Martha Skye Murphy is both a rookie and a veteran, asUm is her first proper album but far from her introduction to making music. She has EPs, singles, collaborations, and an electronic opera (Postcards Home) dating back to 2016, and her impressive résumé goes back even further than that; she sang on a Nick Cave song that soundtracked the opening credits of John Hillcoat’sThe Proposition when she was just nine years old. (She again collaborated with Cave in her teens when she sang on 2013’sPush the Sky Away.) Fittingly and perhaps unsurprisingly,Um is a debut that feels like the work of a seasoned artist. Made in collaboration with producer Ethan P. Flynn (David Byrne, FKA twigs),Um is a display of haunting, folk-tinged art pop fueled by ambient textures, swelling strings, gentle pianos/acoustic guitars, field recordings, and more, all topped off with the eccentric soar of Martha’s voice. The frequent comparisons she gets to artists like Kate Bush, Björk, Tori Amos, and Julia Holter give you an idea of what to expect, and the thing she has most in common with all of them is an approach to singing, songwriting, and arranging that doesn’t follow anyone else’s rules.[A.S.]

It’s not every day you hear someone who’s mastered the quiet and the loud the way Skylar Sarkis has. When he’s not busting eardrums with his punk bandTaking Meds, he’s embracing sad, somber singer/songwriterslike Arab Strap, Smog, Sun Kil Moon, Sparklehorse, Mount Eerie, and Leonard Cohen with his solo project Growing Stone.Death of a Momma’s Boy is his second Growing Stone album and best yet, with gentle acoustic guitars, gorgeous string and horn arrangements, some light drumming, and deeply pained, personal singing and songwriting from Skylar. It’s an album he wrote entirely sober, and says it’s “about feeling the actual pain, not feeling the consequences of avoiding it.”[A.S.]

Ka had us hanging on his every word up until his very last one. He unexpectedly passed away at age 52 in October, less than two months after releasingThe Thief Next To Jesus, which now serves as the swan song for the former Natural Elements member’s 16-year-long second act, a bittersweet conclusion to one of the most remarkable runs in all of underground rap. As the title implies, Christianity largely informs these songs, from the gospel-infused backdrop to the stream-of-consciousness screeds that find Ka exploring the way religion relates to race, freedom, and life itself. In true Ka fashion, it’s a hushed, patient album that sounds gorgeous on a passive listen and heart-stopping on a close one.[A.S.]

Undeath know that you can’t call your albumMore Insane if the music itself isn’t gonna live up to that promise. The Rochester band’s third LP finds them rising from the old school-style death metal swamps of their first two and coming out with their best and most musically varied album yet. It’s still death metal through and through, but it also incorporates elements from all throughout metal history, from the gallop of classic heavy metal to the crisp attack of thrash to a little aughts-era metalcore and a little tech/prog.More Insane has the biggest screamalong hooks and the most air-guitar-worthy riffs of Undeath’s career, and the clearer production from Mark Lewis (Cannibal Corpse, The Black Dahlia Murder) only helps bring the intricacies of Undeath’s songwriting to the forefront.[A.S.]

There’s a new face of Texas rap, and he goes by the name of BigXthaPlug. He’s got a regional flavor as unmistakable as the scent of Texas barbecue, with a backdrop of trunk-rattling trap beats infused with vintage funk, soul, and gospel samples, and a Southern drawl with enough country grammar to land BigX aspot on the Shaboozey album. On his sophomore albumTake Care, he holds your attention for 15 songs in 31 minutes without a single feature. His charm, his stories, and his subtle hooks are more than enough.[A.S.]

Riff master Matt Pike is back and sounding even more energized than on his past couple LPs withCometh the Storm. It’s High On Fire’s first album in six years (also following Matt’sdebut solo album), first with a new hop in the band’s step from new drummer Coady Willis (Murder City Devils, Big Business, Melvins), and first since bassist Jeff Matz learned to play thebağlama, which brings a Middle Eastern flair to these songs. Outside of those couple minor adjustments, High On Fire don’t fix what ain’t broke, dishing out a stoner metal sludgefeast that sounds as fiery as any peak in this band’s 25-year-long career.[A.S.]

“I’m too much,” Bill Ryder-Jones admits on “I Know That It’s Like This (Baby)” before adding, “but I’ll never be enough for you I know,” all while still finding the beauty in a doomed relationship. That’sIechyd Da, the former Coral member’s first solo album in five years, in a nutshell, where joy and deep sadness are processed as one emotion. Ryder-Jones has the kind of gentle, warmly melancholic voice that is perfect for material and melodies like these—some of his best-ever songs—and it’s all made more vibrant via orchestral arrangements and even a children’s choir. In less talented hands, this could all be too much, butIechyd Da is just enough.[B.P.]

For her third album, Nilüfer Yanya has further refined her style into smooth perfection, shedding all extraneous elements. That includes most other musicians and songwriters as she and longtime collaborator Willma Archer wrote and producedMy Method Actor entirely by themselves for the first time. Nilüfer’s double-tracked vocals (a moody low line paired with airy falsetto) mirroring the interplay between Archer’s melodic bass and inventive guitar chording is a recognizable style whether it’s used for grungy alt-rock, R&B jams, or delicate ballads. Adding wonderful atmosphere this time around are strings and pedal steel, which bring additional lift to Nilüfer’s effervescent harmonies and skillful songwriting. It’s a fully realized world, but Nilüfer Yanya continues to grow and rise within it.[B.P.]

