The point of having so many Gremmy Awards categories to something that most people just think of as "surf" is to best compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. And so what we have here is the wildberries at the bottom of the basket. Unidentifiable, unique, possibly poisonous. Some of them play with our idea of surf music, some of them ultimately are just recommendations to surf fans.

It's funny how things have changed over the course of doing the Gremmys. I once had a small band called Khruangbin win this category, now I feel like bands that sound like Khruangbin are kind of their own genre, and I'm hesitant to include them here. Bands like Chicha Libre and Sonido Gallo Negro that pushed cumbia and chicha felt like cousins to surf music, and while sometimes that still feels like the case, cumbia has experienced such a vibrant revival in a manner that often feels very separate from surf. And I think that's amazing. Even if it doesn't seem to have paid dividends for surf music, I love that we're living in a world that seems more open to instrumentals in general. Maybe this will mean fewer people yelling "SING SOMETHING" at shows.

But the most important thing that I'm saying here is that if you took any of my Gremmy categories seriously, please take this one less seriously. Think of this only as things that I, a fan of surf music, might think other fans of surf music would find enjoyable.

The reason that I subdivide the Gremmy Awards into so many different categories is because reverbed instrumental guitar music can be and always has been so many different things. "Latin'ia" has a different appeal to it than "Bombora". I often refer to this category as the music with more of a punk and metal influence "added into it", but isn't that circular? You're not going to find much music with the same dark intensity as "Misirlou" before it, and if you ask me you won't find a whole lot of that intensity for a while after! This is not some sort of infusion to weaponize surf music, it's following surf music further down a path that it started. 

Modern surf is always a large category because most of us by default are modern people doing modern things, creating modern works. So it's always going to be a big category. And its not really something you can define: it's not traditional surf, it's not too aggressive, but it's still surf, and that amorphousness also means that there's a lot of things that you could call "modern surf". So what I'm getting at here is hoo boy, do I have a lot of things on here. And when I have this many things you might think "well did anything not make the cut? Absolutely, there were a lot of good and even great surf records not on this list, a few that felt like snubs, and the crazy thing is I wanted to cut more. But the thing is, I couldn't! I felt like nearly all of these in their own way had a claim for the top spot. And especially interesting, they all brough something unique to the table, not even an opportunity for one to "cancel another out".

And I guess that's a good problem to have. So here are TWELVE very interesting and excellently crafted surf records, and one that after a LOT of thought, I decided I liked the most. In no specific order except for the last one.

60's surf music is magical, and while countless people have modified it and expanded it, nobody has ever replaced it. For some, it's a guiding light to strive towards. I think that was the idea behind these albums, at least to some extent.

Finally, we've been done with 2025 for a whole month and I'm ready to roll out the 2025 Gremmy Awards. These are my favorite surf releases of 2025, divided up into several categories so that I'm not comparing apples with oranges. Except I definitely am and you shouldn't take these categories too seriously. You shouldn't take any of this seriously, it's just one guy's opinions.

So it's May and my attempt to finish the Gremmys earlier each year is clearly going in the opposite direction despite this being the easiet category. I barely have to do anything! I simply call upon some friends in the surf world and see what they think of this year's crop of surf music so that they may either validate my opinions or alleviate the guilt I feel from omitting certain releases. I'd like to point out that the blame for the tardiness lies on me, and that a few of these were submitted 1-3 months ago.

This is a category for things that don't fit into other categories or that I feel need to be mentioned as notes about the year. Some of these show up year-to-year, some don't. It's freeform!

This category is probably the most questionable one, but also very fun. Especially this year. The records that go far enough off the beaten path of surf that they don't seem eligible to be discussed in the other categories, but shouldn't go unmentioned. While they're not judged on how weird they are, hearing something new is always fun.

This can also be a hard one to judge since there's basically zero apples to apples comparison. So I try to remind myself of my guiding principle for each category: what do I think I'll listen to and enjoy the most?