Huge blockbusters, breakout debuts, left-field gems, and much more
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY. PHOTOGRAPHS IN ILLUSTRATION BY RODIN ECKENROTH/GETTY IMAGES; MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES; PRINCE WILLIAMS/FILMMAGIC; KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES; ALBERTO RODRIGUEZ/VARIETY/GETTY IMAGES
Along with major releases by the likes of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Shakira, Billie Eilish, and Ariana Grande, this year has given us peak work from long-beloved artists like Tems, Charli XCX, Kali Uchis, Schoolboy Q, Faye Webster, and Waxahatchee, fantastic LPs from breakout innovators like Sexxy Red, Mk.gee, Brittney Spencer, and Álvaro Díaz, as well as heartening reinventions from durable icons like Kim Gordon, Gary Clark Jr., and Pearl Jam. Here is the rundown of our favorite LPs of 2024 so far, unranked and in alphabetical order.
The Peruvian artist A. Chal had gained some serious momentum around 2018, thanks to trap-tinged songs like “000000.” But as his team pushed for more hits, he started to wonder if making label-approved tracks was actually what he wanted. So instead, he decided to go off completely on his own with Espíritu, a deeply experimental, alt-leaning album that pulls from New Wave, Peruvian traditions, and Latin American punk. Songs like “Saico” and “Walk on Everything” channel the deep history of rock en español — and show A. Chal at his most honest. —J.L.
The Big Thief singer-songwriter’s fifth solo album carries an aura of raw, one-take candidness. It’s sweet and subtle in its sound, though Adrianne Lenker’s lyricism remains characteristically brutal and brave. The tracks share a similar sparseness and uniformity in instrumentation — piano, violin, guitar, and occasional percussion — but rather than melding together, each song stands strong, poignant, and singular. It’s a body of incantations that explore reconciliation, resignation, and reverence. —L.L.
The latest from Puerto Rican artist Álvaro Díaz is a 20-song splurge that bristles with post-genre ambition and heart-on-sleeve intensity. Díaz opens the album with Blink 182-indebted post-breakup moaner “Te Vi En Mis Pesadilla,” and proceeds to swerve from reggaeton to synthy emo to hip-hop, ending it all with a rock-guitar ballad. His musical confidence recalls Bad Bunny and Tainy (who appears on the house hallucination “Fatal Fantasy”), turning his anthemic heartbreak into an artistic coming-out party. —J.D.
Twenty-six-year-old Atlanta rapper Anycia has risen rapidly thanks to her vibrant personality and entrancing baritone. She follows through on her debut album, Princess Pop That, the kind of smooth listen that fits into a playlist of hustler braggadocio, except it’s a woman on her boss shit. “I hope you get up out the car, and then your phone crack,” she raps on ““Nene’s Prayer.” The album further entrenches her as one of the “rap girlies” who make music for the turn-up as well as chill vibes. —A.G.
Ariana Grande’s latest is a divorce album that goes through all the stages of grief, and the singer navigates a new beginning with some of the most honest and inventive songs of her career so far. After “Intro (End of the World)” poses the album’s central question, she spends the next couple of songs fighting for either herself or her relationship, in music that can evoke anything from Robyn to Diana Ross to Aaliyah. She toggles between moments of resilience, acceptance, and hope for the future, no matter how uncertain it may be. —B. Spanos
Last year, the Pakistani singer-musician-composer collaborated with pianist Vijay Iyer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily for the beautifully experimental Love in Exile, one of 2023’s best albums. Aftab’s dreamlike new LP, Night Reign, finds her getting even more rangy than usual — whether she’s teaming up with poet and experimental musician Moor Mother for a meditation on the tenuous nature of reality in a fucked-up world, or turning the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves” into an almost foreboding nocturnal landscape. —B.E.
With the follow-up to her 2021 debut, 19 & Dangerous, Ayra Starr asserts a musical maturity that could be considered far beyond her years, but perhaps more aptly serves as a reminder of the emotional depth, logical prowess, and enviable passion young people often possess. Across it, Ayra refreshes tried-and-true Afrobeats elements with the type of songwriting that SZA fans flock to, darting between Nigerian pidgin, Yoruba, and English with endless finesse and attitude in all three languages. —M.C.
