22 Canadian albums we can't wait to hear in 2025

One of the most exciting things that a new year brings is the promise of new music. Once everyone is finished combing through the best-of lists from the previous year, minds naturally shift to what's new and next.

2025 gives us much to be excited about, from new releases by pop heavyweights to emerging artists making smashing debuts. 

Scroll below to see CBC Music's most anticipated albums and EPs of the year. (A couple have already been released, but we felt we'd be remiss to not include them.) 

Artist: Nia Nadurata
Album: Still Living With My Parents
Release date: Jan. 3

On her debut EP, Still Living With My Parents, Nia Nadurata captures the coming-of-age whirlwind with humour and candidness. Opening with "Practice," the anthemic pop kiss-off to an ex, Nadurata breezes through heartache: "Steal my taste, take my style and my mom's leather jacket," she sings, letting him know he won't do better in a new relationship. It's an infectious opener that colourfully plays with many of the EP's themes of love and identity, with each subsequent track slotting perfectly into place, like a puzzle. The second track, "Boo hoo," is a jazzy pop number that keeps the energy high with inklings of sonic similarity to New Zealand singer-songwriter Benee, and by the project's closing song, "Trauma Bond," Nadurata has combined clever lyrics, bright vocals and sparkling melodies for an EP that feels realized enough to be future album material. — Natalie Harmsen

Artist: Skiifall
Album: Lovers Till I'm Gone
Release date: Jan. 10

The influence of the Caribbean has always permeated Skiifall's music (a sprinkling of patois here, a dash of dancehall horns there) but with his new EP, Lovers Till I'm Gone, the Montreal artist goes all in. This is a pure lover's rock record, a genre of music Skiifall grew up listening to in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Upon the release of the EP's first single, "Problems," back in October, Skiifall shared that producer Kenny Beats was the one who encouraged him to lean into the genre that soundtracked his upbringing. He took that leap of faith, and it paid off tremendously. The songs are lushly constructed, with the lilting rhythms of an old-school reggae record straight out of the '60s. And true to the genre, this is an EP all about love, with "Her World" featuring Jorja Smith as one of the sweet standouts. This collection of songs would slide seamlessly into any Caribbean mother's Sunday morning cleaning playlist — which is the highest level of praise. — Kelsey Adams

Artist: the Weather Station
Album: Humanhood
Release date: Jan. 17

"[Climate change] is the story beneath everything and the story hovering just above. It is the story within us and the story between us," Tamara Lindeman, a.k.a. the Weather Station, wrote via Instagram a week before releasing her upcoming record. The followup to 2021's critically acclaimed and Polaris Prize-shortlisted Ignorance, Humanhood was born of a difficult time: while touring and promoting Ignorance, an album as much about climate grief as it was about heartbreak, Lindeman experienced a mental health crisis that she partially processed by writing her way through these 13 new songs.

Recorded with an improvisational band that included Kieran Adams, Ben Boye, Philipe Melanson, Karen Ng and Ben Whiteley, Lindeman brought her lyrics to the table with producer Marcus Paquin to see what would flourish. The result is a vulnerable wrestling of conscience during a time of global crisis: "I've gotten used to feeling like I'm crazy, or just lazy/ why can't I get off this floor? Think straight anymore?" she sings on "Neon Signs," giving voice to the paralyzing feeling of disconnection. By the end of Humanhood, alongside a band that both buoyed her and broke apart in song multiple times, Lindeman has found a way through, even if it isn't a tidy solution: "Too late for perfection, to clean up the mess/ too late to take it all back I guess/ all I can do is sew it in," she sings on the sparse album closer, "Sewing." — Holly Gordon

Artist: the Weeknd
Album: Hurry Up Tomorrow
Release date: Jan. 31

The Weeknd's sixth album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, will serve as the final piece in his latest album trilogy that includes 2020's After Hours and 2022's Dawn FM. The first couple of singles, "Timeless" and "Dancing in the Flames," pulsate with the eerie synth-pop sound that informed those previous albums. However, on "São Paulo," the Weeknd proves that he's always willing to continue experimenting with different genres: the Brazilian funk track, while still packed with creepy imagery (see: the nightmare-inducing music video), pushes the boundaries of the Weeknd's pop proclivities. His role in the video also hints that he might be experiencing a rebirth and nearing the end of his recording run under his stage name: in 2023, the Weeknd told W magazine he was getting ready to close that chapter. "I'll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as the Weeknd," he said. "But I still want to kill the Weeknd." If the mysterious billboards declaring "the end is near" are any indication, Hurry Up Tomorrow might be when Abel Tesfaye finally pulls the trigger. — NH

