OK, one last 2025 feature to put a bow on the year (and cause we’re a little bit behind this year, tbh). In a year where so many movies felt engineered for taste-clustery, instant meme-ability, 2025’s best soundtracks did the opposite: they insisted on patience, texture, and mood that lingered long after the last cut to black. These weren’t just scores dutifully hitting story beats or playlists doing the heavy vibe lifting. They were living, breathing components of the films themselves—sometimes historically rooted, sometimes defiantly anachronistic, often both at once—pushing and pulling against what we thought we were watching.
READ MORE: The 150 Most Anticipated Films Of 2026
That tension is the connective tissue across this list: the way Ludwig Göransson folds period blues into modern-facing production on “Sinners,” or how Nine Inch Nails build a sleek, industrial cathedral for “Tron: Ares,” less a rock-star flex than a piece of world-building. Elsewhere, Hildur Guðnadóttir turns “Hedda” into something prickly and communal, while Johnny Greenwood keeps “One Battle After Another” raw, restless, and separated—music that doesn’t soothe so much as agitate the skin.
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Below are 20 picks we kept coming back to—some song-driven, some score-forward, all of them alive with intent. We’re not ranking them. Think of this as a map of the year’s most resonant sonic storytelling: music that doesn’t merely accompany images, but refracts them, reshapes them, and, at its best, makes you want to hit play again the moment the credits end.
“Sinners,” Ludwig Göransson
David Milch’s inimitable Western masterpiece “Deadwood” famously employed contemporary vulgarities in place of what cuss words people might actually have used in America’s frontier times; the thought was to shock the HBO series’ audience with the foul language they know, rather than risk making them laugh with such antiquated swears as “fopdoodle” and “bedswerver.” For the soundtrack to Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” Göransson follows a similar approach: he gives the audience a taste of both authentic Delta blues and Irish folk music, but broadly wraps up the sounds of the film’s period with a modern-facing production. Slapping a label of “soulful” on this collection of songs and score would be easy, but also lazy, because “Sinners’” soundtrack isn’t a product of soul alone, but of circumference–as enthusiastic to embrace the past as it is eager to receive the future. – AC
“The Plague,” Johan Lenox
The most remarkable quality of Lenox’s work on “The Plague’s” soundtrack is also its most easily bypassed: progression. Watching the film, one may con themselves into thinking that the eerie violin plucks and draws have been ever-present throughout, when in fact they don’t make their presence felt until deep into its running time–the point at which obnoxious boyish pranks become cruel and abusive, or rather, the point at which boyishness can no longer obscure cruelty and abuse. Charlie Polinger’s debut wields a dialect derived in part from horror cinema, because frankly, there’s little more horrifying than poorly supervised preteen boys erecting their own social hierarchies. But it’s Lenox’s contributions that emphasize the darkness baked into the withered old proverb that “boys will be boys.” – AC
“Hedda,” Hildur Guðnadóttir
Handfuls of 2025’s movie soundtracks fall under the umbrella of “jazzy,” each being influenced by this discipline and aesthetic in ways great and small. Only one 2025 movie soundtrack, however, is influenced by Cornelius Cardew and The Scratch Orchestra, the experimental 1960s musical group he founded comprising one part professional musicians and one part amateurs, and that’s “Hedda,” where Guðnadóttir wrangled everyone–everyone–from gaffers and boom operators and folks in the production office to join in singing during shooting. The effect is to bring these sequences to prickly, unvarnished life, blended with the percussive contributions of Robyn Schulkowsky and Joey Baron, an experimental percussion duo. Their work gives “Hedda” not a pulse but a sense of danger, exactly what Nia DaCosta needs for facilitating Tessa Thompson’s spiral into self-indulgent chaos. – AC
“Avatar: Fire and Ash,” Simon Franglen
Who doesn’t love an Easter egg hunt? Franglen, rebounding from his relatively restrained work on 2022’s “The Way of Water” soundtrack, decorates the “Fire and Ash” soundtrack with callbacks to the work of the great James Horner, bringing back themes and motifs from his masterful score on the original “Avatar” film; folded into Franglen’s overarching sound here, these bits function almost as reassurances, footnotes for the whimsy and magic that defined the first picture in the series. The reminders are necessary: “Fire and Ash” sheds these qualities in exchange for a booming orchestral character, tying into the third act of “The Way of Water.” There is pomp and grandeur in Franglen’s work here, and especially menace–a suitable introduction for the Mangkwan tribe and their love of all things that smolder. – AC
“Tron: Ares,” Nine Inch Nails
For best enjoyment of this particular soundtrack: set your expectations. This is not a Nine Inch Nails album. It’s a soundtrack–yes, a soundtrack composed and produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, but nonetheless a soundtrack, meaning the duo is constrained somewhat by the assignment. If you can swallow that semi-bitter pill, their songwriting befits the techno-realm constructed in the movie, paying homage to Daft Punk’s soundtrack for the last “Tron” film, 2010’s “Tron: Legacy,” while giving “Tron: Ares” their own signature. Think of Nine Inch Nails’ grainier industrial tone and the intricate chord progressions Reznor and Ross are known for on a broader scale; top that with an overwhelming cinematic sweep from track to track. That’s the ballpark the pair have aimed for with “Tron: Ares,” where they’ve knocked out one of 2025’s most engrossing soundtracks independent of the film it belongs to. – AC
