It was another one of those years: a year absolutely LOADED with great Milwaukee music. So while this list covers oodles of different artists and releases, it’s anything but complete. Instead, take it for what it is: a brief look at some of our personal favorite Milwaukee LPs, EPs, and songs of the year.
MATT’S 5 FAVORITE MILWAUKEE LPs OF 2025
Paul Cebar’s 40-plus-year history in Milwaukee music could fill volumes. There’s his role as ambassador and hep-cat conduit for vintage R&B, soul, roots, and Afro-Caribbean music. There’s his work with The R&B Cadets, the Milwaukeeans, and Tomorrow Sound. And there’s his long-running “Way Back Home” show on 91.7 WMSE. Cebar’s self-titled 2025 record is just as wide-ranging and globally attuned as the man himself. The one-two opening punch of “When We Sing” and “We Sure Got Enough” is deliriously jubilant, Cebar at his most soulful and get-up-and-dance crowd-pleasing. “We bring a lot together when we sing,” he croons on the former song. There’s real joy emanating from these tracks, and real joy emanating from the record as a whole.
Collections Of Colonies Of Bees — Celebrities
Collections Of Colonies Of Bees aren’t what you’d call a “dance” band, but dancing is all over the group’s 2025 record Celebrities. “She can dance,” purrs Daniel Spack in “You Can Go Again.” “Knows how to lose herself,” finishes Marielle Allschwang. Is CoCoBees’ first LP in seven years destined to become a dance classic? Well, if you expand the definition of “dance” to “joyous and unencumbered movement brought on by the joyous and unencumbered creation of sound” then yeah, Celebrities is a banger. The long-running post-rock group has never been better than it is here. Come for the yin-and-yang vocals of Allschwang and Spack, stay for the towering instrumentation and gloriously distorted guitar solos of founding member Chris Rosenau.
The Hallelujah Ward — Everybody Swoons
Everybody Swoons opens with a pair of driving indie-rock insta-classics: “Your Uncertain Shadow” and “Manageable Oblivion.” Both songs shimmer with Mark Waldoch’s guitar, swoop and dive with his voice, and barrel along with the force of the Dan Didier / Paul Hancock rhythm section. “I know a good man who will sing until his own heart explodes,” Waldoch sings on the opening track. Is it possible that he’s singing about someone other than himself? “I know a good fan who can sing until his own heart explodes,” Waldoch sings later. Maybe he’s the fan this time around, or maybe we’re the fans. Either way, beware those exploding hearts, because Everybody Swoons is full of them.
There’s a warmth that radiates from Clementine, the second full-length album from Milwaukee alt-country band Ladybird. It’s there in the good-times songs about rock star dreams and barstool camaraderie. It’s there in the images of blue lapis belt buckles and blue Midwestern skies. And it’s there in the album’s gorgeous production—open, airy, and inviting. But, like any good country album worth its weight in shots and heartache, there’s a longing that radiates from Clementine, too. It’s there in the growing-old gloom of “Old Fashioned.” It’s there in the they-don’t-make-’em-like-they-used-to vibe of “99.” And it’s there in the lonesome lap steel, the reverb-tinged lead vocals, and the sepia-toned harmonies that haunt this fantastic record throughout.
Twenty-twenty-five seemed to be a year of starting over for LUXI. One look at her Bandcamp page reveals just one record: Cherry. No trace of the dozens and dozens of releases that the longtime electronic artist had ushered into the world over the last decade. But if Cherry represents a fresh start, it’s a strong one; these are some of LUXI’s best tracks, nine sonic missives that float in the spaces between DIY dance-pop and ethereal vaporware. The title track and “Angel Baby” are deliciously glitched-out, “Heartbeats” and “Butterfly Effect” sound like they’re being beamed in from an underwater dance club, and closer “Dollhouse Memory” ends thing on a surprisingly gritty note.