Artist: Naya Ali
Album: We Did the Damn Thing
Release date: Feb. 7

"This is our story, my story — a celebration of everything we've overcome and every win we've claimed together," rapper Naya Ali wrote when announcing We Did the Damn Thing, her second album. Celebratory energy is the throughline of the project, on which stunting on her adversaries is top of mind. Throughout Ali's two-part debut album, she displayed a fierceness and bodied each song with her rippling bars. That same intensity radiates through We Did the Damn Thing, particularly on "Turning Tables," the latest single: "Living for the masses is not attractive," she sings over sputtering beats. Her impassioned delivery shapeshifts on each track, as she showcases her growth not only as a rapper, but a singer, too. On "More Life, Less Names" she raps with swagger, and on "Life" she flows her voice over a silky Afrobeats groove. It's a harmonious mix filled with boisterous wordplay, demonstrating Ali's knack for sharp songwriting. — NH

Artist: Blond:ish
Album: Never Walk Alone
Release date: Feb. 14

The winter blues should be scared of Blond:ish's upcoming album, Never Walk Alone. The Montreal producer and DJ wants the record to be "a friend in times of loneliness" and with its infallible, turbo-charged energy there's no way to dwell on the melancholy while it plays. Never Walk Alone follows 2019's Higher Ground, and although it's been almost five years since the last release, Blond:ish has kept busy appearing at festivals from Istanbul to London to Los Angeles. It's during her live sets that she really honed the sound of the new album, which helped Blond:ish make a record full of crowd-pleasers. The title track is infectious and buoyant, capable of imparting a sunny disposition on even the most curmudgeonly of folks, and the album evolves from there. Playing around with Afro house, synth pop, soul and more, Blond:ish and her collaborators are really leaning into jubilance. Never Walk Alone is truly an international affair: she enlisted British singer Stevie Appleton, Brazilian American singer Zeeba, Australian house duo Night Tales, Albanian Swiss producer Black Circle, Zimbabwean singer and producer Bantu and more to bring her optimism overload to life. — KA

Artist: Art d'Ecco
Album: Serene Demon
Release date: Feb. 14

New-wave '70s goth glam crossed with '80s-inspired dark pop that instantly evokes a night out at the club with the stickiest floors you've ever had the pleasure of prying your feet off while trying to dance. Art d'Ecco's Serene Demon is equal parts conjurer and catalyst, taking the listener backward and forward through the last 50 years of music with the wild abandon of a possessed time traveller. "Once you've trained the ear of the audience, it establishes a new precedent. That moves pop music forward in the most beautiful, organic way, and I'm constantly trying to exist within that paradigm," Art d'Ecco said in a press release. "How do I challenge myself and throw the rule book out, but still make this the catchiest, quirkiest piece of music possible? I like existing between those two worlds." It was a goal he kept clearly at the forefront of writing and recording Serene Demon. "The Traveller" is a brooding, fuzzy, synth-heavy romp; "True Believer" stomps and coos with brass flourishes and Destroyer-like vocals; and the title track is moving, moody and weird in all the best ways, an eight-minute-long, piano-driven grasp at living. — Andrea Warner

Artist: Fernie
Album: Hopeless Dreams
Release date: Feb. 14

Fernie's upcoming EP, Hopeless Dreams, ushers in a flood of forlorn emotions. The Brazilian Canadian singer-songwriter fuses the stories of heartache and his turbulent childhood into soft vignettes. "When will I know what happiness holds for me?" he sings on "Pain" (produced by Patrick Watson), using his whispery vocals to evoke longing and fragility. Fernie takes his time to navigate healing, and his emotional recalibration results in an air of hopefulness about the future: "I wish for passion everlasting," he declares on the tranquil "Bones and All." Empathy is the propeller across each track, continually pushing Fernie toward self-discovery and repair. — NH

Artist: Saya Gray
Album: Saya
Release date: Feb. 21

Toronto's Saya Gray began writing her upcoming album in late 2023, after a tumultuous relationship came to an end. She booked a flight to Japan and took a solo trip across the country, keeping a guitar in the passenger seat in case inspiration struck and a medley of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Joni Mitchell playing from the stereo. The result of that cathartic period is her second album, Saya, a smorgasbord of sounds that sees the singer, producer and instrumentalist go through different stages of grief, just not necessarily in a linear order. Moving between anger, sadness, disbelief, denial and acceptance throughout the record, Gray has crafted songs that feel lived-in and raw while maintaining the boundary-pushing that has made her so intriguing since 2022's 19 Masters. On "Shell (of a Man)" she asks: "How to get past the past/ I'm still hung up on cobwebs," as she struggles to break the ties that bind her to the relationship, and on "H.B.W." she dives into a nightmarish spiral of destructive thoughts. Gray's experimental approach to folk roots Saya together, with spellbinding guitar, bass and Japanese koto, her haunting vocal delivery and a wash of discordant sounds thrown in for good measure. — KA

