To reflect on the year, Chapelboro.com is re-publishing some of the top stories that impacted and defined our community’s experience in 2025. These stories and topics affected Chapel Hill, Carrboro and the rest of our region.
We had a lot of heavy news in the last 12 months, but 2025 also saw a lot of great local art and culture – and of course music. Each December, 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck counts down the top 50 local songs of the year – always a tall order, and this year was no exception.
It’s time for an annual tradition: here’s (part 1 of) our countdown of the best local songs of 2025!
First, some ground rules. We define a “local” artist as anyone currently based in 97.9 The Hill’s coverage zone, which includes Orange, Durham, and northern Chatham counties, plus Saxapahaw. Wake County’s out, but some of our favorite local songs always come from Raleigh artists – including Azul (“Lies”), Bowerbirds (“And I Don’t Need You”), Christina Munsey (“Mileage”), Fancy Gap (“Gold Coast”), Gray Young (“Semblance”), Jeremy Gilchrist (“Home”), Matt Southern (“Cool Guy”), Sinopsis (“No Tellin”), Twilark (“A New Ending”), and Vishy (“Green & Gold”).
The James Taylor rule also applies: even if you’re a Chapel Hill native, we’re only counting your music as “local” if you’re currently in the area. Shoutouts are due nonetheless to Alycia Lang (“Summer”) and Waldo Witt (“Thread”), both of whom are now in LA – plus Earleine (“Free Time”), who’s now in Nashville, Crooked Fingers (“Cold Waves”), who’s now in Georgia, and Chatham Rabbits (“Gas Money”), who (despite their name) now live in Greensboro.
We’re also only considering originals for this list, no covers – but we have to acknowledge the artists who went into the studio this year to reimagine the classics. Viv & Riley led the way there with two separate projects, Kissing Other Ppl (“Where’d All The Time Go”) and The Onlies (“The Moonlight Song”) – but we also got great standards from Jake Xerxes Fussell (“Close My Eyes”), Joseph Decosimo (“Billy Button”), The Holland Brothers (“Frankie & Albert”), and Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson (“Marching Jaybird”).
We also don’t have any instrumentals on this year’s list, but there were several great ones. To name a few: JPhono1’s “Architect of Puzzles,” Phil Cook’s “Buffalo,” Malone & Warner Vaughan’s “Friends,” Red October’s “Death By A Thousand Cuts,” and Frank Tomorrow’s “TwentyTwentyFive.” Frank Tomorrow was also one of a few artists who took a tentative step into AI-generated music this year – and no, there’s none of that on this list either (as far as I know!), but interested parties may want to check out his “And Tell You” – or Fan Modine’s “Gainesville or Glasgow,” Rapsody’s AI-tweaked “Avon Through the Wire,” or Aunnoy Badruzzaman’s “Lost in the Colors” (as well as the pieces he wrote about the process).
Even after all those restrictions, there were still too much worthy music this year to include it all in a single top 50 – especially when we’re focusing on individual songs, rather than full albums. Just a sampling of artists who released great longform projects in 2025: Alli Blois (“The Quest”), Bass Battery (“Life in Shambles”), The Beautiful People Club (“Can You Dig It?”), The Blusterfields (“Peach”), Bombadil (“How the Moon Got Back Home”), Brother Kent (“Fancy Stuff”), Entrez Vous (“Antenna Legs Hear Everything”), Jason Bales (“Watching the Pines”), Larry (“Puddle!”), Manic Third Planet (“Halfway”), Michael Daughtry (“Double Down”), The Mountain Goats (“Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkin”), Oblations (“Sun Going Down”), Private Cathedral (their self-titled debut), Tyler Dane Lemons (“Omnipresence”), and Verity Den (“Wet Glass”).
And now, without further ado: let’s begin counting down the 2025 Live & Local Top 50.
50. Mipso, Singing Song
After a remarkable 15-year run, Mipso went on a (permanent?) hiatus this year – but not before dropping this sweetly dystopian track about a world without birds. (Honorable mention to Dante High’s “Dread,” another possibly-final song by a beloved band.)