IfFive Dice, All Threes isn’t the best Bright Eyes album since 2005’sI’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, it’s at least the most energetic. (It might be the best too, though.) Following forays into alt-country, orchestral rock, and “indietronica,” Bright Eyes got back to the basics and busted out an album that mirrors their rowdiest live shows, with so many elements of classic Bright Eyes intact: Conor Oberst’s shaky voice, unhinged melodrama, strummy acoustic guitars, a punk spirit, and some of the more ornate arrangements of Bright Eyes’ more recent records. They’ve also got well-executed guest appearances by Cat Power’s Chan Marshall, The National’s Matt Berninger, and The So So Glos’ Alex Levine, the last of whom gave Conor a helping hand during the initial writing process (and maybe helped inspire the album’s punky side). Toquote Conor’s old friend Tim Kasher, “Some of these songs rival his best work of the last 30 years. Kudos!”[A.S.]

After a breakout year in 2022 and a slightly quieter 2023, GloRilla was more dominant than ever in 2024, with the release of not one but two full-length projects—herEhhthang Ehhthang mixtape and her “official debut album”Glorious—that found the Memphis rapper proving herself as a force that’s here to stay. The two projects spawned a string of delightfully inescapable hits (“Yeah Glo!,” “Wanna Be,” “TGIF,” “Hollon,” “Whatchu Know About Me”) that all find Glo staying true to the type of tough, catchy, Memphis rap vibes that defined her surprise breakthrough single “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” two years earlier. Appearances by Megan Thee Stallion, Sexyy Red, Latto, and others spice up these tracks with verses that figuratively and sometimes literally affirm that it’s Glo’s moment. To quote Megan, get ’em Glo![A.S.]

The followup to Arooj Aftab’s breakthrough 2021 albumVulture Prince (and an equally acclaimed 2023 album with Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily,Love In Exile) finds the Pakistani-American musician widening her musical scope more than ever. She covers the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves,” as well as theghazal “Zameen,” which was popularized byBegum Akhtar, the legendary Indian singer who Aroojsays is “like my Billie Holiday.” She employs artful auto-tune on “Raat Ki Rani” in the way that someone like James Blake, Imogen Heap, or Bon Iver might. She brings in spoken word artist and rapper Moor Mother on the broody, bluesy original “Bolo Na.” The English-language “Whiskey” feels like it could be a late ’60s Leonard Cohen song, and it’s one that the 39-year-old Arooj Aftab originally wrote back in college, around the same time she went viral with a“Hallelujah” cover. It’s a complete musical melting pot, from jazz to pop to folk to classical, from her birthplace of Saudi Arabia to her adopted hometown of New York City.[A.S.]

After making a bright, jammy album that embodied their adopted home of California with 2019’sFather of the Bride, Vampire Weekend returned withOnly God Was Above Us, a colder, darker, weirder album that reflects their birthplace of New York City. Its lyrics and artwork are filled with historical references to the boroughs that Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, and Chris Tomson once called home, and the music tends to veer closer to the chaotic, twitchy indie pop of the first three Vampire Weekend albums. But it’s not a return to form so much as it’s another step forward, their fifth of five consecutive artistic triumphs. It’s their noisiest, most fuzzed-out record, but still with wall-of-sound arrangements that would make Phil Spector or George Martin sweat, and the return to the chaos of the band’s younger days is matched by a continued maturation in Ezra’s lyrics. As the glory days of aughts-era indie rock giants fade further and further into the rearview,OGWAU wasn’t theonly album of its kind released this year, but it was far and away the best.[A.S.]

Over a decade and a gazillion releases into his career, Newark rapper Mach-Hommy played his first-ever solo show this year, at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center. And despite having so much long-beloved material, he opted to perform his new album#RICHAXXHAITIAN in full, a bold yet unsurprisingly effective decision. The new album finds Mach at the peaks of his powers, and it’s been a standout all year, ever since it dropped in mid-May. True to his ever-appealing form, the multi-lingual, first generation Haitian-American raps in English, French, and Kreyòl as he paints a picture that ranges from autobiographical tales to the current crises in Haiti and Gaza. The largely-self-produced, boom bap-inspired backdrop shifts around just enough that#RICHAXXHAITIAN never sounds too repetitive, and Mach fires on all cylinders as he goes bar for bar with fellow greats like Black Thought, Roc Marciano, Tha God Fahim, and Your Old Droog. Outside of the political/social commentary in his lyrics, Mach continues to comment on the social media-era accessibility of celebrities with his elusiveness, and on the value of music itself with his limited, drastically-overpriced physical releases that always sell out. It wouldn’t keep working if he didn’t keep releasing such great records like this one.[A.S.]

For their second album, Chat Pile have zoomed out. Their 2022 debut LPGod’s Country saw them taking a look at the dark underbelly of American society, andCool World goes global by looking at disasters all around the world and how they affect each other and, ultimately, us. It’s a theme that hit especially hard this year, and Chat Pile match their global dread with a backdrop that’s even bigger, heavier, and harder to pigeonhole than their beloved debut. It ranges from somber, gothy moments to sludgy noise rock to straight-up extreme metal, with lots of other ground covered in between. In a time where it feels like things just keep getting worse, this album makes for a perfectly bleak soundtrack.[A.S.]