Artist: Tate McRae
Album: So Close to What
Release date: Feb. 21

Calgary pop star Tate McRae has had a whirlwind four years including viral hits ("Greedy," "Exes"), two Juno Award wins and soon to be three albums with the upcoming release of So Close to What. Between her emotionally driven anthems and explosive dance hits, McRae has crystallized her sound and style into certified pop gold — or in the case of her biggest hit, six times platinum. As she reunites with producers and songwriters Ryan Tedder, Amy Allen and Ilya, expect the hooks to be even catchier and the accompanying dance breaks to hit even harder, as evidenced on singles "It's OK I'm OK" and "2 Hands." A press release notes that the album will chart "the journey of growing up when the road ahead feels infinite," which is equally reflected in McRae's ascendance to pop stardom: while she's already reached remarkable heights, we know she will only keep rising with each new project. — Melody Lau

Artist: Basia Bulat
Album: Basia's Palace
Release date: Feb. 21

Basia Bulat marked many new chapters in her life in the past few years: moving into a new home, welcoming a new daughter and putting together her first album of original music in almost five years. Basia's Palace — a name that represents her literal home and jam space as well as the inside of her head — was written in the late hours of the night on a MIDI keyboard, not dissimilar from the way one of her influences, Leonard Cohen, once did with his Casio. It was there that she was able to sit and reflect on memories, but also contemplate how that plays a role in building futures. The resulting songs are described in a press release as "the softest and most searching of her career." But sonically it also stretches Bulat's folk boundaries into disco-influenced tracks like "My Angel" (though funnily enough there's also a more folk-centric song titled "Disco Polo," an ode to a Polish dance genre that her late father loved). Basia's Palace presents a bright and beautiful new world that we can't wait to step into and spend lots of time in. — ML

Artist: Xia-3
Album: Interworlds
Release date: Feb. 28

Jing Xia spent seven years in Newfoundland before creating her dream scenario: a collaboration with St. John's punk rockers Ritchie Perez and Brian Downton that brings the Chinese guzheng tradition into a contemporary light. Sounding unlike much you've heard before, Interworlds lives up to its title: it connects Xia's guzheng, a traditional Chinese zither, with Perez and Downton's punk roots for an album that is both playful and introspective, as Xia's deft melodies build enchanting stories alongside the atmospheric playing of her bandmates. Whether its through the meditative layering of Explosions in the Sky-adjacent "Leaves Left Behind" or the invigorating melodic journey in album opener "Another Day," Xia-3's debut album will break your mind and heart open to a sound that is only in its infancy. — HG

Artist: Marie Davidson
Album: City of Clowns
Release date: Feb. 28

City of Clowns is electronic artist Marie Davidson's first solo album in almost eight years, since her Polaris Music Prize-shortlisted Working Class Woman. (In 2020, she released a collaborative album, Renegade Breakdown, with frequent collaborators L'Œil Nu.) For Davidson, the DJ booth is her podium to deliver keen observations on club culture and gender politics through audacious beats that tackle the mind and the dance floor. On her upcoming release, Davidson draws inspiration from Shoshana Zuboff's book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, directing her attention toward technology's influence on people's lives. Zuboff's writing frames technology as a machine that translates human experiences into "prediction products" that anticipate our "now, soon and later." But Davidson, an unrelenting pursuant of authenticity, is here to push back. On "Contrarian," she repeats "I'm not like you" as a whispered subliminal threat; on "Y.A.A.M.," she clearly states the battle lines and chooses her side: "I stick with the weirdos." Where do you stand? — ML

Artist: the Burning Hell
Album: Ghost Palace
Release date: March 7

What will be left of us when we're gone? It's a question on the mind of P.E.I.'s the Burning Hell, a band intimately familiar with crafting "party anthems about the apocalypse since before the apocalypse arrived at the party," as described on Bandcamp. Lead single — and bop — "Bottle of Chianti, Cheese and Charcuterie Board" pokes fun at the ephemera we hold dear but aren't able to take with us when the apocalypse brings us down. "The doctor whispered in my ear as she cut the umbilical cord/ start with a bottle of Chianti, cheese and charcuterie board," sings Burning Hell core duo Mathias Kom and Ariel Sharratt, giving us an absurd and vivid image with which to face the future. Ghost Palace, a posthumous place beautifully captured by the quilted album cover, was crafted by Kom and Sharratt, with Jake Nicoll in the producer seat and newest band member Maria Peddle on fiddle and vocals. Many friends contributed, including Constantines' Steven Lambke and By Divine Right's José Contreras, giving Ghost Palace a communal feel of marching joyfully to the end. Never has the apocalypse sounded more cheerful — while feeling most imminent. — HG

