Best New Music: November 2025 (Part 2)

Catch up on part one here!

View the Substack version of this piece here!

#5: AHOF, The Passage
This comeback is reassuring proof that WHO WE ARE was not a one-off. AHOF continue to channel the feelings that come with embarking on a new life chapter in special and refreshingly nuanced ways. Their songs do not convey excitement without some nervousness; they stay sounding upbeat yet cautious, young and eager works in progress. “Run at 1.5x Speed” sums it up: “This feeling I’ve never known before is so good”! Enjoying an in-between life stage is what the trailer for The Passage and the "Pinocchio" music video are all about. In the trailer, the boys work on the backgrounds and rehearse for a school play. One of them does not get off the floor after falling while practicing choreography; he looks deflated and disappointed in himself. The others appear to be kicked out when a group of older students approaches with a look that says, “This is our turf! Get lost!” After being made to feel small, they regain their smiles when sprinting towards a glowing light, the entrance to an alternate world. AHOF’s ultimate achievement, though, ends up being in the “real world,” in that crooked and incomplete school play setup. They approach and offer a hand to the boy who fell, and the nine members go on to be each other’s light, rather than be preoccupied with chasing the light of a dream world’s entrance.

“Nine dreams gathered as one… Let’s jump up high and paint our scribbles together,” they decide in the song “Everything is Love,” which describes shining brightly while holding hands. They decide they will be “Writing tomorrow [to be] as bright as today” in “The Sleeping Diary,” and in “Run at 1.5x Speed,” they say the most specific level of navigation they need is just a “bright smile” for a light source. The most significant light of all turns out to be the glow of the moon, which becomes their spotlight in "Pinocchio" as they dance in an environment that is otherwise pitch-black. 

In addition to the moon and all of the references to “scribbling” and “shining” together, the most notable symbolism comes from Pinocchio’s blink-and-miss-it presence in the eponymous video. He plays a very minor role, only appearing after being summoned by an AHOF member’s magical light beam, shot via bow and arrow into the night sky. AHOF remain the stars of their story, and they are far more emotionally invested in each other than they are emotionally attached to any role (like that of “Pinocchio”) through which they can compare or contrast their ideal selves, or to any setting (like their “workshop” that might not actually be theirs anymore) that they could claim as their own. The moral of The Passage, its trailer, and the "Pinocchio" music video is that some of the best journeys are those that occur internally, which is why layered emotions are prioritized over a desire to explore or finish working on any specific surroundings. 

#4: Haezee, UNLOCKED
UNLOCKED is a multi-genre marvel about the messy mysteries of a life worth living. It assesses how one loses and regains autonomy through light-related symbolism that gradually progresses. Haezee goes from describing a romantic partner as a light source in her life (“You illuminate my darkness,” she sings in “LOVING YOU MAKES NO SENSE”), to adding a negative connotation to that description (“You blinded my sight,” she realizes in “TWO BROKEN SOULS”), to realizing that making someone else her light makes her the shadow (“Like a shadow following you silently… I’m slowly withering in your afterglow,” she sings in “SO BE IT”), to admitting that reversing the roles is easier said than done (in “OST,” she promises, “I’ll still leave the lights on for you”), to finally regaining her own light (from “PICK A SIDE”: “Every time I find myself, I glow”). She sings about reengaging with a toxic relationship countless times, but she acknowledges that the number of times she reconnects with her inner light can also be countless. The desire to try again and again, whether in terms of making a relationship work or finding her true self, is the epitome of this album’s spirit. A related core theme is the lack of a clear endpoint to her efforts; the answers to her questions about the nature of love and the meaning of life always remain at least somewhat unknowable. Therefore, UNLOCKED never fully closes the lid on its state of wondering mixed with wandering, as Haezee questions how loyalty is proven (“PROVE”), prays that no one asks for cut-and-dry answers about her life (“LOVING YOU MAKES NO SENSE,” “PICK A SIDE”), throws herself into mutually lustful but also mutually destructive encounters (“TWO BROKEN SOULS,” “LOCK IT IN”), and sometimes makes an effort to go easy on herself (“IT’S OK TO FEEL BLUE”). All the while, she uses ballads and the rich textures of 90’s and early-aughts hip-hop and R&B well, making certain arrangements feel as timeless as her existential questions. 

UNLOCKED is ultimately a story of being more than overcoming. It explores how life’s harmonies can be found in the most seemingly out-of-tune places and scenarios, hence some purposefully untuned, old instruments incorporated into some of the tracks! The best instrumental of them all, though, is in “What’s Life.” (Notably, there is no question mark in that title; Haezee does not really seek a specific answer.) The piano moves with the string orchestra, as she soulfully sings,  “What’s life? / Children learning how to cry / Praying to stars and the sky / Feeling alive / Never knowing why.”