The Healer is one of the year’s best sludge metal albumsand one of the year’s best noise rock albums. Across four songs in 66 minutes, SUMAC echo the ten-ton riffs of bandleader Aaron Turner’s former band Isis and the noisy improvisation of a Sonic Youth or Swans live show in equal measure, and they walk that line so effortlessly thatThe Healer never really falls into one category or another. It’s heavy, it’s clamoring, it’s psychedelic, and it’s a journey that earns its lengthy runtime with multiple cathartic payoffs.[A.S.]

We’ve seen a lot of bands toy with the confines of hardcore these past few years, but no one’s doing it like Candy’s doing it right now. On their third and most expansive album yet, they give you everything from straight-up hardcore punk to chugging metalcore to synths, breakbeats, and other electronics to the best and catchiest ’90s industrial rock song of 2024, “Love Like Snow.” (Candy bristle at being called “industrial” though. Theyprefer “hypercore.”) With a little help from their friends (including members of Angel Du$t, Fleshwater, Trash Talk, and Integrity), Candy defy expectations left and right onIt’s Inside You. For 31 relentless minutes, they fit square pegs into round holes, turning unsettling moments into satisfying ones and squeezing boundless experimentation into concise bursts of rage. It pushes them further in every direction–weirder, heavier, catchier, etc–and it just never lets up.[A.S.]

The long-running, sporadically-active band State Faults have been staples of West Coast screamo since the early 2010s, but it was a trip to the East Coast that resulted in their most spacious-sounding and best album yet. Recorded in Burlington, CT with producer Chris Teti (of The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die),Children of the Moon finds State Faults sounding warmer, brighter, and more towering than ever before. No disrespect at all to the great Jack Shirley who helmed their last two albums, but it feels like Chris helped unlock something in State Faults that we’ve never heard from them before. They also wrote a batch of songs that ranges from their most instantly-satisfying and melodic (“Palo Santo”) to their most immersive (the ten-minute “No Gospel”), and throughout it all, they toe the line between shimmering beauty and harsh chaos at every turn.[A.S.]

Somehow, ELUCID is only getting weirder. The Armand Hammer member’s latest solo album uses noise, glitch, and live drums to create the loudest, most abrasive backdrop that he’s ever rapped over, and his third-eye-open bars sound even more intense in this setting. You could semi-accurately call it a cross between Shabazz Palaces and Death Grips, but an “X meets Y” namedrop doesn’t really capture how startlingly original this music is.

“Say goodbye to America, I wanna see it dissolve,” Alynda Segarra sings on “Colossus of Roads.” If there’s a line that describes the experience of living in this country in 2024, that’s the one, and Segarra delivers it with enough conviction to imbue it with the solidity of truth, as they do everything onThe Past Is Still Alive. Their tales from the road are more vivid and affecting than ever, no less because after a couple of albums exploring other styles, they’ve returned to the Americana sounds of their 2014 breakthroughSmall Town Heroes. Their slice of the genre incorporates the familiar warm twang of pedal steel and fiddle, but it also remains clear-eyed about the painful, fucked up realities of life in the US in the present day, right up through the solemnly declared end of “Ogallala,” watching the world burn. There’s catharsis in that image, which is presented like a benediction towards their fellow misfits, who remain the most enduring images from these songs.[A.H.]

Nearly 20 years in and six years since their last proper LP, Thou are as uncompromising as ever.Umbilical has elements of sludge metal, black metal, punk, grunge, noise, and more, but it would be easier just to say it sounds like Thou. They use familiar ingredients to come up with an otherwise-unfamiliar approach, and there’s still nobody doing it like them. They sound as hungry, powerful, and abrasive as ever onUmbilical, an album that meets the moment with poetic dissent and static-y darkness.[A.S.]

Few records in 2024 were as simultaneously fun and dire as Ekko Astral’sPink Balloons. Through a mix of danceable, rage-induced post-punk and sweetly melodic indie rock, the DC band throw a party for the end of the world, looking to spark a little joy in the face of inevitable doom. The album had some of the most grin-inducing one-liners and pop culture references in rock music this year, along with moments of real anger, sadness, and pain. Between the way singer Jael Holzman’s experiences as a trans woman impact her songwriting, and the way non-album singlePomegranate Tree finds Jael and drummer Miri Tyler writing about watching a symbol of their Jewish upbringing transform into a symbol for genocide in Palestine, Ekko Astral tackled some of the year’s most dominant issues from a place of personal impact and insight. The music they released this year is a moment-defining example of speaking truth to power and writing catchy-as-hell songs in the process.[A.S.]

Sometimes it seems like there’s an ideological split between the genre’s usually-more-melodic crossover successes and the tougher-sounding bands keeping it real on a more underground level, but Speed defy that entirely. The Australian gang has become even bigger in the States than many of our homegrown heroes, and their debut albumOnly One Mode does nothing to soften their blow. Taking cues from recent forebears like Trapped Under Ice and early Turnstile as well as OGs like Madball and Biohazard, it’s catchy as hell but only has about 10 seconds of vocals that qualify as “melodic singing.” Usually, their one mode is informed only by crisp, ass-beating, chuggy hardcore, and Speed have figured out how to churn out songs within that style that are as concise and memorable as possible. Gang vocals, flute interludes, turntable-scratch breakdowns, and other little embellishments make the whole ride even wilder, and every aspect of this album feels built to keep the crowd moving at every turn. Like most hardcore bands, Speed are best experienced in a room surrounded by a few hundred other sweaty individuals, and if you need a little extra push to go see them, the ten kickass songs on this album are a pretty damn good sell.[A.S.]

