Best Album Covers of 2025, So Far

Ah, 2025. We're reaching the end of March and earth has yet to explode, but I won't give up hope yet as we still have 9 months to go.

There has been a lot of new music in 2025 and I haven't listened to most of it. But I have taken some cursory glances at album covers, and today's post will feature 16 covers that caught my attention, with a mix of popular and underground artists.

Turkish artist Orkun Akbal started the year by releasing Spirit Frequencies, a dreamy ambient 11 track LP. The cover features 12 beautiful abstract shapes that match the flowy nature of the lush ambient pads that form the base of the tracks.

Am I in Trouble? launch their debut album, Spectrum, with a 7 track LP full of colors, and a few beautiful flute performances by Ember Belladonna. Every track is named a color, and the cover matches with a full spectrum of colors, and much of that energy is represented on tracks like Pink.

Peurto Rican artist Bad Bunny releases his sixth solo studio album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos) in the first week of January, with a 62-minute LP that blends reggaeton with Peurto Rican genres like plena and salsa. The cover features two empty plastic chairs in grass with a banana tree behind, posssibly evoking the feeling of sitting outside with family and friends enjoying the moment.

Ethel Caine released a 90-minute studio recording Perverts, which is a dark and slow ambient work, unrelated to her planned album trilogy. A long-haired figure stands alone in a room on the right, with a circlular shape connected to the photo on the left. The dark atmosphere and mystery are perfect for the album, I just have to know what's up with that person.

Balloonerism is the second posthumous album by rapper Mac Miller, feauturing jazzy instrumentals and soulful lyrics. The family explained that he had commissioned the artwork for the album around 2014 when it was recorded, but other albums were prioritized for release. The cover features Dali-like surrealism as a person is lifted by a deformed Miller-face balloon. The blue sky reflects the airy and free instrumentals and overall floaty vibe.

A happy, vibey indie rock album Burnout Days by flipturn features a figure either being impaled or releasing a beam of stars from the chest, with a sort of colored-pencil or crayon style that feels youthful, bright and energetic. It's fun!

Scottish post-rock band Mogwai's eleventh studio album The Bad Fire is lush, warm and psychedelic. The cover is punky and colorful, with a painting of a volcanic crater with blues, yellows and greens jumping out against a pink background. Frankly, I'd love to hang the painting standalone on a wall.

Capping off the month is L.S. Dunes with their second studio album, Violet. The cover features Death sitting alone in a small wooden boat in the sea, with a orange-ish sky above. The colors in this painting are beautiful, providing a somewhat melancholic dusk as Death contemplates, which is the natural thing to do on a boat.

Post-punk band Squid's third album Cowards is our first February album. The cover features two fingers holding a scorpion stinger just above another finger against a blue background. It's evocative with just a few elements... will they sting themselves? There's also great movement as the eye follows the stinger across the composition.

Toward the end of February, Deep Sea Diver released their fourth studio album Billboard Heart, 5 years after Impossible Weight. It's a bit fun, dreamy, energetic and vulnerable. The cover features a wide stroke of red over a blue sky and dark foreground with distant terrain. It's simple, a bit of warmth mixed with something calmer and melancholy.

Doves' sixth studio album Constellation for the Lonely is dark and psychedelic, with a darker, shadowy album cover. I actually first thought of Beverly Joubert's 2018 photograph of zebras. The sole light source casts shadows of people onto the ground, stretching towards the bottom of the ground, while the people walk in opposite directions, each on their own path. In some way, the people are the stars which form a constellation, with the upper light source being a sun.

The first of three March 7 releases, Canadian metal band Spiritbox's Tsunami Sea is heavy and then melodic, and then heavy. The album cover is mostly black with a white wave and mirrored face profiles above and below. It's actually somewhat simple for a fast metal album.

Multi-genre musician SASAMI released her third studio album, Blood on the Silver Screen, this March, with a pop focus. Our first portrait cover, SASAMI stands in the center with hair cast on an open jacket, against an empty gray background. The entire cover is black-and-white spare a slight spill of blood from her lower lip. The cover matches elements of her music, love, sentimentality and openness, where the blood may reference a spot of pain in a love story.

Another March 7 black-and-white portrait album cover, Lady Gaga's Mayhem album is bouncy with a lot of electronic and industrial elements matched to Gaga's poppy vocals. The cover features Gaga somewhat expressionless with messy hair next to a broken mirror with her distorted face. The cover could possibly reflect a character lost in a world of mayhem, although it's a bit difficult to match to the musical elements of the album.

Swiss composer and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and American composer and guitarist Mary Halvorson combine to create an avant-garde jazz album, Bone Bells. It's minimal and eccentric, and the album cover shares the eccentricities, sort-of freehand doodles with faces, shapes and letters over yellow, red and blue streaks.

The last album on the list is Doo-Ha! by British jazz group The Lewis Express, with Chip Wickham playing flute. It struts, it grooves, it's fun, it's fresh. The cover is reminiscent of historic abstract jazz covers with modernist design elements, shapes and lines creating movement toward the tilted title.