I’m late. It’s January, and that’s a singularly inappropriate time for a year end list. Everyone’s tryna look forward, but not your boy t faith – I’m out here casting retrospection like your favourite DND spell. 2026 can wait it’s goddamn turn while I pay a few respectful glances back at 2025 one last time. Damningly I only found the time to write about TWO of these songs on the blog last year so hopefully I can make partial amends by saying some glib nonsense that only vaguely touches on the music and largely gives me a personal outlet to center my thoughts on the year as it was.
As ever, giving you the key preface that these are my favourite songs of the year, not the objectively best ones and a long way from the most technically difficult studio performances or complicated art introspections. They moved me for different reasons, some largely structural while some with massive cultural validity. Lemme say this though – if you disagree, that’s embarassing [for you]. I’ve only been wrong two times in my life and I shan’t be speaking further about those situations or the corresponding suites that followed. These are infallible opinions wrapped in highly fallible words. Oh and we’re trying to look at those fresher faces with the exception of the Rions in there which I listened to too many times to omit.
Lonelyspeck
Wishing
How can I go past a track this singularly successful in delivering an artists vision? The culmination of years of self taught production, video editing, vocal growth and cultural discovery, this track is everything I know Lonelyspeck to be. The track was the first released from their debut full-length Crown of My Spirit and though it might not have had the incisiveness or jagged visceralism of some of the other tracks, it’s broad with a vitality that I’ve almost never heard in recorded sound. How can a voice be so synthetic yet so full of life? How can production entirely drumless yet so seemingly emphatic? A near perfect song that deserves a thousand times the reach it’s so far received.
Mali Jo$e
highbury
The contemporary King of the West Coast came correct with one of the albums of the year and this is my favourite cut. A throwback to the golden age of Arsenal that namechecks Thierry and Dennis Bergkamp and may as well have namechecked ME given how perfect a ven diagram of my interests it seems to be. Punchier production than we’ve heard from Mali on recent drops and silky flows that we’ve never stopped hearing from Mali across recent drops, this is a true level above.
Drifting Clouds
Bawuypawuy
A song that left the whole Unearthed team agog and has been on the highest rotation ever since, Bawuypawuy. Italo club energy transfused with the Liyawulma’mirr-Djambarrpuyngu language of Terry Guyula, the so named Drifting Clouds. It’s a modern adaption of a songline that’s existed for millenia with the lyrics describing the sea, wave and the rough current of Arnhem Bay. I’m usually more inclined to let the song speak for itself rather than wrap that context around it in advance but this record is intrinsically connected to the physical waterside, the tidal movement in the drums lapping synths. Song of the land, song of the sea, song that moved me emphatically in 2025.
Ullah
I Want It All
I saw Ullah sing this song in Brisbane and stood surprised as hundreds of fans screamed the words back at her. No small thing for a Perth based, left of center, fresh faced songwriter with a Barnett-esque spoken word single. This track though, man… I get why those fans were offering it back to her in that moment. It’s introspective and open, vulnerable about the small experiences and the big desires. It’s still slightly chaotic to me that it works at all given that the dynamics between verse and chorus feel so jarring yet somehow the sum of the parts is a delight.
Zion Garcia
FIGHTBACK
A cosmically oversized record with crushingly thick production. Zion’s another one who took his chance to glow up majorly in 2025. He’s always had a lock full of raw materials but he finally assembled them just so on this newest EP. Some of the other tracks on the EP are expansive and rough, tackling production points that felt overly ambitious but more than any other on the record, this one stood true. Yeah I love to see a rapper flex flows, sure I love to see a young gun acting up like Twista but the pace, the confidence and the strut on this record showcases a bigger bicep than any lyrical miracle record could do for him. Very fun chorus to scream at the show too, know it.
Lottie McLeod
Ruin A Good Thing
As soon as I heard Lottie’s first song ‘Happy Birthday’ in 2023 I knew she and I were gonna spend some headphone time together. As usual, I was extremely right. She’s got that not unheard-of Phoebe Bridgers-esque vocal which sits halfway between spoken and sung yet what many Bridgers aspirationals often lack is the capacity to write That Song. Not Lottie whose poignant lyricizing constantly cuts to the quick. This record’s laments the end of a relationship but spiritually it seems her true tragedy is that she doesn’t regret it’s end the way she feels she should. An end to something that needed to end and a song that I wish never did.