TYLER’S 5 FAVORITE MILWAUKEE LPs OF 2025
In 2023, Diet Lite’s rapid post-pandemic ascent to Milwaukee music prominence culminated with the release of Into The Pudding, an ambitious and excellent 18-track album. Since then, the local rock trio stayed pretty quiet compared to its early years, but that silence was broken in a big way last month with the release of Double Wide Yukon. The follow-up was written in northern Wisconsin and recorded to analog tape at Jamdek in Chicago. Much like its predecessor, the 13-track release comes complete with chunky guitar licks, a raucous rhythm section, sneering vocals, and meat-and-potatoes rock and roll that shines especially bright on standout songs like “Pack It Up” and “It’s All Too Much.”
Fuzzysurf’s long-awaited follow-up to 2020’s super poppy Sweet Tooth is a 20-track, genre-jumping double LP that comes after a two-year hiatus. True to the album’s name, Chameleons takes many different forms—capably veering from the band’s expected surf-tinged indie rock to downtrodden ballads, and even some uncharacteristically dark flourishes—over the course of its 67-minute runtime. Fuzzysurf members also flexed new instrumental muscles by adding keys, accordion, mandolin, banjo, lap steel, bells, trumpet, timpani, and harmonica to reach new and unfamiliar places throughout the ambitious and shapeshifting record.
Old Pup—the pet project of multi-instrumentalist Will Hansen—expanded on its sterling catalog in February with the release of Spider Towns. The sophomore album illustrates Hansen’s wide-ranging musicianship and lyrical depth, incorporates an impressive local supporting cast, and weaves an intricate and altogether entrancing sonic web. Soft and understated singing, top-notch songwriting, and a wide breadth of instruments and featured players all come together to create something special. All told, Spider Towns shows Old Pup capably straddling the line between different genres, between tradition and experimentation, and between ghostly and gorgeous.
In March, Telethon released a surprise full-length album. The 11-track Suburban Electric is the long-awaited follow-up to 2021’s Swim Out Past The Breakers. Over the course of the near-40-minute album, Kevin Tully’s lyrics take the form of testimonials from imagined individuals like a struggling character actor, a bored senior who has seen enough in life, a guy who builds a time machine, an exorcist who goes away on business, and “a guy who let things get away from him a bit.” The expansive scope of song subjects is more than matched musically, as the band not only applies its usual layers of top-tier operatic power pop to the mix, but builds on the instrumentation employed on past releases with full-on orchestral arrangements.
Valley Fox isn’t reinventing the wheel with Bear Dance, but the folk trio’s debut album is making traditional music that sounds exceptionally beautiful. The release is composed of eight songs that offer a delicate blend of mandolin, acoustic guitar, and bass throughout (plus sparing violin, pedal steel, and percussion at select points of the record). Anchored by Tori Yocum’s sauntering upright bass lines, Bear Dance is vaulted to tremendous heights by the enchanting dual vocals of Laura Bomber and Joe Wais, whose creative chemistry is especially palpable in the harmonies of “Badger Boy In Blue” and the album’s spellbinding title track. Toss is the rollicking “Roll On Mary,” and Valley Fox has managed to forge a debut that’s as timeless as it is pretty.
MATT’S 5 FAVORITE MILWAUKEE EPs OF 2025
Alley Eyes — Bondage In The Afternoon
Are we in the midst of an “indie sleaze” revival? While one could argue that Milwaukee has never left its indie sleaze era—or that it has always existed in an indie sleaze era—bands like Alley Eyes are making the case for a full-blown homegrown resurgence. The group’s irresistible Bondage In The Afternoon is a five-song collection of indie-rock earworms that recall the best of ’00s-era bands like The Strokes and The Killers. “Roman Holiday” and “Bloodstain” radiate a jean-jacket-and-cigarettes cool-kid energy, while the fantastic “No Good” mines a more anthemic ’00s sound. It’s all wrapped up in a Midwest sensibility that makes it unmistakably Milwaukee.
Bug Moment — The Lazer Collection
On 2023’s The Flying Toad Circus, Milwaukee “emo-adjacent rock melancholia” group Bug Moment spun a hushed and haunting spell. This year’s five-song The Lazer Collection is a bit different. Gone are the 30-second soundscapes of crickets, night wind, and music box ditties from Flying Toad. In their place are blown-out walls of guitar, bass, and drums; gorgeously glitchy vocals; and the occasional death-metal howls of pain and fury. Opener “Destroy All Monsters” begins quietly enough, but it soon gives way to a riotous hyper-pop explosion. The title of “Arbiter” nods to the Halo franchise but its sound is pure driving emo. “Chaos Emerald,” meanwhile, is both The Lazer Collection‘s most heart-on-its-sleeve track and its heaviest.