It’s getting harder and harder to stand out within the increasingly-crowded sphere of new old-school death metal, and one band that did it with flying colors this year was Gatecreeper. They embraced their love ofmelodic death metal more than ever, butDark Superstition isn’t just At The Gates/In Flames worship either. It’s a tasteful, kickass melting pot of the melodeath stuff, the old school death-thrash stuff, some punk/hardcore, and more, and Gatecreeper stir it all together in a way that’s devilishly catchy and just a little bit out of step with everything happening around them. These are the most memorable songs of Gatecreeper’s career, and some of the most euphoric metal songs to drop this year from any band.[A.S.]

One of the year’s most delightfully weird, unpigeonholable albums is the second glass beach album, otherwise known asPlastic Death. It’s a maximalist, immersive, hour-long collision of prog, avant-pop, and a touch of screamo that spends its entire lengthy runtime spiraling out of control. It’s not meant for passive listening or easily-digestible consumption, but it’s not too experimental for its own good either. At the end of the day, this is memorable, enduring pop music–a weird, warped, erratic form of pop music, but pop music nonetheless–and these songs really have a way of sucking you in, even (or perhaps especially) during their most dizzying, mind-melting moments.[A.S.]

Guided Tour feels like the album High Vis have always been working towards. Since forming in 2016 with members of Tremors, Dirty Money, and other UK hardcore bands, High Vis branched out from the members’ aggressive roots to explore post-punk (2019’sNo Sense No Feeling) and baggy/Britpop (2022’sBlending) before finding ways to merge their past, present, and future like never before onGuided Tour. It embraces the moshy hardcore/punk vibes of the band’s live show more than any other High Vis LP, while exploring a host of other forms of Brit-centric alternative rock and making welcome left turns like the house/punk hybrid “Mind’s A Lie.” Throughout it all, commanding shouter Graham Sayle turns societal contempt and a refreshing sense of hopefulness into one magnetic chorus after the next.[A.S.]

I don’t think anyone has summed up Rosali’s new albumBite Down better than Steven Hyden, who called it “Sandy Denny jamming with Crazy Horse on a late night in the mid-1970s,” so I won’t attempt to try, but I will add that it’s pretty remarkable how well Rosali captures that vibe 50 years removed from this imagined scenario. The North Carolina/Philadelphia singer/songwriter (whose full name is Rosali Middleman) has been releasing albums of warm, earthy folk music for nearly a decade, and on this one—her Merge debut—her Crazy Horse-esque backing band is the David Nance Group, whose rugged jams couldn’t work more perfectly with her transportive voice. It sounds like a lost gem from the past but it also sounds totally timeless, and the songwriting is magnetic. Whether it’s an immediate hook like “Rewind” and “My Kind” or more of a slow-burner that creeps up on you like “Change Is In The Form,” every song onBite Down lures you in and never lets you go.[A.S.]

There was always something holding Foxing back. They’ve always been one of the most wildly ambitious bands to come out of the 2010s “emo revival” movement, and it always seemed like they were swinging for a fence that was ever so slightly out of reach. By the time their debut albumThe Albatross took off, they were ready to move on from it. They failed to meet their own expectations with their gorgeously somber sophomore albumDealer. Reviews of their third albumNearer My God spoke of it like an art rock opus that drew parallels toOK Computer, but it never truly became a widespread critical darling. Their fourth albumDraw Down the Moon gave festival-pop bands a run for their money in a musical sense but never reached festival-sized crowds. The more they weren’t getting the full credit they deserved, the more it felt like: what more could you want from them? Well, apparently what people wanted from them was their noisiest, harshest, most stereotypically inaccessible record to date. On their self-titled fifth album, Foxing followed up their festival-sized swing with an album that found them headed happily back down to the basement, and it feels like it’s resonated more quickly than any Foxing album before it. When I saw them on tour in October, they played almost entirely songs from this album, and it was the first Foxing show I ever went to where it didn’t feel like the crowd was waiting around for “Rory” and “The Medic.” The album grabs your attention right away with the full-on screamo of its opening one-two punch (“Secret History,” “Hell 99”), but this is not just “Foxing’s screamo album.” Among its best songs, there are also lengthy slow-burners (“Greyhound”), groovy art pop anthems (“Barking,” “Gratitude”), and a sentimental, album-closing piano ballad (“Cry Baby”). And it’s Foxing, so even when they do screamo, they do it in the ambitiously melodic way that they do everything else. For so many bands, this would be their “weird, difficult” album, but for Foxing, it’s a new contender for magnum opus. And judging by the way this band has operated throughout their entire 12 years as a band, I’ll place my bets right now that LP6 is gonna be yet another left turn that none of us see coming.[A.S.]