49. Personality Cult, Careful
The lead single off “Dilated,” this hard-rocking band’s first album in five years.
48. Cameron Stenger, Lighter
I’m going with “Lighter” here, but Stenger gave me lots of options: he released two full albums this year alone.
47 (tie). BANGZZ, Stuck
47 (tie). Chiroptera, Pollutant
47 (tie). Treasure Pains, Strike
Grouping together three of the best hardcore rock songs of the year, each with powerhouse female vocals from BANGZZ’ Erika Libero, Treasure Pains’ Jessi Knop, and Chiroptera’s Avery Byrne (a School of Rock House Band vet whom you’ve heard many times on 97.9 The Hill). Chiroptera’s appearance here is most impressive: the whole band is made up of middle- and high-schoolers. (And they’re not the only high-schoolers who are going to show up on this list.)
46. Cam Knopp, Are You Gonna Go My Way?
Nope, not a Lenny Kravitz cover: Knopp only released two songs this year, but this soaring six-minute epic was a highlight.
45. Warner Vaughan, Falling Apart
The aforementioned Vaughan is one of the leaders of a new generation of UNC student musicians who’ve risen to prominence in the local music scene in the last three years.
44. Weird Way, If You Didn’t Have To Try To Stay Asleep
Recorded during the pandemic but not released until June, Chris McSween’s project’s self-titled album saved the best for its closing track.
43. Superchunk, Bruised Lung
The legendary band is still going strong after 35 years – now with a new drummer, the also-legendary Laura King. (Honorable mention: “Turn To Stone” by Youth Pastor Vibes, a Durham band that debuted in 2025 with their own McCaughan-esque lead vocals.)
42. Roxanne Fortney, If I Could Talk To The Moon
“Hope he’s doing all right out there.” With the warm crackle of cassette fuzz as a backdrop, this cozy track is the Platonic ideal of sad acoustic post-breakup bedroom indie. (I like this individual song, but honorable mention to the Durham band Stay Stay, whose debut album “The Only Truly Locked Door” captures this same vibe across 11 tracks.)
41. Cuffing Season, Summer
This slow burner caps off this Hillsborough band’s debut full-length album – which wasn’t released, ironically, until the tail end of this song’s namesake season.
40 (tie). Peter Holsapple, Larger Than Life
40 (tie). The Salt Collective, In the Shadow of the Moon
Few North Carolina bands are as seminal as the dB’s, and the guys are still rocking today. “Larger Than Life” was the driving lead single off Holsapple’s album “The Face of 68,” while Chris Stamey and Gene Holder were part of the multinational Salt Collective, releasing the stellar album “A Brief History of Blindness.” “In the Shadow of the Moon” features a who’s-who of local stars, including Stamey and Holder plus Mitch Easter (Let’s Active), Rob Ladd (The Connells), Jeff Herrick (The Unsustainables), Rachel Kiel (Rachel Kiel) – and Lynn Blakey, who wrote the lyrics and sang lead vocals (along with REM’s Mike Mills) even while spending much of the year battling cancer.
39. Secret Monkey Weekend, So Much Joy
In just a few years, Secret Monkey Weekend has quickly risen from a fun family project to a serious player in the Triangle’s music scene. Co-written by Ella Hart (who’s still only 23, and she’s the older sister), “So Much Joy” is the opening track and the star of their sophomore album “Lemon Drop Hammer.” (Not the only family game in town: honorable mention to “Bad Day Sunshine” by the Mad Starlings, a brotherly trio out of Durham.)
38. Bengt and the Walkers, Slow Suicide
Bengt Walker’s eponymous band only released one song in 2025, but they made it count. Bengt’s voice is deeper than Meat Loaf’s, but otherwise this theatrical rocker wouldn’t have been out of place on “Bat Out Of Hell.”
37. The Carolina Junebugs, Georgia May
In a year full of great UNC artists, the Carolina Junebugs entered the scene in December with their debut EP “Down in the Valley,” of which this closing track (paired with the 19th-century standard “Angeline the Baker”) is the standout. Booth Bassett, Emily Bishop and Ellary Smith met in UNC’s Carolina Bluegrass Band and haven’t looked back.
