore Dreaming explores themes of disconnection, anxiety, and digital ennui, all wrapped in lush guitar textures and breezy hooks. The band continues to evolve while staying true to their roots — crafting a record that’s at once globally resonant and unmistakably local. It’s a dream-pop soundtrack for modern malaise, and one of their most cohesive works yet.
elo elo - I Can’t Find My Head
On I Can’t Find My Head, elo elo (Tang Hui Jun) crafts a vivid, whimsical universe shaped by curiosity, collaboration and emotional honesty. From the Sweet Enoughs-inspired ‘Salmon Skies’ — born from her pink Stratocaster and a love for “long flowy chord progressions” — to the title track’s slow-forming, self-reflective experimentation, the EP glows with personality. Standout track ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider (feat. Claude Glass)’ began as a “Logic preset-esque” trip-hop demo before Isa Ong’s guitar work gave it “angular, dark coloured clothes. A dazzling debut from an artist finding her voice in real time.
goneMUNE - AVERDONIA
AVERDONIA emerges as a stunningly crafted concept album where shadow-clad synthwave and ambient cyber-textures cradle the story of a cyborg in search of sentience. goneMUNE explains, “I always felt like a cyborg would fit perfectly in Singapore… the essence of little to no rest, being constantly overwhelmed by work” — a metaphor she uses to anchor AVERDONIA’s journey. With each track, the album channels grief, identity, and the machine-human threshold in equal measure, marrying clinical glitch with emotional ache. A dark experimental landmark from Singapore’s underground.
Sharvamaya Mohan's picks:
Intermission Party Programme - Modern Desires
Relieve the raw authenticity of Intermission Party Programme that soars with each guitar riff on Modern Desires. It focuses on how society is modelled on a foundation of greed, oppression and pressure. We’re always fighting to get our hands on things first, having to be first in line to reap the benefits of whatever we’re chasing, to help us get to the top of the food chain. The chase becomes a stampede, trampling over others, driven by the blinding obsession that comes with the idea of being number one. The seed of this ideal is planted into our brains when we’re young, pushing us deeper into the undertow as we gasp to stay above the surface, not worrying about chasing an elusive dream. The suffocating sentiment weighs heavily on our chest till it evolves into just another goal on our to-do list. Building on “Kiasu” and becoming “Kanchiong”. Tracks such as ‘Weaving Spiders’ offer commentary on how those who have attained this pipe dream seem to push back those who crave the same fate with lines such as “Stains on his back, you could not care less, oppress the silent, oppress the tired”. Modern Desires is a beloved garage punk band’s shot at giving a voice to the underdogs, making their troubles feel seen and their efforts feel fruitful.
Vegtable - Through the Motions
Vegtable offers a softer alternative, indie rock sound with Through the Motions that’s defined by soft guitar strums and slow drum beats that create a comforting soundscape taking listeners on a sonic journey through the 11 songs. The sadcore album captures the drab routine and churning mundane nature that life develops with time. The ambient tones create a lulling atmosphere that hypnotises the listener, making them see the album’s themes clearly — resonating with each note and word. The album opens with the warm notes of ‘gum’ to the mellow closing track ‘Let it Enfold You’ — encapsulating the overall energy of the entire album before the notes fade off into oblivion.
Sun Cell - Movements (In The Dark)
Movements (In The Dark) is a poignant depiction of Sun Cell’s unmistakable post-punk sound that wraps up the introspective lyrics of each track with layered instrumentals that bring an element of depth. The melancholic message of each track is put on a pedestal — peeling back the emotions that fuel the stories that the album is modelled after. The album features the signature 80s new wave touch and soft lilting vocals by Sun Cell that throw rocks into the bubbling volcano of yearning and nostalgia that rests dormantly in our subconscious. The collaborations that the album houses add another wave to the amazing ocean of melodies. On the closing track ‘for now, not ever’ Sun Cell join forces with motifs putting vocalist Elspeth Ong’s delicate yet empowering voice at the forefront of the song — blending their indie rock sensibilities with his own style creating something truly refreshing and unique. Sun Cell also teams up with Nosedive that brings their dreamy and ambient vocals to the mix reviving the poetic lyrics that say, “I’m yearning for a feeling I can’t explain”. Movements (In The Dark) takes listeners on a complex journey through unique musical arrangements and heart wrenching lyrics.
