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.

I Killed Your Dog dazzles with its musicality, but its emotion is what takes it to the next level.

At its peaks, it is capacious, melancholy and beautifully indicative of the human desire for connection and meaning. It is also, at times, simpering and molasses-y, when Savage has proven he knows how to succeed without shackling himself to those tropes. When it burns low, its ashes are suffocating—but when it flares, it blazes high.

Fans may feel it’s more of a long slog than they remember, with the slower tempo stretching many of the songs beyond their natural length, and the spoken word passages lending a languorous quality that may induce drowsiness.

Despite his quiet voice and instrumentation, his music refuses to recede into the background. It commands your attention in every conceivable way.

Whether Creevy’s eking out an epiphany or bent on her own destruction, I Don’t Want You Anymore successfully embodies the private suffering that precedes any semblance of healing.

Many of the genre’s most popular songs right now resemble its past more than its future (or at least what one would hope constitutes its future). The music of Rustin’ In The Rain is an exception—and best of all, there’s space in its world for all of us.

The unconcealed emotion gushing out of Again is stupefying. Where Oneohtrix Point Never takes these sounds may challenge the senses, but the feelings Lopatin is drawing forward are all too familiar.

Album closer “Meant to Be” is maybe the best song on the album. It’s uptempo, for one thing, with electric guitars that circle and soar above a bed of synthesizers and a propulsive beat that help Tweedy’s melody take flight. It’s a reminder of how good Wilco can be at their best, even if that’s a standard the band doesn’t always reach on Cousin.

Yard reveals the band’s versatility—confirming that the band has extensive new sonic avenues to explore in depth moving forward. The album is already a delicious feast but, after this achievement, one can’t help but wonder what the band will try next.

Especially as it enters the moody second half, the album begins to mirror what M83 did in 2016 with Junk, leaning so hard into the cheese and schmaltz of late-‘80s muzak that it almost verges on fetishistic parody. But Palomo’s sun-soaked, salt-rimmed, neon-tinged world has such an immersive, hypnotic pull that its more derivative tendencies don’t really matter. World of Hassle oozes so much personality that a two-hour vaporwave YouTube video could never replicate.

Tension is strong proof that Kylie Minogue in 2023 is more than just “Padam Padam,” but it’s also a relatively uncomplicated message from the international superstar. It delivers what she does best: a campaign speech on behalf of pleasure and its pursuit, with an electro-pop shine that delivers dopamine hit after dopamine hit.

If it’s true that Lydia Loveless’ jets are starting to cool, Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again shows that their music still throws off plenty of heat.

Laugh Track is a companion piece to the band’s other 2023 album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, sure, but it stands on its own.

This album is also an experiment—a glorious one where we get to hear Demi Lovato’s virtuosic vocal technique and belting.

The most remarkable thing about The King, however, is that its synthesis of sound and vision makes it feel so thoroughly like a monumental record.

End should be the playbook for any artist who wants to balance giving fans what they want while growing their creative craft almost three decades in.

Inhabiting a space similar to Romy’s recent album Mid Air or Ibizan favorite Everything But The Girl’s “Miss You,” Sorry I Haven’t Called successfully melds confessional poetry with intricate dance sensibilities.

The songwriting across all 11 tracks is accessible and familiar—and yet, Cilker’s world that she’s created is fully under the rule of her genius penmanship. It’s sharp and far-ranging; anyone who has run from something can tap in and find ecstasy; anyone who has stayed put can achieve the same baroque fate.

You don’t emerge from the LP with a sense of linear narrative. Across 16 songs, relationships fail and prosper and then fail again; hope deteriorates and grows, only to deteriorate again. What Zach Bryan is is a moving portrait of life’s knottiest, in-between moments.

Their power remains in full effect on their latest, Hollow. At 11 new songs, their first LP since Unseen in 2016 strikes a balance between foreboding quiet numbers and deceptively airy tracks that belie the fatalistic lyrical content.

GUTS is a brash, sobering look at the totality of fame on a young woman—how it consumes, abuses and isolates.