I thought I wanted Kim Gordon to finally make another rock record, like she finally did with 2019’sNo Home Record, a decade after Sonic Youth’s final album came out, but apparently I wanted her to make an industrial rap album.The Collective might just be the most innovative Sonic Youth-related album to come out since the band’s breakup, from Kim Gordon or otherwise. I’m stretching the truth alittle bit by calling it a “rap album,” but the production from Kim’s current collaborator Justin Raisen explicitly pulls from industrial hip hop, trap, and rage-rap, and Kim tops it off with the same iconic speak-singing and striking lyricism that she brought to her best Sonic Youth songs. It’s a rare example of a rock veteran embracing modern hip hop without an ounce of cringe, and it makes sense that Kim Gordon is a person who can pull that off. It’s been decades since Sonic Youth started intermingling with the New York rap scene that surrounded them, and Kim and her former bandmates have always seemed more concerned with pushing culture forward than reliving glory days.The Collective might not have discordant guitars, but in a spiritual sense, it feels like exactly the kind of album that an artist like Kim Gordon has always stood for.[A.S.]

Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker is a generational talent with a growing catalog of great solo and band albums, and 2024’sBright Future is a particularly special one. She headed to a studio in the woods of New England with four collaborators to make it, and none of them listened to the recordings, all done analog, until they’d finished. The resulting songs are heart-rending in their stark beauty, and even when Adrianne is chronicling specific details, remembering her mom crying when the family dog was put to sleep on “Real House,” the emotions they evoke feel universal. At her recent NYC shows, Adrianne made a majestic Brooklyn theater feel intimate, and made many in attendance cry, with the quiet power of this material. It aims straight for your heart without excess production or ornamentation, just the raw conviction of good songs that will resonate with you for a long time. [A.H.]

Josh Tillman summoned the grandeur of ’30s/’40s orchestral arrangements for his last album as Father John Misty, 2022’sChloë and the Next 20th Century, but it’s withMahashmashana that he really integrates them into his songs in a way that clicks. It’s one of his best albums yet, with his wit and pathos playing out over eight dense, glorious songs. “Screamland,” an all-out epic featuring Low’s Alan Sparkhawk that swings for the bleachers over its nearly seven minutes, is a clear standout, but from the stirring orchestral majesty of the title track to the horn-infused funk of “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All,” Josh is firing on all four cylinders here, dropping wry remarks and ten-dollar words with panache as he goes, and reminding us why we love his music in the first place.[A.H.]

Magdalena Bay proved they are masters of making blissful electro-pop with their 2021 debut LPMercurial World, but that’s not all they are. WithImaginal Disk, they dipped back into their prog past as Tabula Rasa for one of the most inventive and relentlessly catchy releases of the year. It pairs a high-concept backstory with one maximalist banger after another, from the sci-fi blips and bleeps of “Image” to the ABBA-inspired disco of “Cry for Me,” each song shifting shape and going off in unexpected directions. Rosalía is on board — she made the album coverher Halloween costume this year — and I agree: Magdalena Bay are here to usher pop into its next form in some looming space-age future. [A.H.]

Throughout Doechii’s sprawling 19-song projectAlligator Bites Never Heal, she mocks the idea that only boom bap is “real rap” and also delivers some of the best boom bap released this year. She stages a conversation between herself and her therapist, culminating in a breathing exercise that doubles as the project’s most memorable moment. She raps, sings, and remains constantly unpredictable, never sticking to one flow or even one genre of music for more than a few moments. Her versatility extends beyond the album, intobooming festival sets, aTiny Desk concert with a jazz band, and avivid television performance that find Doechii interpreting theAlligator songs in multiple ways. Outside of these 19 songs, she also spent 2024 delivering one of the year’s most iconic rap verses (on her and Tyler, the Creator’s bisexual anthem “Balloon”), releasing her most exhilarating single to date (the house-infused “Alter Ego” with JT from City Girls), and picking up a Best New ArtistGrammy nom. Four years into a steady rise that began with her breakthrough 2020 single “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake,” Doechii’s never been more unstoppable.[A.S.]

For his first album as Johnny Blue Skies, Sturgill Simpson looked forwards and backwards all at once, using the sounds of the country, blues, soul, and Southern rock of the late ’60s/early ’70s to shape the future of Americana, just like he often did on the beloved one-two punch of 2014’sMetamodern Sounds in Country Music and 2016’sA Sailor’s Guide to Earth.Passage Du Desir is widely and deservedly considered his best since the latter, and it’s also endured as one of the most standout country-leaning albums of this whole year. Between this album and his jam band-friendly live show, Sturgill is as much for country fans as he is for the rock crowd–The Allman Brothers, The Band, and even Arcade Fire come to mind throughout this LP–and these songs find him firmly in his comfort zone. As thrilling as it’s been to see Sturgill push himself towards everything from heavy rock (Sound & Fury) to bluegrass (Cuttin’ Grass), it’s tough to beat an eight-song, no-filler, instant-classic album that sounds like second nature for the person making it.[A.S.]

