From a folk murder ballad to an impassioned call for peace, Guardian writers pick their favourite lesser-heard tracks of the year

• The pick of 2025’s film, music, art, TV, stage and games, chosen by Guardian critics and writers

There is a sense of deep knowing and calm to Not Offended, the lone song released this year by the Danish-Montenegrin musician (also an earlier graduate of the Copenhagen music school currently producing every interesting alternative pop star). To warmly droning organ that hangs like the last streak of sunlight above a darkening horizon, Milovic assures someone that they haven’t offended her – but her steady Teutonic tenderness, reminiscent of Molly Nilsson or Sophia Kennedy, suggests that their actions weren’t provocative so much as evasive. Strings flutter tentatively as she addresses this person who can’t look life in the eye right now. “I see you clearly,” Milovic sings, as the drums kick in and the strings become full-blooded: a reminder of the ease that letting go can offer. Laura Snapes

Valentina Magaletti drummed for her life, Sarz got hips swinging and Daniel Avery got slinky and serpentine: our writers pick their favourite unsung LPs from 2025
• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

Towards the end of Tether, there is a song called Silk and Velvet; its sound is characteristic of Annahstasia’s debut album. Fingerpicked acoustic guitar and her extraordinary vocals – husky, expressive, elegant – are front and centre. The arrangement is subtle but not drearily tasteful: arching noise that could be feedback or a distorted pedal steel guitar, which gradually swells into something climactic before dying away. The lyrics, meanwhile, concern themselves with selling out: “Maybe I’m an analyst, an antisocial bitch,” she sings. “Who sells her dreams for money.”

Strange folk, lost pop, disco oddities and, um, Dido – here are the forgotten tracks that became this year’s most replayed revelations
• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

I grew up listening to the Mamas and the Papas’ hits but had never heard their albums before this year. I had no idea anything as creepy as Mansions lurked within their sunny oeuvre. Its sound is ominous, its mood one of stoned paranoia, its subject rich hippies sequestered in the titular luxury homes, haunted by the sensation that the flower-power dream is going wrong.