WVCHWY
Tjalunkut
Didn’t know that my 2025 was missing a techno heater wrapped around Yidiki lines but resoundingly, RESOUNDINGLY it was. This goes wayyyyy too hard and cements WVCHWVY (pronounced whichway) as one to watch in the clubs of 2026. The man nerfed his vowels and used that unspent energy to imbue this with diabolical vigour. Absolute monster of a record from a dude I’d not clocked prior.
Divers
The Great Tree
While they’ve been at it for nigh on six years now, this is Divers’ first foray into the hallowed pages of Sound Doctrine. It’s a record that lured me in with groove and vocal but kept me with storytelling. A lost-indie record about a singularly mighty tree, dominator of forests, holders of memories and unexpectedly frequent text message sender. Get amongst please.
Dylan Atlantis
Prove
The opening paragraph of this song is an as unexpected a D.D Dumbo reference as I might have heard this year and similarly the bioluminescent energy of the record once it left shore took me entirely by surprise. It’s warm, expansive relational meditation delivered with unexpected pace and the signature production fingerprints of Nick Ward. That momentary time in life where you’re pursuing someone with reckless abandon? Captured perfectly here in a physical moment between two people, all else cast to the side.
Annie-Rose Maloney
A Bit Of Love
In my minds eye, Annie sits alone at a well loved piano in a suburban 60s brick bungalow, forty minutes outside Melbourne gently padding the keys as she sings these words for a home studio recording. Backing vocals adding emphasis to what is a simple and moving premise. The way I’ve always heard this record, it feels as like a retelling of the moment she first took the plunge and sung on record, or perhaps in front of a crowd. Maybe I’m hearing it entirely wrong and the whole thing is figurative but I’m not out here to try to overthink it.
Eli Wan
Pixeldust 18+
I’ve not been won over by a live performance since the time I saw Martin Odegaard against FC Porto at the Emirates in February 2024 and even then there wasn’t anywhere near as much crowd surfing. He’s poured forther from Brisbane with his debut track Pixeldust 18+, a Jean Dawson-esque hyper-pop number with a hook that sunk through me fast. Big song and he’s gonna make a believer from anyone who lays eyes on that live show. Reportedly there’s a whole finished album on the way too.
The Rions
Tonight’s Entertainment
Even the most aggressive hedge funds would be tipping fedora to the growth shown by The Rions these last three years that’s led to the LP that homes this record. It’s the best song on the record and one that feels like the truest songwriting to the bands lived experience. Doesn’t hurt that the hook quite simply cannot be disputed.
DRIZZZ
Who’s Dat!
The youngest unc, the teen king of Narellan Vale, the intercontinental champion of welterweight drill. Clever punchlines and that UK tilt that does so much to season his confident bars. It’s a long haul ahead for a sixteen year old trying to make his name on the world stage but this kid’s got the raw materials and the drive.
Elle Shimada
GIRL SIZED DREAMS
At some point in the next few years there’ll be a collective realization that Elle Shimada has been deeeeeeply slept on these last few years. In a world where Audrey Nuna has become a global name, Elle Shimada deserves the same. Confidence, character and a capacity to produce her songs down to the finest vintage, she’s the real deal. Lovely human too, it warrants saying.
LXRDMC & VV Ace
That’s So Raven
Two dudes whose chemistry clearly makes them an ideal fit to link over this thoughtful beat. It’s ultimate one little keys line and some light percussion but its so spacious, as it needs to be to accomodate two Naarm heaviweights like these. I coulda chosen a handful of different Ace tracks instead of this one and Arjay made a late surge but this has that calm that I’m about right now. There’s a reason that these two link up so frequently and I reckon you can point at a pair of vocals that weave like corded rope. Different pockets and different flows that somehow feel so tied together. Watch these two, 2026 is theirs.
Disphing
213
I like the grind of young Disphing having watched him ply his sound design trade in the weirdest of ways these last few years. Clocked him as an Unearthed High entrant a few years back and the lad has proved himself to have one of the deftest touches of the antipodean hyper-pop fixation. This record is one of his most refined yet chanelling the euphoric uplift of classic Porter and the more modern, compressed and distorted chaos of this generations pinball mayhem.