As the generation of artists that turned rap on its head ~15 years ago become the genre’s new elder statespeople, it’s been thrilling to watch the ways many of the greats have grownwith their music rather than out of it. Kendrick Lamar turned personal growth into aconcept album and then turned hisbeef with Drake into the year’s most world-conquering rap song. Tyler, the Creator completed his transformation from skate rat to art-rap auteur with this year’sCHROMAKOPIA, another self-reflective concept album (that you’ll read more about soon), and ScHoolboy Q was by both of their sides. He wasthere on stage when Kendrick made the live debut of “Not Like Us” (five times in a row), and he appears on one of the best songs on Tyler’s album, “Thought I Was Dead.” But before doing either of those things, he released one of his best albums yet withBlue Lips. The 18-song, 57-minute project ranges from punk-rap ragers like the Rico Nasty collab “Pop” to meditative jazz-rap. Like his aforementioned peers, self-reflection and growth are core themes, and so are bragging rights, shit-talk, and life’s pleasures. It’s the most multi-faceted ScHoolboy Q album to date and he masterfully pulls every aspect of it off. If you thought you had him pegged, or if you thought he fell off with 2019’s lukewarmly-receivedCrash Talk,Blue Lips suggests otherwise. [A.S.]

Knocked Loose aren’t just one of the biggest hardcore bands in the world but one of the most chameleonic. On top of going on increasingly-large headlining tours withdiversetour packages, they’re as likely to be found opening anarena tour for Slipknot and getting the kinds of crowd reactions they’d get at their own shows as they are toturn Coachella into a hardcore show with Billie Eilish rocking out sidestage. Whether it’s Coachella or ahardcore fest, aheavy metal fest, or anemo nostalgia fest, Knocked Loose emerge as a show-stopping band with mass appeal. And they continue to do it all without ever softening up their sound one bit. This year’sYou Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To is one of the most brutal records of this band’s ten-plus-year career, but it’s also one of their catchiest. And it manages to be “catchy” without having a single part that would count as “clean vocals”–even when radio-friendly guests Poppy and Chris Motionless show up, they’re here to scream their heads off too. It’s an album that finds Knocked Loose walking the walk, making music that’s true to themselves that also happens to fit in so many different contexts. It’s genre-transcending without being genre-defying. It suggests that maybe Knocked Loose keep getting all these Ws because they’re just that good.[A.S.]

Not many bands come back from hiatus to release their best album yet, but not many bands are Gouge Away.Deep Sage, their third LP, delivers on every promise that its 2018 predecessorBurnt Sugar made and it sounds like the album that Gouge Away were always destined to make. It’s a hardcore album and a post-hardcore album all at once, with expansive moments that owe as much to Sonic Youth as they do to The Jesus Lizard, as well as no-nonsense rippers that go as hard as this band ever has (“Stuck In A Dream,” “Spaced Out”). Christina Michelle’s voice is as shapeshifting as the instrumentation, and she puts as much blood, sweat, and tears into her ethereal singing as she puts into her throat-shredding screams (and does itjust as perfectly live). There’s no denying the absolute force of Gouge Away at their heaviest, but with the dreamy alt-rock of album closer “Dallas,” Gouge Away send us off on the album’s softest note, and it just happens to also be one of its strongest.[A.S.]

Zach Bryan releases too much music for the casual listener to keep up with, but if you’re still looking for a place to start with the alternative-friendly mainstream country singer, you might want to start here.The Great American Bar Scene is Zach’s most consistently-rewarding album yet, from its Springsteenian storytelling (“Oak Island”) to its actual Springsteen collaboration (“Sandpaper”), from its rollicking anthems (“American Nights”) to its depressive ballads (“Pink Skies”). It has indie-folk sensibilities and radio-friendly appeal all at once, with songwriting strong enough to bring all of us together. Zach loves making long albums and this one is no different, with 19 songs in 63 minutes, but somehow it feels concise.[A.S.]

More than a decade after signing a solo deal with Domino, Portishead singer Beth Gibbons finally delivered her first album solely under her own name. It was worth the wait. Made with producer James Ford and longtime collaborator Lee Harris (Talk Talk),Lives Outgrown is a treatise on mortality and aging rendered in a darkly hued palette of string-laden windswept folk. There’s not a breakbeat to be found, but Gibbons is as ever delivering sorrow and beauty in equal measure with cinematic production, masterful, nuanced songwriting and that voice that can still wreck you with just an “ooh.”[B.P.]

Katie Crutchfield first won us over while in her days of playing punk houses with P.S. Eliot, but it’s in her present country era that she’s perhaps found the most acclaim. From 2020’s revelatorySaint Cloud, to her 2022 collaboration with Jess Williamson asPlains, and now this year withTigers Blood, her takes on the genre have felt like instant classics, placing her among titans like her longtime inspiration Lucinda Williams. A little twang, it turns out, is the most natural accompaniment to her soaring voice, and onTigers Blood we also get to hear her collaborating with another artist who has defined the year in countrified indie rock, MJ Lenderman. Their sublime harmonies on “Right Back to It” are a high water mark in a year full of them. [A.H.]

Box for Buddy, Box for Star reminds me of early 2000s indie rock not because it sometimes sounds like that era–“The Postal Service through a lens of Alex G” is my working elevator pitch–but because it exists in today’s culture the way an album like this would’ve existed back then. Those were the days when “indie rock” albums were usually by artists who were enamored by pop songcraft but too uncompromising in their weirdness to infiltrate the prevailing mainstream, and that’s exactly what This Is Lorelei’s Nate Amos is. He’s the kind of artist who will sing about Steely Dan through excessive auto-tune over a riff that kinda sounds like blink-182 on one song (“Dancing in the Club”) and pay homage to Elliott Smith on another (“Two Legs”). He’s a casually brilliant lyricist, with plainspoken lines that you’ll be thinking about for weeks on end, and a master of melody.Box for Buddy, Box for Star stands out because it’s not supposed to fit in, and it’s refreshing to get an album that embraces that concept the way this one does.[A.S.]

