Festive Fifteen 2025

By markontour, December 21, 2025

I had to miss Glastonbury this year, which is usually my best introduction to new bands, but it has still been as difficult as ever to choose my fifteen favourite songs released in the last twelve months. If I get time there will be a B-Sides collection too, but for now herewith markontour’s Festive Fifteen 2025, in everlasting homage to DJ-supreme, John Peel.

The full playlist is available on Spotify and YouTube.

1.Arabic Papi by DJ Bliss, featuring Omar Souleyman
I just love the hypnotic, driving, head-bobbing rhythm of this Middle Eastern dabke-style beat, paired with Omar Souleyman’s powerful voice. Souleyman looked a little lost, standing with just a synth player on the Green Man main-stage when I saw him this summer, but DJ Bliss has brought his usual energy to the fore.

2.People Watching by Sam Fender
Deserved winner of this year’s Mercury Prize and this Springsteen-esque story song finds the singer mulling over the every-day struggles of strangers, as he travels home from spending dying hours with a loved one.

3.All My Freaks by Divorce
The triumphant debut album from this Nottingham band features so many great songs, but I particularly loved their performance of this song at the cosy Globe venue in Cardiff recently, and Tiger Cohen-Towell‘s vocals are cracking.

4.Dragonfly by Samantha Crain
This upbeat tune from the Choctow Nation songwriter elegantly evokes the colourful, four-winged insect after which the song takes its name and its lyrics allude: “I only wanna be free at last / Live to see where I arrive at / I skim across the water top / Depending on how the light falls / The angles and the aerosols / All hues are seen within me”

5.Take a Sexy Picture of Me by CMAT
When I started compiling this year’s Festive Fifteen I was sure it would be dominated by Irish bands, but CMAT is the only one that made the final cut. Her joy-filled Green Man set was the stand-out live event of 2025 for markontour. This track manages to be simultaneously funny, poignant, reflective and spiky.

6.Passenger Seat by Wolf Alice
Now touring their fourth album, Wolf Alice are still getting better, as well as more stylish. This wistful number shows off the dynamic range of Ellie’s voice and has been on repeat on markontour’s headphones through many months of near continuous travel.

7.Mum Does The Washing by Joshua Idehen
Trending throughout the year, Joshua Idehen is a performance poet who achieved a breakthrough as a singer in his 40s with this clever commentary on patriarchy and political ideology,

8.Los Angeles by Big Thief
If I could only listen to one song from 2025 it would be this heart-poundingly, redemptive ballad. “Los Angeles, 3:33, nothing on the stereo / Dirty tea, you’re like the Mona Lisa / Smiling in the half-light / Mysteriously, but seriously / I’d follow you forever”

9.Spike Island by Pulp
A triumphant return after 25 years of recording hiatus sees Jarvis Cocker comfortable in his entertainer skin: “I was born to perform / It’s a calling / I exist to do this / Shouting and pointing”. Spike Island provides a reference point to 1990, although to a legendary Stone Roses gig, rather than a Pulp show.

10.Join Ice by Jesse Welles
Phil Ochs for the 21st Century, Jesse Welles pours out witty political songs with such frequency (four albums in 2025 alone) it’s practically musical editorial. ‘ICE’ takes satirical aim at Trump-era immigration enforcement through the eyes of a new recruit looking to overcome low self-esteem by putting on a uniform and holstering a gun.

11.Cobra by Geese
I loved 2023’s ‘3D Country’ but got into it a little too late for that year’s Festive Fifteen. In the meantime Geese seem to have attained Gen Z cult status and ‘Cobra’ explains why – this is a proper rock ear-worm. I’ve not a clue what it’s about, other than someone can excite cobras to dance, but not singer-songwriter, Cameron Winter.

12.Corduroy Couch by Brown Horse
This song from the Norwich-based country-rock band’s second album is a paen to a lazy day on a corduroy couch watching The Matrix and musing on the contradiction of being young and yet every day inching nearer to death, “Every tide takes a little more of the shore”.

13.The Thing Is by the Tubs
I have yet to see this Welsh / London band and as the jangly guitar indie rock is right in my musical sweet-spot it is something I have to correct soon in 2026!

14.Sudden Storm by Ezra Furman
I like the cadence of the singing, which mimics the relentless nature of a storm, although the weather event in question describes the state of the singer’s brain rather than that of the atmosphere.

15.Mill on the Hill by Melin Melyn
Welsh bakers who work in a yellow mill (“Melin Melyn”) that is threatened with closure. Surreal stories with an Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake kind of sound, a Melin Melyn live show is something to behold and listening to this song helps me relive it all over again.

Bonus tracks
16.You Can Get It If You Really Want by Jimmy Cliff
Reggae great Jimmy Cliff sadly left us this year and I thought I’d go for one of his most upbeat songs to commemorate.

17.She Bangs The Drums by The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses were the seminal band of my late teens and early twenties and there were a few years where barely a day passed without me listening to at least one of their songs. Waking up in Brazil to the news of bass-player, Mani’s, sudden death at only 63, knocked me sideways. It really felt like the end of an era. Mani’s bass drives ‘She Bangs The Drums’, as his positive energy later revived Primal Scream. What a loss.