IfIHadAHiFi — Paws In The Bacon Grease
On the five-track Paws In The Bacon Grease, veteran Midwest noise-rockers IfIHadAHiFi soundtrack a world in perpetual collapse. There’s death, disease, misinformation, student loans, and toxic kittens. Opener “Welfare Jets” is a clanging and apocalyptic scream into the war machine void. “Everyone’s A Doctor” is a demented Devo-esque ditty “where the points don’t matter and nobody wins.” The alternately pummeling and herky-jerky “Crash Commander” is all screams and static, and closer “Welcome To The Pale Blue Dot” twists Carl Sagan’s famous meditation on our precious planet into a dire warning. “Welcome to the pale blue dot,” drummer/vocalist DrAwkward yelps on the latter song. “We eat our young down here / So if you’re calling just hang up.”
Iron Pizza has long pulled off the neat trick of A. delivering shambling synth-punk ditties that manage to get themselves stuck in your head for days, and B. loading those shambling synth-punk ditties with unexpected weight and emotion. Those qualities are in full effect on the group’s final (?) release, Serpo. Opener (and closer) “Mixtape To Planet Serpo” is a buzzy, bouncy power-pop gem polished with chirping synths and an undeniably catchy chorus. But by the time the band gets to “I Don’t Know Why,” the sci-fi shenanigans are most definitely over. “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,” Jarred Nonnemacher and Rachael Thompson sing. “I don’t know why I cry.” Heavy stuff for a lo-fi party band? Well, the band’s name is Iron Pizza after all.
Brett Newski & The Bad Inventions — ameriCONa Pt. 1: Educate Freeloaders To Buy Art
The big story behind Brett Newski’s ameriCONa Pt. 1: Educate Freeloaders To Buy Art is that it’s not available on major streaming services. Instead, as the title suggests, listeners are encouraged—nay, required!—to buy the record on vinyl, CD, or digital download. But the other story behind the record is that it’s Newski’s best effort to date. Opener “Jesus Freak” is a shaggy Beck-esque folk-rock ditty; “Bitter End Of The Beginning” adds a touch of psych to the proceedings; and “Narrow Escapes” and “Annie, You’re Going Places” are wonderfully hazy and bleary-eyed. Is the 8-track release actually an LP that’s being included in my favorite EPs list for no discernible reason? Who cares! Buy it!
TYLER’S 5 FAVORITE MILWAUKEE EPs OF 2025
When Marielle Allschwang isn’t adding layers of vocal mastery to Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, commanding rooms as the namesake and force behind Marielle Allschwang & The Visitations, and pushing artistic boundaries as a member of Group Of The Altos and Hello Death, she’s collaborating with her partner Adam Michael Krause in a project called Lomira. In March, the duo broke close to five years of recorded silence with the release of A Lapidary World, a five-song EP that shows a different side of Allschwang. When everything else is stripped away for a span of about 16 minutes, only sparse and dissonant instrumentation, delicate vocals, and altogether gorgeous sounds remain. As the saying goes, “sometimes less is more.” That’s absolutely the case with Lomira’s beautifully barren A Lapidary World.
After a breakout 2022 that pushed deep into 2023, last year proved to be an uncharacteristically quiet one for NilexNile. It turns out the Milwaukee rapper was setting down tracks for bigger happenings in 2025. Between taking part in T-Pain’s “Back To Wiscansin Fest” and an array of festival appearances, NilexNile continued his ascent with the release of a new album. The eight-track Pastel Views finds the up-and-coming emcee covering cool, off-kilter production with rapid-fire rhymes and perhaps his most self-assured lyrical delivery yet. Propulsive, high-energy earworms like “Eddie Kane” and “Backseat” are countered with breezy and smooth sonic sidesteps like “Daily Vitamins” (featuring a standout contribution by Jazlyn) and “Earth Day” to round out Nile’s most dynamic and best release to date.