Few artists out there write a melancholic smasher like Babehoven’s Bon and Ryan Albert, whose swaying and unique melodies can make the listener feel like they’re hearing something totally new. The songs on Water’s Here in You blend indie rock with folk and country twangs, occasionally venturing into shoegaze-y territory. At times, the music feels holy and hymn-like. Part of that disarming enchantment comes from the contemplative loop-like quality of the duo’s songwriting. Bon’s use of chant-like repetition can feel almost liturgical, as if her purely emotional confessions might someday become sacraments. —L.L.
Like everything Beyoncé has done, Cowboy Carter is a college dissertation of an album: richly researched and meticulously constructed. And while she has something to prove to a whole musical community, it’s more of a love letter to her Southern roots than strictly a honky-tonkin’ romp. Beyoncé’s point is made crystal clear by the time she reaches “Amen”: She is country and has always been country. There’s no doubting that, gatekeepers be damned. Her latest is a history textbook making her case from track to track. —B. Spanos
Eilish’s third album is her coming-of-age album but also her coming-out album, with a nonstop rush of emotional and musical quick-change swerves. She moves from depression, isolation, and misery to the explicit electro-goth lust of “Lunch,” where she raves over a muse who’s “a craving, not a crush.” Hit Me Hard and Soft makes you marvel at how far she’s traveled as a pop artiste. But it’s also a propitious omen that the greatest Billie is yet to come. —R.S.
The surprise with the Black Crowes’ first studio album in 15 years is how fun, energetic, and unmistakably not-crusty it sounds, even as the references they lean into are all roughly a half-century old. Songs like “Rats and Clowns” and “Wanting and Waiting” are glam-rock with gritty down-home spirit. But whether Happiness Bastards works because the Robinson brothers are reanimating the past, or merely reenacting it, what matters is they’re rocking now. —J.D.
The Black Keys’ 12th album is their most collaborative album yet, with assists from Beck, Noel Gallagher, indie-rap innovator Dan “the Automator” Nakamura, and others. The duo say they wanted to re-create the feel of their “record hangs,” parties they’ve hosted in cities all over the world, where they spin classic 45s. Whether they set their retro-rock wayback machine to Memphis in the Sixties, the Midwest in the Seventies, or Manchester, England, and L.A. in the Nineties, it all flows together like a beautifully paced DJ set. —J.D.
Howard’s second solo album shows her to be budding a master of making forward-moving music that still passionately honors tradition. “I Don’t” is a yearning Philly soul reverie. “Prove It to You” suggests Prince doing acid house. By the time you reach the album-ending “Every Color in Blue,” with liquid In Rainbows-era Radiohead guitar backing Howard’s powerhouse Nina Simone-esque vocals, what should be a willful marriage of opposites feels stunningly natural. —J.D.
Brittney Spencer spent the bulk of her first decade in Nashville paying dues. My Stupid Life is a debut country record that’s certain to cement her place in the genre. The album takes a few songs to find its footing, but once it does, it lifts off and soars: It’s hard to think of a stronger run on a country LP in recent memory than the five-song stretch beginning with the self-reclamation ballad “The Last Time” and ending with the tender heartbreak of “If You Say So.” —J.B.
The Brooklyn-born rapper’s 21-track new project comes after a prolonged period when, he says, he lost his creative fire due to the demands that the industry, especially DSPs, put on artists. His dense, abstract lyricism forms the shafts and columns through which he alternately reflects on his life, dropping gems like “Loud and corny the new clout,” from “Custard Spoon.” Cavalier deploys a range of flows over a diverse, Quelle Chris-crafted canvas — from the jazzy “Pears” to the entrancing “Come Proper.” —A.G.
Charley Crockett has been at it for a decade, longer if you count his busking days, but he’s never sounded as sure of himself as he does here. The lyrics on $10 Cowboy are a mix of honky-tonk hooks, phrases from drifters and gas-station clerks, and stories written in the back of his bus across America. Like the country he’s looking out at, the album is a whole made of disparate parts: soul, country, blues, Americana, and more. —B. Stallings.
