Do you think there’s no good protest music these days? So did I, until I started looking for it. Every month, I listen to it all, then select the best that relates to that month’s political news. Here’s the round-up for April 2025.
1. THE RESISTANCE COMPANY - RESISTANCE CO
US President Donald Trump proudly revealed his tariffs for countries worldwide on April 2, to global ridicule. The formula used was "like apples, oranges, a couple of cashews divided by 10 times four”, said one Wall Street veteran. A financial analyst said it "would be laughed out of a high school economics class". Even Trump's "first buddy", Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was scathing, publicly calling Trump's tariff architect, Peter Navarro, "Peter Retarrdo". Markets plunged, slashing workers' life savings worldwide. Three days later, millions rallied to protest against Trump, Musk and their Department of Government Efficiency's war on workers. The rallies came a day after radical New York punks The Resistance Company released their new EP. It features "Fuck Trump '25", a previous anthem they have updated to include the current US administration. "You know what to do," it seethes. "Fuck Elon Musk too!" LISTEN>>>
2. FEMI KUTI - JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE
Musk, the world's richest person, had wasted little time in removing $US60 billion ($95 billion) of USAid programs from the world's poor. "As a result," said Australian Baptist Minister Tim Costello on April 20, "an estimated 1,192,400 people, many in Africa, will die this year who otherwise would not have." Days earlier, Congolese group Kin’Gongolo Kiniata, who play instruments made from scrap metal, released their new album. On it, they protest the horrors of working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where cobalt is mined for Musk's Tesla electric cars. That LP was followed by the latest incendiary album from Femi Kuti, the son of legendary Nigerian protest singer Fela Kuti, on April 25. "I've been singing political songs for 38 years," said Femi, yet not much had changed in politics. In "Nigeria, it's gotten worse", he said. "Everybody thinks the only way to be successful is through corruption." LISTEN>>>
3. CLUSTER LIZARD - HERTS
Charges of corruption were also being levelled at Trump on April 9, for alleged insider trading. “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!,” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. He then paused his tariffs, sending markets soaring 9.5% and adding $US304 billion to the combined net worth of the world's richest people - the largest-ever one-day gain in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Despite such wealth, he continued to claim the US was being ripped off, pressing Ukraine for a rare earths deal to end its war with Russia. The same day, Ukrainian violinist Valentina Goncharova said her first album in 30 years was inspired by the start of Israel's current war on Gaza, but became "about all of humankind". “Any war is disgusting to me,” she said. That followed the new war-themed LP from Ukrainian electronic act Cluster Lizard. The album is named "Herts", after an ancient Ukrainian warriors' death dance. LISTEN>>>
4. DAVID ROVICS - DEPORT THE BILLIONAIRES
"Why is it always the poorest of the poor are the ones upon whom we're declaring war?" asks US protest singer David Rovics on his latest album. "What if we took back what was never really theirs, nationalise the banks and deport the billionaires?" The LP was released days before Trump's administration asked an appeals court on April 17 to block a judge’s directive that government officials be questioned about a Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador. Meanwhile, it refused to bring back Venezuelans it had deported to the same place for "being in criminal gangs", despite some having no criminal record. It also continued to press for the deportation of Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, arrested for protesting against Israel's war on Gaza. "Mahmoud Khalil was at home with his pregnant wife," sings Rovics on the album's opening track, "when one day came the visit that would change his life." LISTEN>>>
5. LOS FASTIDIOS - LOVESTEADY
Ridiculing such racism were Italian ska punks Los Fastidios on their new LP, released on April 7. On its typically catchy and fun song "Why Don't You Eat Your Cat?", they mock Trump's claim during his election campaign that immigrants were eating Americans' pets. Days later, in the Vatican City state that Italy surrounds, Pope Francis berated Trump for "deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty". The Pope died two days later. When Trump attended his funeral on April 26, the Cardinal running proceedings took a swipe at him with the Pope's words "build bridges, not walls". Meanwhile, Sharon Osbourne, the wife of rocker Ozzy Ozbourne, called for Irish rappers Kneecap - who are from Catholic backgrounds - to have their visas cancelled for slamming Israel at a US music festival on April 18. They replied that she should listen to her husband's song "War Pigs". LISTEN>>>
6. BELLS LARSEN - BLURRING TIME
