Baltimore is constantly shaping and influencing popular music more than you probably realize.

This year alone, fingerprints from Charm City made their mark on multiple projects. One of the biggest R&B songs of the year, Kehlani’s “Folded,” was produced by D.K. The Punisher. All Time Low’s latest single “The Weather” is all over alternative radio. Nasg Chaz’s music was featured on Cardi B’s Instagram. The massively famous streamer IShowSpeed sampled Jimmy Jones’s Baltimore club classic “Watch Out for the Big Girl.” Recent transplant Bartees Strange made a beautiful song called “Baltimore” about his newly adopted hometown with chart-topping producer Jack Antonoff.

And the 10 artists below made some of the best albums of 2025, from here or anywhere else in the world.

10. Natalie Brooke, ‘Measured in Moments’

The passage of time is a recurring lyrical theme on Natalie Brooke’s full-length debut, turning up again and again on songs like “Forever, Forever” and “Nostalgia Brings a Special Type of Pain.” Time even seems to stand still throughout the album, as tracks that unfold over six or 10 minutes somehow manage to feel like concise, tightly structured pop songs that never wear out their welcome. Brooke is a classically trained pianist, sometimes switching to synthesizer or even keytar to lead her four-piece band on prog rock tangents that always seem to operate in service of her words and melodies.

Standout track: “Lucky Enough”

9. Lor Mark, ‘Still Figuring It Out’

Baltimore’s street rap scene is full of subtle regional variations on what young rappers in other cities are doing: names that begin with “Lor” instead of “Lil” to reflect the quirks of the Baltimore accent, lots of local geography in the lyrics, and production influenced by Atlanta trap and Brooklyn drill with a heavier emphasis on foreboding melodies and 12th-note hi-hat patterns.

Lor Mark is a rising star in that scene, releasing no fewer than four albums in 2025 and appearing on Kooda’s summer club smash “Milly Dance.” The best of those albums, “Still Figuring It Out,” features Lor Mark in a more contemplative mood, rapping over soul samples and paying tribute to his friend and collaborator Harfordrdtay, who was fatally shot in 2023.

Standout track: “Behind That Name”

8. Georgia Beatty, ‘The Book of Stars: Collection of the Heir’

Georgia Beatty’s second album “The Book of Stars: Collection of the Heir” is sold with an actual illustrated companion book that tells the mystical tale of the Air Queen’s journey to Earth. A chapter of prose corresponds to each song alongside beautiful ink drawings by Rachel Wojnar. It’s an impressive mixed-media work that helps conjure a whole intriguing world out of Beatty’s spare, entrancing arrangements of cello, guitar and vocals.

Standout track: “Queen’s Cradle”

7. Micah E. Wood, ‘You, Me, the Reign’

Micah E. Wood has exhaustively documented Baltimore’s musical community as a photographer over the past decade, publishing the book “Scene Seen: Baltimore Band Portraits 2016-2024” earlier this year. He also released his highly collaborative third album, on which Wood unsurprisingly knows how to effectively frame the voices of locals like rapper Eze Jackson and singer Eyas in his own music. The danceable indie pop songs on “You, Me, the Reign” tell a love story against the backdrop of political chaos and economic inequality, putting a personal and big-hearted spin on the unprecedented times we’re all getting through together.

Standout track: “Wunder”

6. Splitsville, ‘Mobtown’

The Power Pop Hall of Fame isn’t a physical place, but the lovingly maintained website is selective about who defines the genre. Baltimore’s Splitsville is one of just 31 acts that has been canonized, alongside power pop greats like Big Star and Matthew Sweet. “Mobtown,” the band’s first album since 2003, is less a love letter to the band’s hometown than a thoughtful meditation on the complex social issues and historical context behind every landmark and neighborhood.

Standout track: “On Federal Hill”

5. Nourished By Time, ‘The Passionate Ones’

The funky, eclectic DIY pop that Marcus Brown recorded in his parents’ Baltimore basement for Nourished By Time’s 2023 album “Erotic Probiotic 2” attracted so much critical acclaim that he signed to XL Recordings, the U.K.-based label that launched the careers of Adele and M.I.A. “The Passionate Ones” was partly recorded in proper studios in New York and London but maintains the same unique homemade aesthetic. Brown, who performs under the Nourished By Time name, writes with disarming honesty about the pressures of his thriving career: “I dreamed this life, now I’m scared to live it.”

Standout track: “9 2 5”

4. Dijon, ‘Baby’

A decade ago, Dijon Duenas began his career in Maryland, recording as half of the duo Abhi//Dijon and performing at Baltimore underground venues like The Crown. Today, the mononymous Dijon is based in Los Angeles, co-wrote this year’s massive Justin Bieber singles “Daisies” and “Yukon,” acted in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” and was a musical guest this month on “Saturday Night Live.” In the middle of that flurry of activity, Dijon’s second solo album “Baby” was a revelation, a glitchy and stylized yet intimate and soulful take on modern R&B.

Standout track: “Another Baby!”

3. Flock of Dimes, ‘The Life You Save’

Jenn Wasner has often done more with less — creating a formidable wall of sound with her long-running duo Wye Oak, or programming electronic backdrops for her songs on early releases by her solo project Flock of Dimes. But she’s also collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, contributing this year to both Dijon’s “Baby” and Bon Iver’s “Sable, Fable.” Her third Flock of Dimes album features a larger ensemble of backing players to great effect. Organs and violins and saxophones envelop Wasner’s distinctive voice, and her wild, distorted guitar leads contrast beautifully with Alan Good Parker’s pedal steel.

Standout track: “The Enemy”

2. Turnstile, ‘Never Enough’

A quiet moment on the bridge of “Look Out for Me,” the six-minute centerpiece of Turnstile’s fourth album, samples dialogue from a 2006 episode of HBO’s “The Wire”: a gut-wrenching moment when teenager Randy (Maestro Harrell) has been failed by every adult in his life. Then, an insistent kick drum pulse enters the track, and the punk band takes a brief detour into Baltimore club music. Turnstile belongs to the world now, touring internationally, earning Grammy nominations, and scoring their first No. 1 hit on alternative radio with “Never Enough’s” title track. But the band keeps reminding us, with songs like “Look Out for Me” and events like May’s Wyman Park Dell benefit concert, that Baltimore made them who they are.

Standout track: “Look Out For Me”

1. Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals, ‘A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears’

“Been trying to die young so long I got old,” Brian Ennals raps with a chuckle over a seasick symphony of synthesizers. “My son got my face, I wonder if his DNA got the same mistakes.”

Ennals and producer/multi-instrumentalist Tariq “Infinity Knives” Ravelomanana confront you with a bizarre burst of noise or a disarmingly uncomfortable truth several times a minute on their third album as a duo. They set out to make a brief stopgap project to tide fans over until their next major work, but “A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears” instead turned out to be an avant garde hip-hop masterpiece that rivals and perhaps even surpasses their 2022 breakthrough, “King Cobra.”

Standout track: “Sometimes, Papi Chulo”