Poison Hand — Suspect The Vice
Poison Hand features members from many of city’s finest punk, pop-punk, post-punk, and hardcore punk projects in its ranks. Though the band formed in 2021, its only recorded material was a WMSE Local/Live set. Thankfully, that changed in September when Poison Hand finally released its long-awaited debut album. That record, entitled Suspect The Vice, features seven blistering tracks that masterfully meld elements of street punk with an unexpected level of lyrical depth and a melodic delivery. If raw and rousing tracks like “Pressure” and “Tourist” don’t get your blood flowing and your toes tapping, there might be something seriously wrong with you.
Another year, another Favorite Milwaukee Music list with Shontrail on it. This time around, the eclectic artist’s eight-song Sonata is the release deserving of year-end recognition. In less than 15 minutes, Shontrail touches a laundry list of musical styles, ably veering between dream pop (“Thru The Rafters”), post-hardcore (“Back Seat”), punk (“Ghoul City”), and even an EP-ending nod to both Cheap Trick and That ’70s Show (“Hanging Out With Donna”). True to its name, Sonata consists of several movements and it manages to cover a lot of sonic terrain in a short amount of time.
Since moving back to his native Milwaukee a few years back, Wave Chapelle hasn’t slowed down a bit. Between frequent live outings, recurring appearances at Bucks games, and other bits of local ambassadorship that help to bring positive attention our city’s way, the accomplished hip-hop artist routinely puts out new music. In October, Chapelle’s catalog grew in both quantity and quality with the release of The B&W Pack. The six-song EP sees Wave at the top of his game with earworms like the propulsive “Doing Good” (which references his North Side upbringing) and well-performing single “Up For It” that each get a boost from Grammy-winning producer Menebeats.
MATT’S 5 FAVORITE MILWAUKEE SONGS OF 2025
Breakup Tour — “Maddy Says (You’re Ruining Your Life)”
Next Paperback Hero — “Parochial Tween”
Red Quean — “Sugar & Violence”
TYLER’S 5 FAVORITE MILWAUKEE SONGS OF 2025
Buffalo Nichols — “In The Name Of God”
MATT’S FAVORITE MILWAUKEE LPs OF 2025 THAT DIDN’T MAKE HIS TOP 5 BECAUSE, WELL, LET’S FACE IT, STICKING TO ONLY 5 LPs IS MADNESS
414BigFrank — If U Ain’t First
Willy Porter — Humans In A Room
Sex Scenes — Everything Makes Me Sick
Social Cig — Patchwork: A Road Dog Story
Trolley — A Carnival Of Grey And White
TYLER’S FAVORITE SONG BY A FORMER MILWAUKEE ARTIST WHO NOW LIVES ELSEWHERE OF 2025
In 2022, Zed Kenzo left Milwaukee and moved to Massachusetts in an effort to “get [her] stuff together and start over.” The relocation helped her achieve sobriety, begin a new artistic journey, and make some of the best music she’s ever made. Prior to continuing on to her current home of Los Angeles, Zed released “Marvelous” in March, and, as the single’s name suggests, it’s absolutely marvelous. It’s super fun, energetic, and all-around excellent. While we wish she didn’t need to leave us, it’s clear the change of scenery has done wonders for her both personally and musically.
MATT’S FAVORITE MILWAUKEE CLASSICAL CROSSOVER LP OF 2025
Alicia Rytlewski — When We Were Bears
Classical music can be intimidating to those who know little about it [raises hand], but no homework is needed to enjoy Alicia Rytlewski’s wonderful—and wonderfully accessible—When We Were Bears. The contemporary-classical album opens with the earthy, mournful, and hypnotic “Under The Hackberry Tree.” Cellist Ben Kalb appears on that track, but the bulk of the record is Rytlewski alone, weaving one intricate and breathtaking piano composition after another. Pieces like “Ephraim” and the three-part “Three Sisters Farm Suite” hum with a narrative energy that renders them more cinematic than stuffy.
