scrmbl contributor Patrick St. Michel runs an email newsletter called Make Believe Mailer, an offshoot of his long-running blog Make Believe Melodies. Every week, he shares essays and round-ups of new Japanese music, from J-pop to independent releases, including albums that might have flown under listeners' radar. Here are some of the highlights from the past month, shared with readers of scrmbl.

Fuki Kitamura — Spira1oop

Electronic tinkerer Fuki Kitamura’s debut album shows how the past shouldn’t be stuck in place, but rather something closer to putty ready to be stretched out and shaped into something new. At its core, the music on Spira1oop nods to yesteryear — the unorthodox clatter of techno-pop, the seaside groove of city pop, the refinement of classical music, the freewheeling energy of jazz — but refuses to let them settle, instead sculpting it into something unpredictable and fully her own.

Part of the draw is the out-of-time collision playing out over these just-shy-of 40 minutes. Kitamura’s zig-zagging pop mutations exist in the same lane as a Hakushi Hasegawa while many of her textural touches remind of netlabel names such as Tomggg or Avec Avec. Yet she’s stated in interviews her core influence is Akiko Yano, which equally comes through in the creative beats and sonic variety coming together to form oddball pop. A song like “looping second” features a bunch of elements zooming across one another — choruses of Kitamura in falsetto, basslines, synth stardust and strings — yet everything collides just right to make something catchy. Some instances like “menou” come closer to being overwhelming, but moments like that are balanced out by piano ballads or bossa-nova interpretations that bring the fantasy of city pop into 2020s reality.

It’s an album splitting the difference between the badlands of left-field experimentation and proper pop, but Spiral1oop’s finest moments retrofit familiar sounds into the contemporary and ambitious. “mirror” uses layers of Kitamura to create a dizzying song, a miniature sonic typhoon showcasing modern construction while feeling as sticky as the pop that came before owing to her voice. Late cut “wingbeatFreq” transforms all of this into a nearly eight-minute-long rave, highlighting both attention to detail and Kitamura’s ability to turn even an epic number into something overflowing with hooks. That’s what makes it one of 2025’s best — the references come through, but Kitamura fully warps them into works all her own. Listen above.

D.A.N. — Daydreaming

Functioning as one large piece rather than two shorter ones, this dispatch from the usually herky-jerky band D.A.N. finds them showing off a slower and more thoughtful side to its creation. “Daydreaming I” and “II” unfolds at the speed of reflection, with the beat strolling ahead and the guitar playing offering plenty of room for the vocals to sort of float overhead as the song’s structure changes. The second half features noisier elements and something approaching emotional release, but the group never lets it fully explode, focusing instead on the sonic journey that came before. Listen above.

sidenerds — wasurerarenai, sorega anata

Another one to add to the pile of great indie rock records coming out of Japan in 2025, though what separates the latest from quartet sidenerds is the vocal melodies dashing over the noise. Listening to the interlocking singing dashing through “Wasuretai” or the higher-pitched dramatics on closer “Urusei” makes me picture all the bigger labels champing at the bit to get this pop-adjacent delivery under their eyes. Yet what makes the band shine is how that radio-ready delivery is paired with emo-indebted guitar chug and the occasional surprise shift in time. It has a catchy element to it, but it’s hardly trying to conform. Listen above.

lazydoll — absence (fuzai)

It has been a signature year for a generation of Japanese underground creators who emerged during the pandemic, who used the internet to develop their sound before bringing it into the real world. Producer lazydoll’s fourth album joins releases from the likes of Peterparker69 and safmusic in showing just how far this community has come as 2025 draws to a close. Throughout absence (fuzai) it sounds like the music is slowly being scrapped off, with some songs such as “inton” being both coated in feedback and in a constant loop of start-stopping, like its waiting to malfunction completely. It isn’t a complete mess — see the surprisingly clear “noir” for something approaching a Tokyo underground lullaby, or “hitori” for straight-ahead rap — but the most compelling parts play with abrasive textures to help bring out the wistfulness within lazydoll’s style. Then there’s something like “kasabuta,” a jittery bit of dreaminess using the opening snippets of The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” to construct 2020s melancholy. It’s an emotional highpoint also hitting on the internet-age perspective artists like lazydoll bring. Listen above.

Swashi2 — SILLAGE

Vocaloid producer Swashi2’s debut album explores a fever-dream approach to song construction, with lithe dance-pop songs folding in and out of themselves. Swashi2 creates tracks darting ahead but which mutate in small ways throughout, whether its a synth going up a note or a synthesized voice seemingly melting in on itself (though they also throw in some slower moments…there’s a song about eating food playing out at half-speed, with sleep practically still in its eyes). The highlight is “Kosei Ni Natchatta ；；,” a darty examination of the quirks that define us and define us in the eyes of others boasting a melody both irresistible and unstable. Here's a 2025 highlight, and a reminder of the continued space for experimentation in Vocaloid. Listen above.