Clark has said she had to take over production because she couldn’t figure out how to articulate the sounds in her head to somebody else. Listening to the finished product, it’s easy to see what she means. The surreal, slippery “Hell Is Near” is unlike anything Clark has done before—and particularly difficult to fully capture with words. Broadly psychedelic, a collage of 12-string guitar, piano and hydra-synth creates a song that feels like its own pocket dimension.

When it comes to Aaron West, it’s easy for the plot mechanics to consume much of the conversation. But In Lieu of Flowers contains some of Campbell’s best melodies and soaring choruses.

All that hard work has culminated into a gorgeous, career-long debut. Chanel Beads’ day is finally here, now.

What’s hollow about The Tortured Poets Department is that the real torture is just how unlivable these songs really are.

It is when the band—and Watt—evoke Pearl Jam’s stunning capacity to rage at the injustices of the world, invoking personal grievances in equal measure, that Dark Matter is at its best (see “React, Respond” and “Waiting For Stevie”), while less on-brand tracks like “Upper Hand,” which enters on a synthesizer intro, embrace novelty with mixed results.

This isn’t a nihilistic record, especially with the wistful but bright closing sentiment of “Common Mistake”—where Baldi sings “You’ll be alright, just give more than you take.” But most of the talking is done by Gerycz’s sledgehammer drumming and Baldi’s layered guitars, a hallmark of all great Cloud Nothings songs.

angeltape presents a darkened canvas of experimental rock, showcasing Drahla plunging into the depths of their elaborate and existential craft.

One Million Love Songs delivers exactly what it promises—an unflinching look into the seemingly endless ways that love (and loss) leaves its fingerprints on us.

sentiment is the work of someone who understands that emotions are a full-body experience, and rousay’s work responds with a sensory palette beyond what a typical song can muster. Does it devastate? Sometimes. Above all else, this little archive of rousay’s emotions cancels the distractions outside and sinks you in a bath of feeling. The best response is to ease in.

Whether they are looking backwards or forwards, you can rest assured that BODEGA will remain wholly themselves—but Our Brand Could Be Yr Life shows just how flexible all of that can be.

Ultimately, English Teacher are a band that fare best when they stop conforming to boundaries—even the ones they set for themselves.

Ramona can be overwhelming when taken in as a whole, and that’s something that might ultimately keep many at arm’s length from the album. But, if you let Grace Cummings in, Ramona might just surprise you yet.

A 36-minute story, Don’t Forget Me is Rogers’ shortest project thus far. It is also her most sonically and lyrically cohesive, featuring some of her most captivating, folkloric songcraft yet. Allowing the listeners to create a world around her words and sounds, Rogers is at her best when she keeps it simple and sweet.

At times, Houck’s revelations can get lost into an aimless fog of luscious sounds created by these music industry veterans—especially evident on “Fences,” where Phosphorescent’s meditations on a relationship in decay get obscured by a samesy blur of pedal steel and organ. .... But the upside of Revelator’s polished and highly cohesive sound is that even relatively minor switch-ups can prove thrilling by comparison.

While it hardly comes across as careless, The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions flaunts a genre-averse attitude that allows his range to shine. The album draws a throughline between the aspects of Thornalley’s sound geared towards the warehouse and those better suited for festival crowds.

On these nine songs, Mount Kimbie pulls off sonic and structural changes in a seamless way.

Only God Was Above Us is about transformations. It represents the idea that even with growth and change, an artist—or just a human being in general—can preserve their core. It’s high-brow art in that way. But if you, like Koenig, can appreciate the art of a good walk, it would also just make for a great soundtrack to your next mindless stroll.

The grandiosity is firmly embedded in the talent, as River and their band inject some serious punk rock attitudes into a well-worn infrastructure of venerable country tunes. The guitar tones are crisp, the pedal steel sounds like a million bucks.

Live Laugh Love is a refreshing outing from Chastity Belt, who are no doubt in top form, as the album arrives like the culmination of each member’s lifelong musical evolution taking the collective whole to new heights.

There’s a warmth to this symbiosis that’s new for Patton, and while it may not be as explosive a revelation as Black Origami was, it makes for a record that feels like a vital new step in Jlin’s evolution as an artist.

An album I like quite a lot when it’s on and ultimately, for better or worse, doesn’t stick with me much afterwards.

From the sustained discomfort captured in a ringing bassline on “Talking to the Whisper” to soft waves of ambient synth soundscapes on instrumental track “Ocean,” every choice on Something in the Room She Moves feels effortless.

Bite Down is packed wall to wall with tunes that are unsettled but unhurried, generous with melody, wandering but never lost, and reliably steady despite the never-ending twists and turns of an earthly existence. But above all, they are beautiful, broken and built around the kind of raw emotional uncertainty that will resonate with anyone who has ever lived, loved and/or lost.