Artist: Caroline Savoie
Album: Rom-Com
Release date: March 14

If Caroline Savoie's new album sounds pitch-perfect for a soundtrack, it's by design. Inspired by the rom-coms of her teenage years — peak Julia Roberts, or more specifically an obsession with the Renée Zellweger-led Bridget Jones's Diary — the Acadian artist from Dieppe, N.B., has created a concept album of songs that could bookend any film in the genre. "C'est un petit peu all over the place," she told Radio-Canada's La matinale of the sound of the album, pointing to her earworm of a disco song ("Encore") accompanied by blistering punk-rock ("Alors que tout explose") and calming folk ("Je t'espere"). Recorded mostly live off the floor, Rom-Com has a lived-in, heart-on-sleeve feel, as Savoie's expert lyricism shines through while backed by a tight band that includes Miguel Dumaine, Carl St-Louis, Donald O'Brien, Marco Gosselin and Monica Ouellette, with guest-star backing vocals by Lisa LeBlanc and Sylvie Boulianne. Rom-Com marks Savoie's fourth album on Simone Records, but her first time producing — and she's sounding as masterful as ever. — HG

Artist: Rose Cousins
Album: Conditions of Love - Vol. 1
Release date: March 14

"Love" doesn't seem like a big enough word for all the wondrous possibility of feeling held and being seen, not to mention its galaxies of nuance as we fall in and fall out and feed ourselves on its myriad states of being. On her new album, Conditions of Love - Vol. 1, Rose Cousins returns to her own first love — the piano — to craft 10 testaments to the human heart in all its glorious, inane complexity. "Love feels great and makes us ridiculous," Cousins said in a press release. "It's tiring and intense, joyful and devastating. Falling in love, being in love and staying in love are all such different things…. Humour helps." The record delivers Cousins' trademark capacity for wry wit and emotional gravitas, but her archness never serves as a way to keep a distance between herself and her lyrics. Cousins knows how to find the light in the dark, she knows survival, and she's crafting whole worlds here, be it a metaphor-rich meditation on what endures, like the sweeping ballad "Forget Me Not," or the darkly funny but hopeful "I Believe in Love (and it's very hard)." — AW

Artist: Destroyer 
Album: Dan's Boogie
Release date: March 28

Two years after his Polaris Music Prize-shortlisted album, Labyrinthitis, Dan Bejar is back with his 14th album, delightfully and strangely titled Dan's Boogie. (Titles have always been one of Bejar's many fortés: song titles on this release include "Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World" and "Cataract Time.") Lead single "Bologna," featuring Fiver's Simone Schmidt, picks up on the nocturnal grooves of his last release, while powering toward a thrilling unknown ahead. "There's an outside chance/ you'll never see me again," Schmidt sings in the song's opening moments. In a statement, Bejar said he hadn't written many songs like "Bologna" before, adding: "I struggled singing the first and third verses, the most important parts of the song. They needed gravity and grit. The threat of disappearing needed to be real. So I called Simone." Rarely taking the role of the supporting character, Dan's Boogie promises many different sides of Bejar, an incredible feat and flex for an artist who is almost three decades into his career. — ML

Rumoured releases

Artist: Sebastian Gaskin
Album: TBA
Release date: early 2025

The multi-instrumentalist R&B singer with the powerhouse voice from Tataskweyak Cree Nation recently won a No. 1 Song Award from SOCAN for co-writing his hit "Ghost," and rumour has it that he'll be releasing a debut album via Ishkōdé Records very soon. — HG

Artist: Yves Jarvis
Album: TBA
Release date: early 2025

There's little info so far on a new Yves Jarvis album, but hearing his two recent singles — the funky "The Knife in Me" and the Prince-inspired "Gold Filigree" — we're chomping at the bit for more from the Calgary-born, Montreal-based artist. — HG

Artist: Isabella Lovestory
Album: TBA
Release date: summer 2025

Isabella Lovestory's next album expands on the perreo-pop horizons of her 2022 debut album, Amor Hardcore, bringing in new sounds from trap to synthwave. The album plays with ideas of subverted beauty ideals, levity versus darkness, and the artist's distorted self image. — KA

Artist: Tre Mission
Album: Hell Is Other People
Release date: TBA

One of the few Canadians to make a name for themselves in grime music, Tre Mission is back with a new album executive produced by Junia-T. Hell Is Other People will follow the rapper's 2019 album, Orphan Black. — KA

Artist: Debby Friday
Album: TBA
Release date: TBA

2023 Polaris Prize winner Debby Friday has been dropping breadcrumbs about her new album since late 2024, confirming it was "on its way to mastering" in October. There's no info yet on the title or release date, but if the tantalizing music she's been dropping over the past year is anything to go off, listeners are in for a treat. — KA