Lucky
Lady Beetle
My days what a song. More immediate than an amazon prime delivery (not sponcon but i’m very willing to take that bezos money if it means I can afford a fridge that works) and a thousand times as ethical (I’ve blown the money), it feels like the theme song to your favourite late nineties feel-good family drama but when that hook hits its a whole other thing. Scissor sharp and oh so memorable with just the right guitar grit.
Jerome Blaze
Living Room (with Zion Garcia)
We’re giving some flowers to one of the country’s true music heads, a dude who doesn’t concern himself with the periphery nonsense of the industry but keeps the art central to the process. He dropped a near perfect album that featured a track called Living Room that was wandered gently through entering and exiting instrumentation while Jerome himself sang of those punctuations and samples feed in and out. He would later rerelease the record as a deluxe drop with the track reimagined, the mighty Zion Garcia offering stream of consciousness earnestness that made massive the micro of his life. Beautiful, real, raw. My only complaint is that I wish Jerome had ALSO retained his original vocal but at this point I’m being pedantic. Special Mobyesque vibes here.
Calliobel
Centipede
Calliobel was a peak 2025 discovery for me. I love deranged records like these and so often artists make them because it’s the requirement for an atypical voice. What I love about Calliobel is that she’s actually got a really beautiful, straight up vocal but she lobs it over these strange trap beats and adhd production points. Centipede moves with the spasmodic motion of all one hundred legs and like a centipede itself, both track and bug are underrated predators. If I’m being real, having relived with this track since writing this up it should arguably be even higher up the list but you won’t catch me editing that artist tile this late in the game so it is what it is.
Ownlife
Beyond It
Full credit for the glow up that’s seen Ownlife’s production, vocals, songwriting and even press photos leap a few echelons in 2025. The Perth king’s has been running his own label and working alongside Zafty which may go some ways to explaining why Zafty’s records have been so well produced through the last 18 months. This is without question the best record he’s ever released. Run the volume up and watch the panning and the bass make a mess of your speakers.
Nerve
95s
Production beast and bar proliferator Nerve linked up with Songer on a record that had me dialled in right from the first few seconds. There’s soooooo much space in the production, dimensional room left between each individual elements. The kick drums have this shaky crunch to them, the guitars (?) quaver in the air asking questions that are answered through puncline laden verses. Nerve himself sounds like he’s leaning in real close to that mic, spoken quietly and allowed room courtesy of that aforementioned production pad. Sounds good quiet, sounds good banging. Have it how you want it.
Chloe: The Brand
London
If I’m earnestly plumbing my own feelings there’s a connection to London as a city that probably needs self-interrogating when it comes to this song. It’s my own personal Mecca, the place that I know I’ll return to when one day I have the funds to see the football game in the building that feels like a home I’ve hardly visited. But this clever pop song captures that nostalgia and wistfulness almost entirely by accident through a intercontinental relationship movement. Clever but ultimately memorable. I find myself humming this hook constantly.
Hektor
Output
Ok I’m cheating because this was late 2024 but then he subsequently released it as part of his Production Line EP? Might I add that this is my own blog and I make the rules so get right out my face with all that. Pulsing, heaving, thick with bass and twisted vocals thursting the record ever forward, Output has been a regular blunt rotation in my vehicle these last twelve months. When those breaks drop back in my cheeks flush, my veins tighten, my eyes dilate, the endorphins release.
binsad
idrwk
This kind of guitar fare doesn’t have a strong history on Sound Doctrine (Australian Music Blog of the Year 2012) but when this chorus kicked in for the first time the track became a mandatory inclusion in this years list. The vocal performance in the verses is solid but when the dynamic between those and the explosive, breathiness of the chorus is so perfectly intense so as to make me believe every intended feeling.
Godlands
left2right
Don’t overthink this one, it’s legitimately just a record I heard blasting through some venue speakers and it hooked me straight off. There’s something about the way the record seems to orbit my ears, not panning from side to side but spinning all at once in a vortex of energy, that has me running it up at the highest allowable volumes in my vehicle (Mazda CX-9, 10 speaker BOSE system, sounds great cheers).