Want more great UNC student music? 2025 had a lot of it: try Davie Circle’s “In The End” or the Wallabies’ “Jinx.” (Or Skkolar’s “Headache,” if hip-hop’s your thing.) As for bluegrass, the Junebugs aren’t alone either: honorable mention to “Lucey and the Guy” by fellow Tar Heel Bill Moore, who made our top 20 last year.
36 (tie). Erie Choir, Bad Luck
36 (tie). Megayacht, Good Luck Bad Luck
Combining these two partly for the similar titles, but also because Erie Choir and Megayacht are a nice pair, having shared the bill at multiple shows this year. “Bad Luck” is one of several highlights on “Golden Reviser,” Erie Choir’s first album in nearly a decade; meanwhile we’ve been playing “Good Luck Bad Luck” on WCHL for half the year in spite of the fact that it hasn’t actually been officially released yet. Good things await in ‘26.
35. Tre. Charles, WNDWS
Another smooth, introspective classic from one of the Triangle’s most consistently great artists. How consistently great? Well, if “WNDWS” doesn’t grab you, there’s a completely different Tre. Charles song on our overall top-97 list for ‘25.
34. Cult Vacant, Wilmington
Marc Rodriguez dropped his earlier project Fool In Utopia to head up Cult Vacant, which made its debut in ‘25 with the stacked EP “Bad Optics” – led by this vibey freeway drive of a track about sinking into love.
33. Daughter of Swords, Money Hits
We waited six years for Alex Sauser-Monnig’s sophomore album “Alex” and it was worth it. The bouncy “Money Hits” was actually only the third of four singles they released from the LP, but it’s also some of the most pure fun we saw in what was otherwise a pretty heavy year.
32. A Different Thread, Amaranth
ADT’s new album “Over Again” isn’t due out for another five months – which is weird to say, because Alicia and Robert spent all of this year teasing it with one great single after another. My favorite is “Amaranth,” inspired by a resilient flower they spotted growing in a sidewalk crack in the middle of a Brooklyn winter – but you could just as easily swap it out for “Come On Home Molly” or “Sweet and the Burn.” (Or “Sorrow and the Joy,” which might actually be my least favorite of the six but has way more Spotify streams than the other five. So what do I know?)
31. Rafael Green, Food For Worms
With its intricate melody and time signature, “Food For Worms” – the highlight of Green’s EP “Solace” – may be the most complex song on this list, a dreamy slow-building track that Nick Drake would have been proud to call his own. (All part of the plan: “Sometimes I wonder, ‘how do I get these incredibly talented people to play with me?’” Green told us. “And I think the secret is that I give them fun, challenging parts to play.”)
Green’s not the only great artist working in this medium: also try Alli Blois’ “Stake,” or Certain Seas’ “Horsefly,” or Brother Gareth’s “Everything Everywhere,” for starters.
30. Superintendo, Inhaling Confetti
There may be beauty in the routine, but there’s nothing routine here: this five-minute tour de force is about as complicated as pop-punk is ever going to get.
29. A Man Who Lived, I Need To Boogie
“I got the blues and I need to boogie, and you look like a nice clean cover band…” Greg Peterson released three full albums in 2025 alone, but the best single track was this haunting ode to late-night loneliness.
28. ElBart, R.N.B.
ElBart’s 2025 output consisted of two full albums and ten standalone singles, including “R.N.B.,” one of the best local hip-hop tracks of the year. (No, it doesn’t stand for “rhythm and blues.”)
27. Taxicab Preacher, Better
Technically a 2024 release, but I didn’t discover it till early this year so I’m counting it. “Better” has been a staff favorite at 97.9 The Hill for months, capped by one of the most cathartic, anthemic, rousing sing-along choruses we heard all year.
26. The Auxiliary, Hemisphere
Electric as neon and smooth as honey, Russell Howard’s project started strong and keeps hitting new levels with every new release, and the synth-drenched “Hemisphere” was their best yet. (Honorable mention to the lower-fi but similarly-vibed “Curtains” by Even Still – the solo project of Brodie Hargiss, who’s barely out of high school but rapidly on the rise.)
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