#3: MIYEON, MY, Lover
The fictional story told through these songs and videos is about the eternal tragedy awaiting those whose love becomes conflated with possession. The exposition is laid out in “Reno,” and MIYEON gives the opening monologue, which says in part, “I’m blocking my ears. Some moments remain vivid. I can’t forget him. When aiming with the gun -” The sentence is cut short by the sound of a shot, and the music video shows MIYEON pulling the trigger. However, despite an actual gun at her feet, the MIYEON in this black-and-white story simply makes finger gun gestures, which prove to be just as effective. The rippling consequences of the shooting unfold, and the camera backs up to reveal a wider scene of feuds and flying debris. Subsequent scenes recall what happened that night through a nebulous patchwork, with choreography, lighting, and acting sequences sometimes taking turns and sometimes working together to reenact that night’s events. 

The versions of MIYEON in different scenes and outfits can be interpreted as different attempts to create psychologically satisfying distance between herself and the “real” culprit. MIYEON, the girl in the casual clothes and messy updo, can calm down by convincing herself she didn’t do it; the girl who looks like her but is in a dress with her hair left down did. (After all, the MIYEON wearing a dress rises from the middle of a circle of dancers the second someone falls off of a balcony and hits the ground, implying her rise comes from his demise.) She can also justify what has happened by revising her memory to make herself the victim, hence a version of her panicking when a bloody, severed hand reaches towards her car window (never mind the fact that this car is the one she smashes with a hammer in another scene, presumably to destroy some crime scene evidence in it). In addition to convincing herself “I’m the victim” or “It wasn’t me,” a third argument MIYEON considers is, “It was me, but I’m just insane.” After all, she has sporadic fits of giggles, and part of the dance routine involves being escorted down from an elevated platform, a “stage” that is the roof of the crime scene car, now lined with lights and made a purposeful part of her act. With the “I’m insane” argument, she flaunts what she’s done, rather than conceal it. As she sings in “Reno,” “I’m the one who will be his last love,” “Finally, our relationship can last forever,” and “This feeling’s not a crime… I’m innocent, love’s like a venom.”

The songs after “Reno” describe the aftermath of the killing through lyrics about assessing the damage and reconciling her lover’s physical absence with his remaining and all-consuming presence in MIYEON’s mind. “[Y]ou mockingly call me again / So I can never escape,” she sings in “Say My Name.” Words like “A winter without you is colder than any other… Boy, why did I love you?” express her remaining shock and inability to comprehend how quickly what her reality looks like has been thrown upside-down. (The winter reference is particularly notable when remembering that snow falls in both the “F.F.L.Y” and “Reno” music videos. Plus, the “F.F.L.Y” music video features wedding-like veils covering the tokens of a relationship, symbolizing a masking of them as much as a true tribute to them.)

Regardless of what MIYEON tells herself about what really happened and the myriad of visual formats she uses while doing so, at the end of the day, the key lines worth remembering are “I’m the one who will be his last love” and “I’m blocking my ears… Some moments remain vivid.” The silence is haunting and heavy, hovering like MIYEON describes her own presence as doing in “Space Invader.” She sings in a way that indicates she is finally more fully grasping the gravity of what she’s done by taking him off of the Earth, leaving her to float through life alone.

The song “Petal Shower” is an apparent attempt to turn over a new leaf, comforting herself with the thought that fear is “just an illusion” and that she can feel light as a feather again by simply blocking out the burdens of her past: “It’s time to leave behind the season I’ve stayed in for so long.” But the last song, “Show,” speaks to the illogic in the assumption that MIYEON can just move on from this. “Show” represents the traumatic loop she is stuck in and serves as a refrain to the expository “Reno.” “Reno” and “Show” are both about the memories that MIYEON cannot get out of her head no matter how much she wishes she could, the sights so jarring that she simply cannot look away each time they replay.

What makes MIYEON’s character particularly interesting are the questionable roots of her remorse. She would play a more sympathetic character if she just sang about feeling lonely and regretful, but her “woe is me” attitude comes across differently given the fact that she has done this to herself. When she sings about regret, it is not so much due to a moral conversion as it is a myopic annoyance with how lonely and empty life feels now.

MY, Lover is a layered look at what drives people to deceive both themselves and one another. It subverts the standard breakup album, spinning a fictional yarn that weaves a fascinating web worth unraveling in endless directions.

#2: SUNMI, HEART MAID
SUNMI’s take on “virgin ghost” folklore, sequel-crafting, and alter ego implications make for an inspired confluence of influences on a paranormal tale.

In 2023’s “STRANGER” era, SUNMI played several characters: one akin to Frankenstein, one akin to Frankenstein’s monster, and another akin to a bystander, a maid working at a mansion, sweeping its yard in multiple videos. In one of those videos, the maid picked up a nail on the ground and put it in her ear. Treating that loose screw as her bluetooth device makes the HEART MAID preview video seem less random, as SUNMI once again turns trash into treasure! She scours trash bags and finds and turns an old laptop and earbuds into her prized possessions. They become her conduits for connecting to the physical world, which is important to both the trash-sifting SUNMI and her other characters.

