Za ovaj godišnji presek regionalnih albuma, pozvali smo Aleksu Simića, kreatora koji kroz svoj TikTok profil pažljivo prati i kontekstualizuje savremenu muzičku scenu u regionu.
Aleksa JovanovićDecember 19, 2025
Annual overviews of regional music today function less as competitions and more as attempts to understand the moment we’re living in. The albums that last aren’t necessarily the ones dominating the numbers, but those that manage to clearly articulate the emotions, identities, and tensions of the contemporary regional context. They reflect both personal experience and a broader social framework, which is what makes them relevant beyond the moment of their release. That’s precisely why I’ve always found it interesting how and where I discover the music that stays with me throughout the year, and whose way of thinking about music feels close to my own. One of those moments happened completely by chance, while doomscrolling on TikTok. I first noticed Aleksa Simić through a video in which he recommended listening to Jymenik’s then-new album. It turned out to be my favorite regional release of the year, but more importantly, that video made me pay attention to the way Aleksa talks about music. Beyond the fact that we share a name, it quickly became clear that we think in similar ways. We don’t view music in isolation, but in relation to the moment it’s created, the context in which it’s heard, and the personal experience it carries. His reflections don’t stop at sound alone, but move into a wider cultural and emotional reading of albums, treating them as snapshots of society, generations, and personal turning points.
That’s exactly why Aleksa is selecting the best regional albums of 2025 this year. His choice doesn’t aim to explain the regional scene as a whole, but to portray it through albums that, each in their own way, captured the spirit of 2025. What follows isn’t a ranked list, but a carefully guided narrative of how the region sounds, feels, and thinks today.
When an artist like Jymenik invites us into the most intimate parts of her soul, into a hermetic, melancholic world, all that’s left for us to do is catch fragments of what we feel, surrender to it, and stop asking too many questions. A singular Balkan vocal cuts through the haze of hard, contemporary global R&B, trap, and electronic sounds. Jymenik is a reminder that the world often exists right there, in our own thorny backyard.
Standout tracks: Drugi svet, kodateznam, Zidovi, Nespokoj
Relja is a paradox: art, style, and sexual freedom on one side, and scorching asphalt, the Balkans, and rigid masculinity on the other. Packing all of this into a single persona seems almost impossible, yet after ten years we finally got his debut album, a direct embodiment of everything mentioned above. His tender and fearless other half, Nikolija Jovanović, alongside him is responsible for the most controversial moment in Balkan pop culture this year. Behind the erotic façade, in the song and video for “Baš ti se sviđa,” they question whether sex, intimacy, respect, and closeness are things we can, and want to, find in one person. Hotel Jugoslavija goes beyond that, but also serves as a litmus test for which themes the Balkan public is still bound to stumble over.
Standout tracks: Dobri umiru mladi, Sex Mashina, Gde je Bog
If modern relationships could be described in three words, they would be energy, melancholy, and transience, all distilled into the image of crying on the dance floor. While common in Western pop music, that image in the Balkans is usually reserved for tears shed in a kafana, somewhere after 2 a.m. The duo Buč Kesidi, however, focus on those first tears on their album Moderne veze, and through its poetics and sound, a new generation is forming, one that understands perfectly well what this duo is singing about.
Standout tracks: Moderne veze, Curimo po asfaltu, Suze u očima
If the sound of contemporary music in the former Yugoslav region had to be distilled into a single artist, one that seamlessly merges the local and the global, the melancholic and the energetic, it would be Senidah. Out of that collision of seemingly incompatible elements emerges her third studio album, Sen i Dah. Whether it’s the synthwave and ’80s-inspired sound of “Lanci ljubavi” and “Zovi me,” Balkan pop-folk meeting modern Latin rhythms on “Delija,” “Idi gade,” “Slutim,” and “Led i vatra,” or the fusion of sevdah with hard electronic textures on “Phuket” and “Sunce sije,” Senidah stands as the common denominator, fully inhabiting each of these roles. She lives and creates in the duality of shadow and breath, of shadow and life.
Standout tracks: Moj si high, Omen, Sunce sije
When a music album becomes the identity card of a street, a city, or an entire neighborhood, you know you’re dealing with a work that will leave a mark. Slobodan Veljković Coby’s debut album, shaped by the sounds of the South, almost unconsciously explores the central psychological themes of the modern Balkan man: nostalgia, roots and family, distance, loneliness, vices, and the search for meaning. In the end, it concludes that his life is both at once, both a Gift and a Curse, and chooses to embrace and celebrate them equally. There’s something unmistakably Balkan in that, too.
Standout tracks: Merak, U daljini, Siroče
There’s a distinctive, laid-back tone in the voices of Balkan millennials, an unusual mix of idealism, sarcasm, humor, and cynicism. When that sensibility belongs to artists, at its best it gives us Artan Lili. Fortunately, they’re never overly serious, and are always willing to play with rock, electronic music, pop, and hip hop while rejecting all norms. Nikola Vranjković, Coby, Cane, and Juice appearing on the same album is anything but compromise or pandering to the “lazy ear” of a hypothetical listener.
Standout tracks: Maca, Rokenrol posle rokenrola, Otrov
Perhaps the most popular release on the alternative music scene, it’s proof that quality will always find its way to an audience, no matter how understated, different, or uncompromising it may be. On the album 25, Marko Louis brings together exactly that: quality and a sound that bridges both sides of the Balkan music scene, the old and the new, the mainstream and the alternative. With his unmistakable voice, 25 explores nostalgia, love, family, and society in a way rarely heard among a younger generation of male artists, who often convey similar emotions more rawly, more aggressively, and with far less introspection.
Standout tracks: Bulbule, Vatra u mraku, Moj mol
The coming of age of Balkan club trap has rarely felt this focused, cohesive, and refreshing. Synth-pop, dance, and rap collide on the most fully realized release yet from the masked, mysterious artist who, despite hiding his face, reveals more than many of his contemporaries have been willing to. On his second studio album, following the classic rapper flex about blue blood, anxiety becomes the central theme, a concept that would have felt foreign to the everyday listener just a few decades ago. For that very reason, what Devito has to say is worth listening to, because on this release, the real masks have undoubtedly fallen.
Standout tracks: Nema spavanja, Emotivna bol, 35 stepeni
If 2025 could be summed up in a single sentence, it would be the year mainstream artists realized how essential it is to find their own sound and boldly carve out their path, staying aware of what audiences love while still offering a clear concept and a personal signature. At the same time, underground artists recognized that social media allows them to reach wider audiences without the limitations imposed by traditional media and their genre or stylistic boundaries.
Looking ahead, the coming year already feels full of promise, marked by singles released on their own or as part of EPs, mixtapes, and album reissues. From all of these artists, we can expect a powerful 2026, along with albums that will undoubtedly shape the musical pulse of the region and continue to define what the modern sound of the Balkans looks like in what is now the second quarter of the 21st century.