While the tribute’s best moments reveal new and rewarding dimensions to his immortal songs nearly seven years after his death at age 74, the collection doesn’t move the needle when it comes to building more awareness around the visionary’s innumerable contributions to pop music.

everything is alive, prioritizes progression and refuses to stay stagnant. Sure, Slowdive glance back at their past every now and again, but it’s clear that their focus is fully set on the future.

Rabbit Rabbit sees the band writing some of the biggest and most gripping music of their career, all while still delivering the winding, twisting arrangements that drew fans to them in the first place over 10 years ago.

Although the highs are as high and electric as ever, the softer, slower moments take a little bit longer to come around to, sanding down instead of expanding on the album’s scope. The best parts of the album, particularly in the first half, illustrate the different kinds of dread gnawing at Rosenstock in straightforward yet colorful detail.

I Keep My Feet On The Fragile Plane is a wildly successful catalog of the trials of early adulthood, providing a comfortable space to explore painful points of unrealized promise and acceptance. Krieger seems at home within the structures of her languid, smoldering ballads–though the fire burns hot when she picks up speed just a little bit.

The occasional misstep aside, Capricorn shows another side of a young artist who is still growing into his full potential. Not only can Eddie 9V play the blues, he’s got plenty of soul, too.

Mommy flushes out all the misplaced pressure and instability that defined the group’s first go-round, while making it clear that Be Your Own Pet remain a force to be reckoned with—but on their terms.

SPELLLING has shown how she can transform her project from peculiar, interior pop to something grandiose—and Mystery School demonstrates her versatility: Not only can Cabral reorient her sound, she can fashion her existing songs with a new, consistent approach, closely tying all of her eras together under one project.

The Window, may, in fact, be the band’s best yet. .... Ratboys showcase, over and over again, their considerable skill for making songs that are emotionally raw and sonically polished, intrinsically rootsy and invariably catchy.

Nothing on Appaloosa Bones will blow your mind or stop you in your tracks, but it’s reliably beautiful and starkly self-possessed throughout, simultaneously free of forced erudition and mass-produced pandering. It is, perhaps, not music for everyone, but fans of Isakov’s stylings will be thrilled to introduce his latest venture into their daintily-plucked campfire song repertoires.

It’s a deeply fun album that beckons the listener’s attention immediately.

Unreal Unearth is packed full of poetic lyricism, heavyhearted remorse, hopeful anticipation and an honest expression of the joys and sorrow of being a human. This is undoubtedly his best work. The more straightforward tracks may be too saccharine at times, but Hozier’s gravitational artistry more than makes up for any slight missteps off the path.

Homo Anxietatem is a stroke of brilliance not for how many different landscapes Shamir wanders across, but for how generous and relentless in the pursuit of transformation they become as the album unfolds.

Chrome Dreams, despite sitting on a shelf for nearly 50 years, falls into our laps as one of Neil Young’s boldest works.

The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons boasts some of the band’s most exhilarating material in a career that has never lacked any superheated songs or top-shelf showmanship. Maybe that counts as maturity after all.

Radio Red is a crystalline, shimmering pop enterprise that dares to ask what a project might look like when a synthesizer takes a backseat to a career-defining vocal performance. It’s a signal that what’s next for Laura Groves is sure to be another marvel just as mythical, intricate and rewarding.

Even if the album sometimes feels thematically hollow, Utopia is still one of the most forward-thinking mainstream releases of the year. Scott is still pushing the boundaries of his psychedelic trap sound after ten years in the industry, and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.

The album ends with “Weekend Love,” a delightful slice of slightly psychedelic indie-ish-club-pop co-written with Ethan Gruska, best known for his work with Phoebe Bridgers and Kimbra. The rest of The Loveliest Time finds Jepsen blasting off in different directions—the dubby soul of “Kollage,” the throbbing synth-rock of “Stadium Love,” for example—with varying degrees of success.

She makes daring moves on A New Reality Mind, but with a stronger push, the whole album could be a daring statement, too.

When Horses Would Run comes as close to that perfect commendation as a debut album can possibly get.

The album is also a testament to Rostam and Georgia’s connection: Their musical chemistry is so rich that, on Georgia’s first collaborative album, she sounds more like herself than ever before. As she stitches her own euphoria together, one thread stands out the strongest: other people.