On her sixth album, Charli XCX stays out later and goes harder than ever before. And while she’s spinning around on the dance floor she’s also spiraling out in her head, digging deep into the types of insecurities and fears reserved for the comedown the morning after. Opening with the one-two punch of “360” and “Club Classics,” Brat seesaws between extremes from song to song, a hyperpop roller coaster of post-Saturn return, early-thirties anxieties, and It-girl bravado. —B. Spanos
Keef sounds like he’s leading a rebellion, cutting against the grain by staying out of the news and simply sounding like himself. The most striking element of Almighty So 2 is his emotional progression. Keef’s greatest skill, even as he came onto the scene at age 14, was his ability to translate exactly what he was feeling. At the time, that meant plenty of rage. Regret doesn’t linger in the background of Keef’s more grown-up bars, but you can hear the weight of experience. —J.I.
Put aside, if you can, the anti-hype cycle around this extraordinary double album — the mysterious release as an unmarked YouTube link, the wild praise that followed from fans and critics hungry for anything that resembles a true underground phenomenon. What you’re left with is two hours of mind-melting low-fi gold, deftly interwoven with threads of psychedelia, funk, garage rock, torch songs, and AM melodies. Unfolding slowly with its own dream logic, Diamond Jubilee is a gem worth getting dazzled by. —S.V.L.
Claire Rousay has spent the past few years building her own adventurous style of electronic collage, calling it “emo ambient.” Sentiment is her self-described pop album, building her late-night diary entries out of synth textures, warped melodies, robot AutoTune vocals, and rock guitar weaving in and out of the mix. he whole album flows like Brian Eno’s Another Green World through the ears of a big Pedro the Lion fan. —R.S.
In the decades since these German industrial icons got their start, Einstürzende Neubauten have dialed back most of the aggression. Rage is more like a steely intensity on Rampen, which finds them dwelling largely in quieter textures. They’ve always been expert conceptualists — true artists who create works meant to be interpreted and felt more than to be intellectualized. By giving themselves over even more to their concepts they’ve created a new set of structures to explode. —K.G.
The Atlanta singer-songwriter has always depicted romance as a force that shapes our ambient mode of existence. It’s fitting that her music favors a lounging-around easiness; her blend of soft rock and indie country is an ideal soundtrack for drawn-out sessions being consumed by your thoughts, uninterrupted. With her fifth studio album, Faye Webster has her strongest grasp yet on how to convey these obsessive contemplations. —J.K.
The Alabama native has built a growing fan base by delivering cutthroat lyrics while maintaining a graceful and fashionable persona. Fine Ho, Stay might be her rawest LP yet, never breaking its self-assured lyrical stride while exploring themes of romantic vulnerability. Like her past projects, the production is electric, filling callbacks to Nineties classics with modern approaches while touching on different hip-hop sounds from all around the U.S. —M. Jordan
JPEG RAW is both a musically dense snapshot of an American stoner dad just trying to focus in a world that allows for anything but, and an album that amalgamates an array of sounds, influences, riffs, and samples while still finding room for the searing guitar solos that made this Texas blues innovator’s reputation. George Clinton, Stevie Wonder, Valerie June, and others help Clark do what he does best, making thunderous blues sound like the music of tomorrow. —J.G.
Girl in Red makes bedroom pop for a worldwide bedroom. Marie Ulven was an introspective Norwegian teenager, from the small port town of Horten, when she became a cult figure with her homemade low-fi tunes like “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” and “Summer Depression.” On I’m Doing It Again Baby!, Ulven picks up right where she left off, in candid synth-pop diary entries about her emotional turmoil. But now 25, Ulven has opened up her range, trying to chronicle the highs as well as the lows. —R.S.
Each album that Roberto Carlos Lange Helado Negro makes seems to reveal a new side of him, offering a glimpse into his expansive imagination. Phasor, his eighth album, released in February, is among his most carefree and playful, allowing plenty of space for ideas and melodies to frolic. The excellent opener “LFO,” inspired by electronic pioneer Pauline Oliveros and amp master Lupe Lopez, is a subtle firework of a song and a statement in itself. Toward the end, he leaves a quiet declaration: “Y ya sé quién soy.” (“And now I know who I am.”) —J.L.
Over the years, singer-songwriter Alynda Segarra’s music lineages have included everything from alt-pop to punk to Nuyorican folk poetry. On Past Is Still Alive, Segarra has honed their craft into a cohesive, astonishingly realized singer-songwriter record, featuring the best batch of songs they’ve ever written: tales of grief and mourning (“Alibi”), youthful romance and misadventure (“Ogallala”), returning and rebirth (“Vetiver”). —J.B.