The album—their eighth overall—finds Jim and William conjuring up wicked, writhing, guitar-driven goth rock that’s full of grizzly, distorted guitar-driven shoegaze and snarly, industrial clangers.

The enduring message is that there’s no tribulation that can’t be overcome with unwavering honesty and durable companionship—a hard-won and time-worn truth that also happens to translate into brilliant music.

Bright Future, though, is not only her most impressive solo album to date, but it’s also a genuine competitor for the best album she’s ever been involved with.

It’s a respectable collection of bluesy rockers that showcase the brothers’ strengths.

Musgraves’ most sonically cohesive album to date, every song pulling from the same muted, pastel palette. And yet, there is still enough variation to keep things interesting from song to song.

In a discography saturated with ambient anthems and frenetic energy, CAPRISONGS brilliantly brandishes the talent of an artist constantly looking for her next high.

It is precisely this linkage between systematized death and riches that makes the album such a mortifying listen and perhaps the most essential of 2024.

Because of this seeming resistance against leaving their comfort zone, Bleachers becomes so opaque it practically evaporates by the time you finish it.

The album succeeds wholly on its immediacy, and both its soundscapes and directionless lyrics slap you in the face with its message. It’s impossible to listen to The Collective without knowing exactly what Kim Gordon is talking about.

Mannequin Pussy’s map of utopia may span uneven terrain, but the band dominates every inch of it, forging cohesive paths between harsh and heavenly melodies. The feat renews one of punk’s lasting tenets for a new era of activism: to protect what’s precious—freedom, community or otherwise—you usually have to raise a little hell.

That tension between fun and miserable is perfect for love songs, and the ones on Playing Favorites revel in it.

She’s embracing herself, her heartbreak, her sarcasm and taking time to dance, slowly, with her feelings.

There’s such a charming muscle being flexed here that you might not even immediately realize that, beneath massive hooks, Yard Act are performing an exorcism on the ever-so universal fixation creatives have on shit-talk outmaneuvering praise.

On their debut, Friko have cemented themselves as one of the most distinguished up-and-coming voices in all of indie-rock.

If anything, the group has gotten better at keeping the subtlety of their music, and their lyrical sentiments, from straying over the line into dull.

The record signifies the formidable maturation of Hughes’ career and pop prowess. Allie X can masquerade as the Girl With No Face all she wants—but there’s no hiding this album’s serious legs.

It’s Nance’s best work yet; who knew all he had to do was ham up his own sublime talents to get there.

While Loss of Life still gives no compelling answer to the question “Who is MGMT?,” it also doesn’t need to. The album makes it obvious that the duo are most at home behind the boards, uniting their musical memories from Oasis to Roxy Music.

Whether it’s Timony’s perplexing lyrical delivery, unconventional rhythms or some instrumental surprises, every song on Untame the Tiger induces some head-scratching, more often to its benefit than not.

Hurray for the Riff Raff not only expands the umbrella of “Americana”; it challenges the very structures on which we hang it, and the legacies of pain that accompany them.

CRAWLER, especially, reads like a love album—a demonstration of the hard work and self-reflection required to be the most loving version of yourself. Talbot’s integrity could be felt on every beat. But TANGK boils love down so much it’s not clear if there’s anything there at all.

GRIP is a vulnerable collection of songs made for heat-of-the-moment intimacy—and everything that comes before, during and after. It’s also serpent’s most instantly replayable album to date.

Souvenir never feels nostalgic. It’s too fast-paced, with only one song extending past three-and-a-half seconds. It’s too brisk, mechanical and brittle to deal in memories. The album shines when it delivers those high-octane moments of rock. These are no souvenirs; they’re gifts for the present.

Think of the best moments throughout the Grandaddy discography and you will rarely praise them for their consistency. Blu Wav is nothing of the sort, and frustratingly so. By Lytle’s own accounting, seven of the 13 songs on the album are waltzes, which, it turns out, might be far too many waltzes. The lonesome, ambling tone works on a few occasions.

Each performance is lucid and brutal, rattling audiences with its unstoppable fervor. Sometimes it’s hard to envision this adolescent version of Sonic Youth while knowing what’s to come for them, but it makes for an all the more enthralling listen as we imagine how it must have felt to be on the precipice of greatness.

Weird Faith is a level up in every regard for Madi Diaz, and it’s hard to see a world where it doesn’t accomplish the goal of raising her profile.

There’s a confidence and vulnerability Brittany Howard fearlessly reveals on this album, which is more adventurous and riskier than Jaime.