The risk they took with their complete metamorphosis paid off, further solidifying them as a band with talent that transcends genres and states.

The songs on The Ballad of Darren are measured and contained. In fact, the calm gravitas which pervades the record occasionally plods. Perhaps it’s a meta-commentary on the album’s subject matter, or, perhaps, it’s just hard to make new music for 30 years straight. Yet, there is a relief that is interspersed amid the LP’s gloom that arrives on more high-spirited, familiar tracks that are reminiscent of the group at their spiky-haired zenith.

Soundtracks are often merely time capsules of their era, and Barbie The Album captures the bounce, bravado and occasional bad moods of 2023 in technicolor.

Each track is visceral and transportive, which is no small feat.

On Little Songs, Wall proves he’s ready to grab that torch and run.

It’s a tense endeavor wading into unknown territory, nevertheless projecting raw confidence. It shows us a band that isn’t afraid to push themselves. And, a decade in, that’s no small feat.

The considerable power of The Greater Wings lies in how Byrne makes that specific feeling universal, and how resonant it becomes in the artfully woven tapestry of her music.

The social commentary feels sharper here, but otherwise, not much has changed in the last three years; Good Living Is Coming For You delivers more of what made Hunger for a Way Out an aesthetic standout and word-of-mouth underground hit.

Buoyant, entertaining and lively.

The scaffolding of ANOHNI’s voice across these 10 tracks is remarkable, and the way she excavates a deep, unrelenting love within them through accessible and awing prose is magnetic, thoughtful and intricate. From a lyrical place, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross enacts an exotic balance that is so rarely seen in contemporary music.

The songs on I’ve Got Me start simply, then bloom into playful complexity.

The literate lyrics, his expressive voice, his knack for hummable melodies—suggest that he has fully arrived at the next phase of a career that continues to deliver songs worth hearing.

Like the best moments on any Neutral Milk Hotel album—or, frankly, any emo album worth a damn—the whaler excels when it feels like Home Is Where are at its slipperiest as a band, conjuring something capable of breaking beyond a simple genre signifier.

Life Under the Gun is an absurdly strong debut, jumping between anchoring drum beats, jangly guitars and explosive choruses with ease. After playing straight hardcore, directing music videos and a plethora of other creative outlets, Shelton sounds firmly at home in Militarie Gun.

Eight isn’t a groundbreaking album—and it may lack some of the daring color that defined the band’s early years—but its lyricism is uncomplicated and easy, with thematics that fit well within the group’s regular wheelhouse. It’s sure of itself and proud to be so.

On Let There Be Music, Bonny Doon articulate what joys fall upon us once we’ve seen through the aches of transition. That is the crowning achievement of this record, as it’s much tougher to write into happiness than it is to write out of sorrow. But, what a gift it is to know that Bonny Doon have found a niche in the heart of joyous, blissful faith.

Across 11 tracks, 3D Country is gnarled, chaotic and vibrant. But, what’s potentially the most-shattering truth of all is that, amid all of this charismatic, wholehearted sonic anarchy, Geese have only just begun.

This Is The Kit have found a way to stay true to their style in a way that doesn’t feel forced or boring.

Killer Mike feels these songs deeply and it shows, but different approaches here from producers, including No I.D., Cool & Dre and others, means the hooks aren’t always strong enough to keep listeners coming back.

ÁTTA is a welcome return to form and beyond for the band, ten years removed from their last studio release, and their partnership with a 41-piece orchestra is both logical and awe-striking.

Shattering the myth of “sophomore slump syndrome,” feeble little horse possess an uncanny bravery. They forge ahead with a fearlessness that is palpable even when the lyrics are sparse.

It’s also a wonderful first product of Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV’s creative union.

It may not be perfect from start to finish, but Weathervanes again affirms Isbell’s place as an Alabama legend—right there next to Saban.

Mid-record gems and unexpected collaborations make certain songs worth a save, and whoever stands at the intersection of the operatic pop and Americana fandoms is surely rejoicing today. It falters toward the tail end in its own self-seriousness, but Wainwright would be hard-pressed not to create a gorgeous musical landscape wherever he goes.