Describing the warm, fuzzy optimism of an Idles record requires only the most pretentious adjectives — ebullience, exultation, jubilation. Their 2020 album, Ultra Mono, brightened the darkest moments of peak Covid lockdown with uplifting punk-rock mantras like “Let’s seize the day … You can do it.” On their fifth full-length, the crew from Bristol, England, dials back some of the intensity, but maintains the positive mental attitude. —K.G.
Five long years have passed since Pratt’s striking 2019 LP Quiet Signs. But the Los Angeles folkie more than makes up for lost time on the excellent Here in the Pitch, a sweeping, nine-track odyssey that culminates with the utterly beautiful “The Last Year.” The album was heavily influenced by the dark underbelly of the Sixties and Seventies, from Spirit to Captain Beefheart, a reclamation process Pratt calls, “marching through the psychic waves of all of the history and layers of humanity that have come before you.” —A.M.
Bouncing from icy R&B and bright merengue to liquefied dream pop, Uchis wants the world to know there’s no box or category to limit Latinas sonically. She also balances a careful mix of power and vulnerability. But Orquídeas is also loaded with sexual agency and bad-bitch energy. Uchis is bolder and more forthright than on past releases, diving deeper into new sounds and flourishing the entire way. —J.L.
The dance-floor maestro — whose latest album features the likes of Donald Glover, Don Toliver, and PinkPantheress — recently told Rolling Stone that ahead of the record’s release, he briefly deleted his Twitter because he was getting so many requests from fans hoping to hear his otherworldly sound underneath their pop star of choice. You can’t blame them for asking; on Timeless, Kay deftly constructs danceable landscapes for his collaborators to inhabit. On tracks like the PinkPantheress-assisted “Snap My Finger,” Kay’s sonic sensibility gels into something, well, timeless. —J.I.
Kim Gordon will turn 71 next month, and she’s made one of the most daring albums of her career. The plucked plush synth pads, set to an 808-style handclap-spangled breakbeat, could serve as sonic backdrop for verses by Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, or ScHoolboy Q, and it’s equally effective for Gordon’s Delphic rapping. The songs come off as avant-garde, trap, old-school hip-hop, noisy, or musique concrète, depending on where you drop the needle. —K.G.
Recorded with Harry Styles producer Kid Harpoon, the Kings’ new one follows their introspective 2021 LP, When You See Yourself, by easing into familiar good times with some unexpected sonic twists. Album opener “Ballerina Radio” pulses with Brit-pop-ish energy. Can We Please Have Fun shows that these family rock stars aren’t afraid of change, and they’re sliding smoothly into whatever their next phase will be. —J. Lonsdale
Appropriate for a band that came together just before and during the early years of the pandemic, the U.K. band’s debut album may be the ideal soundtrack for reentering a messy world newly open for business. Songs like “Caesar on a TV Screen” and “Burn Alive” start like hung-over reveries before vaulting into trampoline pop, wrapping up with crashing crescendos. There’s no denying the way their blowsy, unrestrained songs knock you upside and down and leave you with a dizzying high. —D.B.
This sisterly supergroup of African singers seduces with glee, setting soothing traditional harmonies atop varied tempos, feeling dynamic and cohesive in its embrace of electro-pop, funk, and folk fusions. As the Amazones weave their cathartic cadences and ancestral harmonies into futuristic music, they also deliver a potent feminist message. It’s that spirit and their powerful performances that make Musow Danse a great expression of pan-African consciousness. —C.I.
Fronted by a mailman, this Michigan indie-rock band highlights their Replacements-y Midwestern-ness by opening with “Drinking and Driving,” a song that refers to an essential life skill the members of Liquid Mike may have had down before they were out of high school. On Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, they play short, fast, muscular songs that split the difference between Nineties pop punk and Nineties indie rock, tempering the petulant angst of the former with the latter’s winning resignation. —J.D.