Like how SUNMI played both the dominant and subordinate characters in STRANGER, in HEART MAID, she is both someone being possessed and someone doing the possessing. While her “assigned Grim Reaper” keeps tabs on her and chases after her when necessary in the “CYNICAL” music video, scenes where SUNMI is alone show her being quite capable of turning on herself! She becomes her own seance subject, and she masochistically brings her ghostly self back to the scene of her fatal accident. Obscuring the lines between characters further are the “CYNICAL” lyrics, which make it sound like SUNMI is the ghost who does the taunting and stalking, despite the music video showing her “assigned Reaper” doing those things to her.

Regardless of the nature of SUNMI’s presences, likening them to a ghost’s proves to be effective at addressing yet another version of SUNMI: the celebrity. A long list of lyrics that can be interpreted as coming from the mind of a ghost can also be interpreted as coming from the mind of a celebrity, as both crave “normal” human interactions and endure a sense of “real world” detachment. “She’s in the air… gone… Without leaving a single trace,” and “I’ll fly like the wind and fall into your arms,” she sings in “Tuberose.” “Do you remember?... The song we sang while holding tight?,” she asks in “CYNICAL.” “Can you hold my hand?,” she asks in “BLUE!” “Will you run to me and hold me?,” she asks in “Happy af” (and actually does in the “Balloon in Love” video). An apparition and a fleeting state like fame are surprisingly comparable, and both also come to mind when SUNMI addresses the nature of smiling. She wonders how much smiling comes from a sense of being required to as an idol, compared to how often smiles are “pure,” like the one she sings her appreciation for at the album’s end (“A long long night”).

Part of the final text on the screen in the “CYNICAL” video reads as follows: “Life lasts longer in laughter than in cynicism.” Perhaps that is why the character in SUNMI’s musical world with the most dependable presence is the “HEART MAID,” the one tasked with emotional labor. Having to “clean up” other people’s emotions requires a thorough understanding of what it means to be human: how public perceptions form, how bonds tighten or loosen, and how to benefit from a subverted definition of “cynicism.”

#1: YEONJUN, NO LABELS: PART 01
YEONJUN has done something truly remarkable: make a compelling body of work with a concept that is the lack of one! 

When everything is something, nothing is that thing. For example, if everything was “big,” nothing would be “small,” and if everything was “great,” nothing would truly be “great.” Descriptive terms require relativity, and so by making every setting a stage, nothing is really distinguished as an actual stage in YEONJUN’s short film. Similarly, by making every plot interpretation possible, nothing is “what really happens.” When everything is a transition, nothing is a transition, and when everything is connected, the word “connected” loses its meaning. Once “NO LABELS” apply anymore, the audience has to just absorb what they see and hear. They have to go with the flow alongside YEONJUN, and that flow is ceaseless, both in NO LABELS: PART 01 and its corresponding short film, which is loosely divided into three main parts that feature three of the album’s tracks. 

Whenever YEONJUN’s role seems to become clearer, something blurs it again. In the multi-song video, he plays a rockstar, with screaming fans helping him crowd-surf and chasing after his vehicle. But he also plays a loser, someone who gets punched when he tries to flirt, falls from tall heights more than once, alludes to running into a glass door, and looks like a deer in headlights when a camera flash goes off! YEONJUN’s role outside of any video plot is also kept indeterminable. He presents himself as an astoundingly agile performer at times, but his dancing at others is just jerking his head and body around awkwardly to a beat change. He presents himself as a singer and rapper with endless energy at times, but other times, he falls into more sluggish, mumble-like territory. And he presents himself as the cameraman, but only briefly. When looking at the mini-movie in a broader sense, it does not suit any labels; it is not long enough for “short film” to sound apt, but it is not a traditional music video either.

The listening experience matches the mini-movie’s effect on audiences. Listeners are just along for the ride, a ride that sounds aimless as much as it sounds purposeful; a ride that slows down and speeds up on a whim; a ride that features funk, rock, electronica, hip-hop, and pop that come and go with neither preface nor send-off. The track list aids this effect, with the beginning song in the mini-movie being the final song on the album and vice versa. Yet another attribute that aids this effect is how unclear YEONJUN’s level of control over the sound is. For example, the instrumental slows down when he wants it to in “Coma,” but his calls to “Speed it up” and “Slow it down” in “Do It” are ignored. His volume modulation also has reliability that comes and goes in phases, and his music equipment routinely sounds like it is whirring down for the last time before gaining a second wind, then a third, then a fourth… YEONJUN himself runs the gamut regarding how full of life he seems, belting out songs like “Talk to You” alongside screaming guitars but sounding lethargic and disinterested during parts of “Do It” and “Coma.” Two more ways that YEONJUN does things undefinably: makes terminology related to song formatting obsolete (for example, what sounds like an interlude might actually be a bridge, or what seems like the climax might also be an outro) and puts himself in both secondary and primary roles (since the ways he sounds like he is interrupting himself, volleying parts of a lyric back and forth as if talking to someone else, make him the main act and his backup hype person). 

NO LABELS: PART 01 is the product of intuition and intention being fully aligned. It is YEONJUN in a flow state that is as relentless as it is relaxed, as next-level as it is nonchalant, and as worthy of positive labels as it is determined to deflect them!

Stay tuned for the “Best of the Year” rankings and reviews, and catch up on past “Best of” writing here!