This brother’s been on a generational run since 2019 when he broke out as an Unearthed High finalist with a track called ‘Mistakes’ that he cooked up with his buoy Oscar just as the comp was about to lock down. Thank god he did cos in the years since he’s given us multiple mixtapes, elite bars, concept videos and all the right collaborations. When I first met him Mali Jo$e was actually a duo, him and Oscar geared up together a la Remi and Sensible J but these days Mali is just Mali. Thankfully the two originals have kept linking up, particularly on the debut LP that we just got a week or two back.
The production is way tighter and sharper than we’ve heard on mixtapes and EPs recently and lyrically he’s found a lane that’s one part swagger, one part spiritual, three parts spliffs and one part gunner. Ya boy’s an Arsenal fan, of course, because he knows the truth of things in his soul’s deepest sphere. I’m gonna point you at Highbury because it’s my favourite off the album with production that has these long slides that lead into the richest bass kicks you’re gonna hear tonight. Put that to the side and recognize lyrics that nod to two of Arsenal’s greatest ever gunners in Titi and Bergkamp, namechecked in the chorus, and essentially you’ve got a ven diagram of all my favourite things.
Oh and a bandcamp embed to boot? We’re eating good. Big love to Perth’s finest.
Found myself thinking damn, this song is gonna be on my end of year list hands down and it made me realize that it doesn’t feel right to be having my favourite songs of the year list in December having almost never written about any of those songs. So here’s the first in what is hopefully a series of paragraphs about various recent, excellent records.
If you slept on Drifting Clouds then up yours this is your chance to make things right. The groove is just about enough to put me in a permanent state of standing desk on this workday but a bad knee and a 4:46 run time will see me seated shortly, no doubt. The Ylongu vocal delivered with matching rhythm, the synthetic sax filling me with swagger I haven’t felt since the first time Jock at ABC security started greeting me by name. He recently said he made this record on garageband which made me think I might try to shoot an American Beauty remake on my iphone camera since that seems to be possible for king Terry Guyula of Drifting Clouds. Top end gone italo-disco, who knew this was exactly what we needed all this time?
Uh oh! new year new me! Writing online!
Can you believe it’s been (let me check this) SEVEN MONTHS since I last wrote about an artist? This may surprise you, but I haven’t listened to a single song in that entire seven months since, not even while walking through Coles, not even while waiting for the bird show at Taronga Zoo to start when we got there too early but not so early that we had time to make the trip across to the reptile section without missing the rozellas but still early enough that we got pretty good seats near the front and could make fairly direct eye contact with a barn owl.
Breaking my total audio hiatus to share with you this album from Josef, a soul from south west sydney who gone and got himself a real silky flow. In my mind’s eye ear it’s a little bit dominic fike at moments, a little mac miller, a little mali jo$e, a little new york city, a little zion garcia and so on, and so forth. It’s a little bloody good though and I’d highly encourage you to spend some time with the entire record.
In this household I’d recommend your first pass be via this track below ’24!’ by virtue of the delicate piano lines that Josef steps through like a fleet footed deer, pushing sonic foliage out of his path as his adroit wordplay makes a picturesque landscape unfurl. Artful assonance and a vocal tenor that has this unexpectedly endearing monotone. It draws you in through rhythm and flow rather than melody. At least that’s what happened to me and I was gormless to resist to resist its charm.
I try to make a point of embedding from bandcamp or spotify but my hands are tied on this one so take this spotify link with my apologies.
I’ve been trying to evangelize bystanders and family alike, non-consensually baptizing them into the French dogma that ive proudly adopted since this record dropped a fortnight ago. A voice like butter is just the salt and the bread, the true meat comes in the instrumentation on a track that has grooves on grooves, lightly built on baselines and florid piano moments. It’s far cleaner than the usual sound doctrine fare but who says I can’t shine up nice when I want to? Ethan French might have that immaculate gloss but it’s a self perfect brew, a home recipe that doesn’t quite scent the same as the store bought varnish. It’s giving a little DOMi & JD BECK and I’m told there’s some Jacob Collier to it though I can’t speak to that as someone who has never actively consume a Jacob Collier song (non-derogatory). I did look directly at the JC Instagram and I didn’t have a great time doing so. Make of that what you will. Anyway back to Ethan, he’s doing some hard numbers on “”DSPs”” so evidently there’s an audience who clocked Ethan well before yours truly. Perhaps on one of the two entire mixtapes he’s already release, idk. I’ve got the blog tho, so the true power is mine. The song is yours, this new single from a smart Perth boy called Ethan.