Maggie Rogers’ third album is a heavy emotional lift, but it’s an easygoing listen. Co-produced with Ian Fitchuk (who worked on Kacey Musgraves’ career-defining Golden Hour), Don’t Forget Me strips away the synth–steeped singer-songwriter production of her 2019 album, Heard It in a Past Life, and the alt-rock experimentation of 2022’s Surrender to reveal a rustic, more organic-feeling pop-rock sound. Upbeat tracks like “On and On and On” and “Never Going Home” are perfectly made for big-voiced singalongs. —M.G.
After years struggling to make it as a country artist, Maggie Rose changed up her sound on her last two albums, delving into R&B and country funk. No One Gets Out Alive cements her reinvention as one of the most successful in Nashville history. The album evokes vintage Carole King and Joni Mitchell, the Laurel Canyon scene, and hints of Eighties Sade. Rose is at her controlled best on ballads like “Too Young” and “Vanish,” but she allows herself to rock with abandon, too. —J.H.
On the highly anticipated I Got Heaven, the Philly punk rockers have completely leveled up, enmeshing lush synth sounds into their brash sensibility. On earlier albums, Mannequin Pussy used anger as a blueprint. But on their newest LP, it’s as a vessel to explore the depths of loneliness and desire. They throw raw emotions at the canvas and step back to find a glistening display of human longing. —M.G.
Marcus King’s latest pairs him with production titan Rick Rubin, who helps him switch things up and bring out the soulful side of his sound — while leaning less on guitar and more on piano, strings, and R&B vocal stylings. Rubin’s production offers a sensitive, characteristically unobtrusive backing for King, who has his own very modern use for these vintage settings. Where he might have played the smooth love man or the down-home tough guy, he instead goes for something much more daring, vulnerable, and openhearted. —J.D.
For more than a decade, the Tuareg guitarist/singer-songwriter, who fronts the band that shares his name, has been staking out a space as a radical guitar innovator as well as a fearless spokesman for his strife-riven homeland of Niger. Funeral for Justice is the band’s most forceful album yet, and it’s full of anti-colonial and anti-corruption declarations; “France’s actions are frequently veiled in cruelty/We are better off without its turbulent relation,” Moctar offers on “Oh France,” which manages to feel sprawling yet dramatically urgent. —J.D.
The songs that Michael Gorden makes as Mk.Gee froth and fizz and occasionally freak out. The 12 tracks here draw endless comparisons. “I Want” is a moody sophisti-pop track in the lineage of the Blue Nile, while “Rylee & I” evokes Bon Iver, Arthur Russell, Jai Paul, and John Mayer. On “Candy,” Gordon shreds like he’s got a massive grin on his face, as if this is a private moment of goofy, endearing affection for someone he loves. This unabashed craving for intimacy is at the heart of Two Star’s best songs. —J.K.
Dark Matter is jam-packed with fist-pumping rockers and melodies meant to be shouted out of car windows. But it shines brightest in its most restrained moments. Take the heartbreaking highlight “Wreckage,” a laid-back stunner complete with empathetic, Bruce Springsteen-inspired vocals, and lyrics that seem to be about holding on to a fading relationship. After more than three decades in the game, here are middle-aged men grappling with life and trying to make sense of it all — one anthemic chorus and seething guitar solo at a time. —J. Lonsdale
Rachel Chinouriri, a London-based artist of Zimbabwean descent, made waves in 2022 with “All I Ever Asked,” a catchy indie-pop tune that dresses down a disappointing romantic partner. On her debut, What a Devastating Turn of Events, her songs are sharply observed and unsparingly real, set to music that ranges from bracing alt-rock to rainy-day folk to brisk bedroom pop, making for a rich, introspective tapestry. —J.D.
This ambitious debut from Puerto Rican singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist RaiNao finds the budding artist creating a refreshing blend of genres that’s all her own. RaiNao expertly moves from hyperpop (“Navel Point”) to sleek, club-ready reggaeton (“Roadhead” and “F*ck$”) before diving into R&B-infused tracks and finally landing on jazz-inflected songs filled with funky percussive rhythms like “Gualero REFF12.31.” Meanwhile, RaiNao’s strong, smooth voice carries each song to the next level. —M.G.