Jessica Pratt makes out-of-time music, meticulously crafted tiny gems that sound like a lost ’60s artifact, Brill Building by way of Karen Dalton and Gal Costa, where folk, girl group sounds and bossa nova mingle at a party thrown by Burt Bacharach.Here in the Pitch is Pratt’s most lushly produced album to date with mellotrons, Fender Rhodes electric piano, bongos, and saxophone backing her and her nylon string guitar. Yet the album is still as hushed as Jessica’s previous work, sounding like these songs were beamed in from a distant star where the accompaniment is half a light year behind, faint in the distance, still waiting to catch up to whatever time her present is.[B.P.]

At least as far as rap music is concerned, there was no bigger story in 2024 than this one: Drake poked the bear, and then we all saw what happens when you poke the bear. A week-long trading of diss tracks between the two superstars broke out, none more of a dagger than Kendrick’s “Not Like Us,” a scathing takedown of Drake that beat him at his own game (club tracks) and went on to become one of the most (literally) world-conquering songs of the year. And as the world danced on Drake’s proverbial grave, Kendrick gave us more where that came from. Mr. Morale stepped aside so Kendrick Lamar Duckworth could come out guns blazing onGNX, an album that drops all of the grandiosity that Kendrick’s critics have accused him of in the past. No one is safe from the venom he spits on opening track “Wacced Out Murals.” Multiple songs gave us more where “Not Like Us” came from. In an era in which the internet threatens to erase the regionality that’s long been so intrinsic to rap music,GNX is an explicitly West Coast rap album, from the beat selection to the underground LA rappers that take up just about all of the guest spots. The only big-name guest at all is Kendrick’s longtime collaborator (and upcoming 2025 tourmate) SZA, who duets with him on two songs (“Luther” and “Gloria”) that prove Angry Kendrick still has a sentimental side. Even on an album that intentionally narrows Kendrick’s focus, his wide range comes off as second nature.[A.S.]

After years of promises that there was a new Cure album on the way, maybe even three new Cure albums, Robert Smith actually made good on his word and droppedSongs of a Lost World on us, a mostly unsuspecting public. We had heard some of these songs live the year before on a tour that garnered lots of good will for The Cure, but hearing it front-to-back it still amazes that they delivered a record this good, this vital, this unrelentingly gloomy so deep into their career. Likewise, it seems like a miracle that Robert Smith’s voice sounds just like it did 34 years ago onDisintegration.Songs of a Lost World is their most cohesive since that one and their best since at leastBloodflowers (but maybe sinceWish). Robert Smith keeps saying there’s another record soon on the way, and if so that’s exciting. But ifSongs of a Lost World were to be The Cure’s final album, it’s hard to imagine a better, more fitting end to a nearly 50-year career.[B.P.]

After going in an experimental, melodic, not-really-rap direction on 2019’sIGOR and swinging the pendulum back towards hard-nosed rap on 2022’sCall Me If You Get Lost, Tyler, the Creator brought all of that and more together for his grandest statement yet,Chromakopia. As cliché as it is to say,Chromakopia plays out like a movie, from its truly cinematic intro “St. Chroma” through all the ups and downs that lead to the final fade-out of “I Hope You Find Your Way Home.” Its themes of growth, aging, self-reflection, and the prospect of parenthood give it a deeply personal concept that runs throughout the LP, and Tyler still finds time amidst all the maturation to bust out Odd Futuristic bangers (“Rah Tah Tah,” “Thought I Was Dead”) and share the spotlight with some charismatic rising stars (Doechii, GloRilla, Sexyy Red).Chromakopia feels like everything Tyler’s been working towards since the career turning-point of 2017’sFlower Boy. It’s tempting to call it his magnum opus, but given the hot streak he’s been on, it’s very likely that his magnum opus hasn’t been written yet.[A.S.]

We don’t give out awards, but if we did, ‘Most Improved’ would go to Fontaines D.C. for their fantastic fourth album. Not that they weren’t already a great band — they definitely were — butRomance is a real level up, with the band swapping the drony post-punk of their first three albums for soaring, melodic, ’90s-style alt-rock and their best batch of songs to date, all without changing who they are at all. The hit quotient here is insanely high, from the breathless panic attack banger “Starburster” to jangly singalongs “Favourite” and “Bug,” the dreamy and dramatic “In the Modern World” and “Sundowner,” and the slashing riffs of “Here’s the Thing” and “Death Kink.”Romance turned folks who were previously Fontaines D.C. agnostics (including a couple of our staffers) into true believers, and judging by their shows this year, the pivot didn’t cause them to lose any fans either. This is how it’s supposed to work but rarely does: a band makes their best record by a mile and gets exponentially more popular because of it.[B.P.]