TYLER’S FAVORITE EP BY A FORMER MILWAUKEE ARTIST WHO NOW LIVES ELSEWHERE OF 2025
Born and raised in the Milwaukee area, Johanna Rose played in memorable local outfits like New Boyz Club, Nickel & Rose, and Calamity Janes And The Fratney Street Band—along with providing upright bass support for a variety of Wisconsin projects in town—before relocating to New Orleans, Louisiana and embarking on a solo turn. After putting in her 10,000 hours of writing, rehearsing, performing, and touring relentlessly, the talented troubadour is finally seeing her hard work pay off in a big way. Thanks to her powerful voice and a haunting, macabre take on the vaudevillian genre that’s put on display in her Shallow Grave EP (and other recent output), Rose has racked up hundreds of thousands of song streams and millions of TikTok views. The Milwaukee ex-pat’s rising profile is both long overdue and well-deserved.
MATT’S FAVORITE LOCAL/LIVE SESSION OF 2025
The Dirty Sweet (September 16, 2025)
For the past few years I’ve been honored to co-host WMSE 91.7’s weekly live (and local) music showcase, Local/Live. Every Tuesday night I get to hear and chat with a Milwaukee artist either in the WMSE studios or on the stage at the Walker’s Point Anodyne. It’s a great gig! And though I love all the Local/Live shows, every once in a while one of them catches me off guard and blows me away. Take September’s show with The Dirty Sweet, for example. I honestly didn’t know much about the band going in, but the second the group started playing I was hooked. The Dirty Sweet specializes in the kind of jangly, ’80s- and ’90s-indebted Midwestern rock that’s easy to appreciate but difficult to pull off. And good grief, The Dirty Sweet pulls it off perfectly.
TYLER’S FAVORITE ALBUM BY A FORMER MILWAUKEE ARTIST WHO NOW LIVES ELSEWHERE OF 2025
Ryan Necci And The Buffalo Gospel — The Dead Can’t Take A Hint
Though two members of Ryan Necci And the Buffalo Gospel technically still call Milwaukee home, the country-tinged folk project’s namesake/bandleader has been living in Nashville for years, and two other members are based in Minnesota. As we internally question what percentage of Wisconsin residency is required for a band to retain its “local” status, we’ll shift focus to the band’s wonderful new album. Released last month, The Dead Can’t Take A Hint finds Necci at the top of his songwriting game, as his lyrics and tender voice masterfully paint portraits of “fear, hope, anxiety, resignation,” and, of course, love and heartbreak. His words are paired with exceptional musicianship that’s even more astounding when taking into account the 11 songs were written and recorded by a band whose members are now split between three states.
MATT’S FAVORITE LIVE YOUTUBE PERFORMANCE FROM A FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE FROGS OF 2025
Jimmy Flemion — “Never Do I Leave”
In the history of Milwaukee bands that broke into the mainstream, no group leaves a stranger mark than The Frogs. Brothers Jimmy and Dennis Flemion formed the aggressively lo-fi and subversive alt-rock band in 1980. The Frogs’ proper recording career began in 1988, and it wasn’t long until they caught the attention and adoration of ’90s icons like Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, Billy Corgan, and Beck. The Frogs carried on until the tragic death of Dennis Flemion in 2012; in recent years, however, brother Jimmy has happily stayed busy on YouTube. Browse through his channel and you’ll find oodles of intimate living-room acoustic ditties: Frogs classics, unexpected covers, and unreleased songs like the terrific “Never Do I Leave.”
TYLER’S FAVORITE SONG ABOUT THE WISCONSIN STATE FAIR OF 2025
Middle Child Syndrome — “I’m A Fair Lover”
There isn’t just one way to do the State Fair “right,” but it’s hard to argue with Middle Child Syndrome’s approach. With a rollicking, country-tinged sound and a delivery that’s reminiscent of a food- and ride-focused take on Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere,” the solo recording project of multi-instrumentalist Matt Mueller runs through a $218 list of Fair fare before unleashing a rapid-fire reading of other forms of fairgrounds festivities that, when combined, sounds like the best day he’s had…at least “since last summer.”
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