Last year, I asked a few of the Bay Area’s finest culture writers to share their five favorite songs of the year with us. I like to think of it like Pazz & Jop on a hyper-local scale; a snapshot of the shared musical tastes of people who live and work here. So, we’re bringing it back this year, with a lot of last year’s contributors and a couple of new faces.
It’s always a fun collection of tracks: These 35 songs cross musical styles and regional scenes; some are hugely zeitgeist-y, and others are excavated gems far beyond any algorithm or hype machine. Most contributors featured at least one artist with Bay Area ties. I also threw in a handful of songs I kept on constant repeat.
My hope is that this list feels like friends of friends choosing songs for you. They might delight or, better yet, vex you, but we can guarantee that a human loves each and every song on this list enough to put it on the internet. I hope you take some time in the dog days of 2025 to dig in and enjoy.
You can stream the playlist on Spotify and Apple Music. We’ll also link to individual songs for purchase on Bandcamp, if available.
Timothy Karoff, culture reporter at SFGATE
- Ninajirachi — “CSIRAC”
- fakemink — “Music and Me”
- Worldpeace DMT — “Love Yourself”
- Nourished by Time — “9 2 5”
- Bassvictim — “27a Pitfield St”
John-Paul Shiver, contributor at 48 Hills and Treble
- Mae Powell — “It Comes In Waves”
- Pateka — “Odwalla”
- Late Aster — “Ctrl-F Discipline”
- Pachyman — “Hard to Part”
- SML — “How You Been”
Gabe Meline, senior editor at KQED Arts & Culture
- Pluto & YK Niece — “WHIM WHAMMIEE”
- BunnaB — “LMAO”
- John Adams — “After the Fall” (unavailable to stream; here is Gabe’s review of its San Francisco Symphony world premiere)
- Dijon — “Baby!”
- Rabiah Kabir — “I Crashed My Car - For Mo”
Leah Isobel, contributor at 48 Hills and The Singles Jukebox
- Ethel Cain — "Amber Waves"
- Debby Friday — "1/17"
- Molly Raben — "Angel Pathway Garden Procession" (unavailable for streaming)
- KATSEYE — "Gnarly"
- Autocamper — "Somehow"
Alan Chazaro, co-founder at COYOTE Media Collective
- Ovrkast. — "Small Talk"
- P-Lo — "Yeah"
- Boldy James — "Birds Eye View"
- Evidence — "Favorite Injury (feat. Domo Genesis)"
- Navy Blue — "God's Kingdom"
Alex Ramos, editor at Sunstroke Press and contributor at Pitchfork
- Hayley Williams — “Good Ol' Days”
- Hearts2Hearts — “STYLE”
- Kehlani — “Folded”
- NMIXX — “KNOW ABOUT ME”
- PinkPantheress — “Stateside”
Joshua Bote, associate editor, Gazetteer SF