Blood Incantation aren’t the only death metal band to flirt with progressive rock these past few years, but on their long-awaited new albumAbsolute Elsewhere, they might be the only band that answers the question: “What if Pink Floyd made a death metal album?” Outside of the overt Floyd homage on “The Message [Tablet II],” even that description is reductive, but I think it’s an elevator pitch that doesAbsolute Elsewhere justice. Named after a short-lived mid ’70s prog band that included King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford,Absolute Elsewhere has equal footing in the world of bands like Floyd, Crimson, and Tangerine Dream as it does in the world of bands like Morbid Angel, At the Gates, and Gorguts, and Blood Incantation are masters of both worlds,and masters at blending them together. They find common ground between earthy ’60s psychedelia, ’70s prog rock excursions, ’80s sci-fi synths, and bone-crushing ’90s metal, and the ever-changing album’s transitions are seamless every time. It’s a great metal album, a great prog album, and also transcends being either of those things. It’s just some of the year’s best guitar-based music, period.[A.S.]

SEE ALSO: 3/4 of Blood Incantation also released another of our favorite metal albums of the year with thenew Spectral Voice album.

The Cinderella DIY indie story of the year, Patrick Flegel dropped their first Cindy Lee album in four years out of the blue in March, making it only available as two massive CD-length WAV files or a two-hour YouTube stream. But the real surprise was that there wasn’t a bad apple in the bushel of 32 songs contained within. Previous albums mixed Flegel’s haunted pop with nightmare soundscapes butDiamond Jubilee is hit after hit, featuring a wide range of styles within the Cindy Lee Cinematic Universe. There’s forlorn ’50s slow dance ballads, glammy rockers, twangy surf instrumentals, chooglin’ jams, krautrock grooves, lush Beach Boys melodies, swooning soul, and more, all coated in Flegel’s unique, quietly spectacular guitarwork. The runtime might seem daunting, but listening toDiamond Jubilee is pure pleasure with new treasures to be unearthed with each listen. [B.P.]

Pop music needed an album likeBrat. Things were getting too stagnant, too predictable. Multiple A-listers were releasing albums that just weren’t cutting it compared to past wins. We needed someone to come in and shake things up, and who better than Charli XCX? She’s donepop pop, she’s done outsider pop, and so much else in between. She’s a person who can sing “cult classic but I still pop!” and have everyone agree with her. And after this pastBrat Summer, she’s kind of just anactual classic.Brat infiltrated a stagnant pop mainstream and became the new pop mainstream, and she made pop music a more fun place than it’d had been in quite some time.Brat remembers that pop often thrives when it’s trashy and unserious.Brat‘s not about writing poems, it’s about throwing parties, but it also still gets poetic in its own way.Brat borrows from experimental music and rave culture and comes out with infectious bangers that never sound too sweet.Brat creates a space to have conversations about the life you might give up if you have children vs the life you might gain, or about walking the line between female friendship and competition, and it also creates space to just not think about anything. It’s an album that we almostcollectively OD’d on, and I know I speak for so many people when I say we still never got tired of hearing it.[A.S.]

In an era where stars are so often trying to sell us on the promise that they’re one of us, MJ Lenderman comes off like a regular guy who just can’t help but be a star. Maybe that’s why his deceptively casual ANTI- debutManning Fireworks has had such a chokehold on the indie rock world this year, or maybe it’s just because the songs are too good to ignore. Across its nine tracks, Lenderman stirs up a countrified indie rock blend that’s sprinkled with a little Drive-By Truckers, Songs: Ohia, and J Mascis and comes out sounding like nobody else in the world. Once his melodies are in your head, they’re inescapable, and his words create an entire universe to dive into. He finds the humor in sadness and the sadness in humor. He evokes emotion with pop culture references and sucks you into the lives of deeply unlikable characters. (The story of the unnamed man with the houseboat docked at the himbodome just might be this year’s most compelling indie rock subplot.)Manning Fireworks is a little cleaner and more consistently catchy and upbeat than Lenderman’s earlier records, but it’s the kind of breakthrough album thatdoesn’t feel like it was taking a big swing at breaking through. It sounds like the album Lenderman would’ve made even if 2022’sBoat Songs hadn’t become a sleeper hit, and that’s a big part of what makes it feel so special.[A.S.]

Was there a more versatile or transcendent punk record in 2024 thanI Got Heaven? Was there a more provocative lyric than “What if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch”? Was there a punk record that felt better suited for this year’s ever-changing social and political climate, throughout all its ups and downs? The answer is a resounding “no” to all. The album is a walking contradiction, screaming and cooing its way through pleasure and anger and danger, refusing to settle between vicious hardcore punk and ethereal dream pop. But it’s only as much of a “contradiction” as just about all of us are. Why should Mannequin Pussy settle on a particular theme or emotion if our own lives rarely let us do that? Why not put a potential alt-rock hit (“Sometimes”) right up against chaotic mosh fuel (“OK? OK! OK? OK!”) if so many of us crave both of those things? Mannequin Pussy did it seamlessly, and they did it better than ever.I Got Heaven has the best and most wholeheartedly pop songs the band has ever written, along with some of their most ferocious hardcore songs, and the in-between moments like the title track and “Loud Bark” are among their most gripping songs to date. Whatever you were looking for this year across the wide spectrum of guitar-based alternative rock music that this album covers, Mannequin Pussy did it best.[A.S.]