She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She finds Chelsea Wolfe at her most creative while reviving her particular, audacious and revered brand of dark storytelling. Every piece of the record finds a way to tie into the themes at its core while still pushing Wolfe’s own sound forward in earnest.

It’s exciting to see an artist lean into their intuition and embrace their own creative influences—and that shines through on What Happened To The Beach? in a compelling way—but the album as a whole seems to be figuring itself out alongside its listeners.

These songs sink their hooks into you immediately and, by the time you realize your foot is tired from tapping, the tracklist is three, four notches ahead of where you once were. And that is because Ducks Ltd. have such an acute knack for lulling worn-in, familiar pop tropes into exciting, bright and trebly guitar-forward arrangements. Harm’s Way is frenetic and warm, seamless yet meticulous.

Prelude to Ecstasy is one of the strongest debut albums in recent memory, an incredible introduction that creates an inescapable feeling that we are bearing witness to the birth of a generational talent.

Courting condenses themselves on New Last Name into smaller, more straightforward indie rock. But the moments when they escape those confines exude with personality and color. They match O’Neill’s post-post-modernist irony more closely.

What Three Bells gives us is more than an hour of his musical stream of consciousness roaming wild and free—the results are unpredictable, imperfect and utterly fascinating.

Carlisle’s third album doesn’t have the same sweeping scope as its predecessor, which was boisterous, messy and open-hearted on songs embracing a certain worldview: “Your Heart’s a Big Tent,” say, or “I Won’t Be Afraid.” In some ways, though, he digs deeper on Critterland, an album that is more about making the best of heavy circumstances.

What an enormous room’s production reaches the same high watermark as prior efforts like Three Futures and Silver Tongue, but struggles to land with the same impact.

People Who Aren’t There Anymore is an extensive portrait of an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. But even then, Future Islands are still finding new ways to polish a diamond on this album.

Though devoid of obvious lyrical or sonic cartwheels, Blue Raspberry’s calm, steady sense of purpose carries through, creating a gorgeous, ruminative contemplation on queer desire that will leave longtime fans and new listeners alike bobbing their heads—and reaching for their thesauruses.

Like A Moon Shaped Pool and Suspiria, Wall of Eyes is moodier and more sparse, like how a tree is in the winter. The tracks are like long branches stretching out, each textured by their own idiosyncrasies, complications and sonic movements, but are still clearly part of the same root.

While inspired by numerous corners of art and creation, the influences seamlessly blend into a cohesive and thoughtful tracklist. The imperfections and hinderances embraced by the band allowed for their boldest project to date.

While loss, pain and connection have always defined Sleater-Kinney’s work, Little Rope feels especially imbued with an emotional acuity and intensity, one that I don’t think they have captured this potently since “One More Hour.” For all of this, Path of Wellness did set the bar low, and Little Rope has some sloppy writing and one too many lackluster moments. .... Despite these shortcomings, Little Rope shows us that Sleater-Kinney are well worth sticking with.

It’s a brilliant next step into the intersection between alt-pop and New Age, offering an over-the-top spiritual experience with enlightening reflections on the power to crush and regenerate.

Big Sigh is a knotty, downbeat album that shows the English singer/songwriter stretching herself sonically while still maintaining focus on her pet subjects.

Orquídeas is a masterful ode to Uchis’ ancestral roots. A project that artfully skywalks across a variety of Latin genres, including dembow, bolero, salsa and reggaeton, the project proves to be her most sonically ambitious to date—and boasts all-star level features to boot.

Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)), is both the best work of branch’s career and the most fitting send-off one could imagine for the late trumpeter.

All three of these songs [the title track, Forever Well, and Spend the Grace] find Full of Hell and Nothing at their most integrated, where the lines between them disappear and a new form starts to take shape. They also provide a glimpse of what’s possible when two bands truly push beyond collaboration into an entirely unexplored new space.

Atlas is ambient neoclassical at its finest; stirring and introspective without succumbing to sameness, furthering Laurel Halo’s extensive, unpredictable influence on experimental and electronic traditions.

It’s a subtle album, built around gentle, dream-like musical arrangements that belie the tougher sentiments underpinning these songs.

Though it’s true that this is not a “new” record, it’s still a crucial addition to not just Lenderman’s discography, but to the compendium of contemporary live material altogether as we know it.

You can cook a hard-boiled egg quicker than it takes to get through a Kurt Vile song, and we love him for that. The stretched-out jams on Back to Moon Beach are consistent with the last 15 years of his sound, yet it holds some of the greatest work Vile’s done in nearly a decade.

Moving in this decidedly uncommercial new direction is a bolder step, which proves him to be the sincere and genuine artist that his biggest fans always knew he was.