Bully’s new album, Lucky For You, is her finest work to date. Never before has Bognanno crafted a record so consistently captivating, able to fire on all cylinders even in its quieter moments.

Jackson is communicating her message with precise orchestration for optimal impact. As a listener, you may feel exposed, maybe even singled out.

Romantic Piano is an endless reliquary of devotion, self-kindness and wonder; an impressive, beautiful third act for one of our most-daring and interesting songwriters.

Underlining their strengths and achieving the purest zenith of their eccentric stylings. Everyone’s Crushed shines an incandescent limelight on Water From Your Eyes at the absolute height of their powers; it’s their best work yet.

As painstakingly beautiful as her more inscrutable records have been, to witness Mega Bog in crystalline electronica is to witness an artist reclaim and represent her consciousness with unsettling clarity.

It’s the work of a singer and songwriter with nothing left to prove, which means that Crowell can simply enjoy himself.

One of the acest efforts of 2023 so far. ... Museum performs like a meticulous, well-crafted ballet where JFDR’s crew of players are the ballerinas. Across nine songs, she deftly hypothesizes what emotional boundaries exist in and beyond her world.

That! Feels Good! is a record of sterling, mirrorball-lit songs and bawdy lyricism. It’s Ware’s finest collection of work to date.

Her bandmates act as a support system, pushing these songs to new heights, ready to catch her when she stares at the unknown. All of This Will End is triumphant, despite the emotional terrain it navigates.

It’s a taut, focused collection that reins in the sprawl of the group’s 2019 release I Am Easy to Find and re-centers the band on their most emotionally complete effort since Boxer.

Neale has placed her trust in life’s meanders—and in its source—and the result is her best work yet: a golden mean between experimentation and pop, lo-fi and hi-fi, vitality and rest.

72 Seasons is the sound of Metallica celebrating the past while simultaneously liberating themselves from the impossible burden of living up to their former excellence. They could have done a lot worse.

Big Picture is a successful meditation on tension, an act of sitting in the discomfort. Fenne Lily has become a veritable expert on the subject, and her approach to narrating that process is engaging and novel.

Lyrical precision is what makes the record shine, the fact that Hartzman can recall the exact video game, in this case, Mortal Kombat, that someone was playing when her nose started bleeding at a New Year’s Eve party she didn’t even want to be at.

The Hold Steady’s most musically adventurous collection of songs so far, pairing singer Craig Finn’s vivid storytelling with arrangements that go in some unexpected directions.

While the record delivers on the promise of those talents united—exceptional rock music by three sad-song experts—it doesn’t always sound more timeless than topical. But when it does thrive at the former, the record is exploring more rudimentary feelings rather than emotional coalescence.

Caroline Rose’s portrayal of a new beginning during the first three tracks of The Art of Forgetting is visceral and guttural. ... The tracks remarkably set the pace and atmosphere for the entirety of the record.

Each song feels like its own powerful, strange dream—the worlds described are vague yet familiar, tugging at something in your gut that instinctively pulls towards the characters and loves described.

Aly & AJ are releasing career-defining music (and have been for the past six years), and With Love From might top a touch of the beat as their best album to date.

Say What You Like delivers more of the same qualities that made Paisley your Riding A Bike Friend.

Like any artist following up a successful record, 10000 gecs was always going to suffer from great expectations. While it keeps the duo’s cocky, chaotic spirit at its core, the material never feels like a step forward, nor does it ever capture the magic of their debut.

V is a fun, water-glistening record that waves hi to the palm trees and lies down to take a sun-nap with the sleepy sand dunes. Neilson’s reclamation of his identity in the context of space, sound and story is executed beautifully and is heard with authenticity and keenness.

Though the album contains some of the most straightforward rock songs of Bowie’s career so far, their search for a savior still scales to grandiose heights.

Oddly enough, it’s in the moments where the duo get separated—or neither appears at all—that we get to hear just how fruitful their creative bond actually was. ... There’s no denying the effort that went into this material, and the elegant presentation of this box matches the music’s tone and character perfectly.

What makes Radical Romantics, like the best of Dreijer’s work, a cut above merely great pop is its subversive streak.