Canadian trans musician Bells Larsen revealed on April 12 that he was cancelling his US tour to promote his new album, which was released a fortnight later. “To put it super plainly, because I’m trans (and have an M on my passport), I can’t tour in the States,” he wrote. His move came as it was reported that travellers skipping the US to avoid such border crackdowns could cost the country's economy $US90 billion. Larsen's remarkable record documents his transition as Trump relentlessly attacked LGBTQ+ people. In a unique move, Larsen first recorded the album's vocals in his previous, higher pitched voice, then re-recorded them after his gender-affirming hormones lowered his voice. He then layered the two together, so it sounds like a male singer duetting with a female singer. A week before its release, Britain's Supreme Court also ruled that “woman” and “sex” refer to the sex assigned at birth. LISTEN>>>
7. DEAD PIONEERS - PO$T AMERICAN
As Canada got ready to vote in a new government to take on Trump, First Nations musician Shub released his new LP on April 25. On it, the dancefloor-focused DJ and producer, who pioneered "powwow-step" music with his group A Tribe Called Red, samples native people telling their stories of abuse. A fortnight earlier, Shub's fellow Canadian First Nations musician Tashiina Buswa released her album of biting anti-colonialism with her new group, Ribbon Skirt. “They want 2000s Buffy Marie," she sings of whitewashed Indigeneity. "They want the pipe and the drum.” Similarly acerbic resistance can be found on the new LP by Native American punks Dead Pioneers, released on April 4. On the track "Dead Pioneers", they spit: "One little, two little, three little cheers. Four little, five little dead pioneers. You brought death empire upon us all. Every time we say 'Land Back', you bawl." LISTEN>>>
8. MARLON WILLIAMS - TE WHARE TIWEKAWEKA
Indigenous resistance also helped kill a controversial bill in Aotearoa/New Zealand on April 10. The Treaty Principles bill, which sought to “redefine” Aotearoa’s founding document in favour of the colonists, was defeated by 112 votes to 11. The vote came after Māori Party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke made headlines worldwide by tearing up a copy of the bill, singing a song of defiance and leading a haka in parliament to protest against it. She sings the same song on the latest single and video by Māori musician Stan Walker, released a day after the bill's defeat. A week earlier, Māori pop star Marlon Williams released his first album sung entirely in Te Reo Māori, the native language the bill had sought to get rid of. "To be Māori is to be political," said Williams in discussing his LP. “The sense of shame around not having instant access to an ancestral tongue is a bit of a hard one to get over." LISTEN>>>
9. CYTOTOXIN - BIOGRAPHYTE
An Aboriginal elder was heckled by neo-Nazis as he welcomed people to country in his native language at an Anzac Day service in Naarm/Melbourne on April 25. The hecklers were no doubt emboldened by opposition leader Peter Dutton's campaign to get rid of the ancient practice across Australia. As Dutton tried to shed his now-toxic Trump-like image in a bid to get elected on May 3, climate activists took aim at his pro-nuclear power policy. Rising Tide members crashed his Liberal Party's media conference on April 22, saying: “Scientists say it isn’t a real solution to the climate crisis and members of the Liberals' own party are campaigning against it." A fortnight earlier, the "kings of nuclear meltdown metal", Cytotoxin, released their latest radioactive record. The brutal album features multiple appearances of a clicking Geiger counter and the heavy breathing of people both protected by gas masks and not. LISTEN>>>
10. DEBT NEGLECTOR - KINDA RIPS
Nuclear war is one of the biggest threats to the human race. The other is climate change. On April 25, that threat got far worse. Trump's tariffs on April 2 had cut his own country off from the supply of rare earths it needs as China halted supply. In response, Australia began stockpiling its rare earths on April 23 as a "minerals for mates" bargaining chip to try to get Trump to reduce his tariffs Down Under. Instead, two days later, Trump signed an executive order to fast-track environmentally catastrophic deep-sea mining for the precious metals. The practice had so far been avoided because it "could affect the ocean’s essential role in absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere", reported The New York Times. Days earlier, US punks Debt Neglector released their politically-packed new album, featuring the apt song "Apocalypse Soon". "You reap what you sow," they sing. "So say goodnight." LISTEN>>>
[Mat Ward has been writing for Green Left since 2009. He also wrote the book Real Talk: Aboriginal Rappers Talk About Their Music And Country and makes political music. Mat Ward's latest single is the Andrew Tate-baiting "Small Dick Energy".]
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Read about more political albums.
Stream our new “Best protest songs of 2025” playlist on Spotify. This replaces the previous “Political albums” playlist, that was getting too big at more than 700 albums.