Throughout the rest of the project, Parton’s original tracks (including “World on Fire,” a stadium-ready stomp-stomp-clap protest anthem) and faithful renditions of classic rock favorites help her get the band back together for one last encore shine through. At age 77, Dolly Parton sounds fresh, brand new and like she’s having the time of her life.

Quaranta is Danny Brown at his finest—and his most personal. It’s one of this year’s best albums: a no-skips project from an artist committed to stepping into the light and putting his best foot forward every day, despite the clouds that sometimes obscure the sun.

On their journey up and down (and up again) this gamut of human emotion—from anger (“Blowback”) to confusion and disillusion (“Addict,” “Can I Borrow Your Lighter?”) to misery (“Catch A Hot One”) to love and gratitude (“Herbert”)—Spiritual Cramp sound exceptionally tight. This may be the best-sounding record I’ve heard this year.

In less capable hands, such a painstaking interpretation would be rendered redundant, but the wounded innocence of Marshall’s voice ensures that her versions remain piercingly evocative—vital, even.

Hadsel is the sound of a weary man dealing out his thoughts on a table in a cabin far away, and using extraordinary musicianship to put them in order. The result is a lush, majestic album.

Heaven knows has more intricate songwriting and a wider scope [than her 2021 mixtape to hell with it].

Despite Higher’s lyrical shortcomings, Chris Stapleton still reigns high in the country genre and has delivered another admirable album.

With her viscerally pessimistic, love-hate view of relationships, IAN SWEET steps above the standard moving, moody indie pop. This album hurts in all of the best ways.

His latest is a stunner of a record, with songs that are stark in their simplicity, yet emotionally rich in a way that can catch your breath in your throat or leave your eyes suddenly damp.

It’s a smoother ride than Delaware, for better or for worse, but not without edges. Drop Nineteens have not lost all of their style; if anything, they’ve gained some finesse. It was never supposed to happen, but we should be glad that it has.

For the most part, bar italia have nonchalantly leveled up on The Twits. The noisy songs are louder, the edginess is more precise and, when bar italia tone down the bite, genuine creativity bubbles from the calm.

Pound for pound, Stern’s latest offering is as urgent and electrifying as anything she’s managed in the 16 years since her disarming debut.

Anderson brings along his DIY community for the ride. It’s that bedrock that makes Cartwheel such an expressive and foundational album. And one that’s not just a triumph for Anderson and Hotline TNT, but for shoegaze itself.

1989 (Taylor’s Version) is a sparkling ode from an artist in her prime to an album that played a significant role in paving her way there.

The masterful Spike Field, isn’t just interested in mere questions: It aspires to tear apart time, inspect each shorn fabric and sew up each of its distant stretches to create a new, shimmering collage of the future-past. Within its intricately textured synth patterns, off-tune piano lines and yearning mezzo-soprano are tellings of intimate histories.

The tone on History Books is less frenetic and more reflective. It’s the work of a band that has arguably outgrown the fiery intensity of youth without losing the passion that made the Gaslight Anthem so compelling in the first place.

One of this record’s biggest achievements might be building out the character of Jenny while managing to not sacrifice her central mystery.

The fact that Hackney Diamonds is this damn good further proves that even the bands who’ve given every bit of themselves to the music still have more left to give.

The result is an unspooled revelation, a supplicant’s distorted glee—a celebration which Hayter leaves pointedly open-ended.

While how i’m feeling now is by no means Charli’s most genre-pushing work, nor an indication of the creative potential she has left, it will be remembered as a quintessential 2020 album—not just because of its unique recording constraints, but because of the passion, authenticity and work ethic interwoven in every fuzzy beat and every sprightly, lovelorn lilt of Charli’s most intimate vocal work to date.

Lahai is a transformative album that explores themes like afrofuturism and magical realism across 14 tracks that span a multitude of genres, including soul, rap, jazz, dance, jungle and West African music. And it’s a record that’s as intimate as it is imaginative.

Even with the three original albums alone, Joni Mitchell has left us with such a profound legacy that it didn’t seem possible for anything to come along and reveal more depth to her art. Against all odds, Archives, Vol. 3 does just that and more.

It’s clearly a liberating piece of work, and Humberstone’s honesty and alluring delivery is bound to resonate with listeners near and far.

Her third album, Tomorrow’s Fire, is her best work. Leaning in harder than ever to rock music, the roiling catharsis so often found in Williams’ vocal performance now bleeds into the production. Tomorrow’s Fire is lean, clocking in at 34 minutes across 10 tracks, but Williams doesn’t waste a second of it

This lush, lustful record contains some of Sivan’s most adventurous work to date, with its global influences and club-ready beats vividly evoking the catharsis of being in touch with yourself and your community.