On his heady second solo album, RM interrogates the relationship between his world-conquering presented self and the “ordinary young man named Kim Namjoon” that he might’ve been. His lyrical ride is made even more mind-expanding by the music laid down by RM and his collaborators. Right Place, Wrong Person is psychedelia-tinged and soulful, its lyrics’ intense self-interrogation balanced by music that feels like an invite to further explorations. —M. Johnston
Long Island-born rapper Roc Marciano already has plenty of supporters sipping the Kool-Aid. Since setting his career on a new path with 2011’s Marcberg, he’s spawned a cult fan base that reveres him for reviving the rap underground with his minimalist production and assonant, sordid rhymes. On Marciology, the Roc Marciano experience feels like observing a grizzled boxer go at it with a heavy bag, with a fashion reference as a jab, then flurries of multis coming at different speeds and angles. —A.G.
Rosie Tucker rips modern culture apart in Utopia Now!, a fresh, biting, innovative, and fantastic piece of indie-rock agit-prop tunecraft. These songs combine a twentysomething malaise with a critique of the consumerist machine, and what it does to our brains. You might hear That Dog or Juliana Hatfield in the sound, with a pop-punk crunch in Tucker’s guitar. But the mix of playful humor and anger also evokes the Minutemen, as Tucker swerves between blunt propaganda and storm-in-my-house emotion. —R.S.
Blue Lips returns to the dynamic stylings of the L.A. rapper’s 2016 highlight, Blank Face, albeit with a few important twists. For every confessional moment like “Cooties,” there are three or four teeth-baring mashers like “Pop,” where he flexes alongside an animated Rico Nasty. The way his oscillating raps contrast with the LP’s frequently dreamlike production makes Blue Lips feel like an inebriated haze. Years into his run, ScHoolboy Q’s personality remains compellingly out of focus. —M.R.
Leave it to Sexyy Red to kick the summer off with a raunchy feel-good anthem. In this case, it’s “Get it Sexyy,” where Sexyy Red is there to introduce herself: “Slim thick, caramel skin/Five-five, this bitch a 10,” she raps, riding the tension between producer Tay Keith’s drums. Red and Keith’s creative partnership has managed to christen a distinct sound all her own. Even when she’s offering a life raft to Drake on the playfully catchy “U My Everything,” it’s still Sexyy Red’s moment. Like the mixtape title says, In Sexyy We Trust. —J.I.
Following his appearance on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and featuring his summer hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Shaboozey’s second album melds hip-hop and country in a way that is deep and rich and never a novelty act. When he sings, which is often, Shaboozey reveals a weary baritone imbued with Nashville heartache, and his songs effortlessly blend the deep-bottom sonics (and occasional sense of dread) of hip-hop records with the beefy choruses of post-Shania country pop. —D.B.
Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran is a testament to Shakira’s relevance and dominance. She uses the album to share her massive spotlight with a diverse slate of artists, songwriters, and producers who studied from her playbook — Tainy and Albert Hype, Fuerza Regida, Grupo Frontera, and others. It’s a grab-bag of pop genre fusions, yet Shakira manages to hold court in every song with her incisive and enduring songcraft. —S.E.
While Carrie Brownstein and Corine Tucker were working on Little Rope, they received news that Brownstein’s mother and stepfather had been killed in a car accident while vacationing in Italy. That tragic experience became the emotional backdrop from an album that saw the duo return to the resonant guitar fury that defines Sleater-Kinney at their best. Highlights like “Say It Like You Mean It” and “Six Mistakes” are as cathartic as anything in their illustrious canon.—J.D.
The Smile are more than just a Radiohead side hustle. On the band’s 2022 debut, A Light for Attracting Attention, the stakes were low, and the jams were loose. Wall of Eyes is a lavishly gorgeous second LP. No one is going to convene a Deep Listening Consortium to unpack its meaning, and that’s part of the appeal. Where the first Smile record rocked out a little more than recent Radiohead, this one is more subdued, but there are a couple of first-rate bangers. —J.D.
All Born Screaming is more primal than conceptual, and that makes it a refreshing change-up among St. Vincent albums. It’s a a dark record but not a bleak one. Even as Annie Clark’s lyrics tend to dwell in the space between connection and contempt, desire and disgust (she calls this album “post-plague pop”), the music never feels gloomy or defeated. Clark self-produced for the first time in her career (working with friends on drums like Dave Grohl, Stella Mogzawa, and Josh Freese, and the art-pop artist Cate Le Bon), and you can feel a real sense of discovery as she shifts the sonic lens. —J.D.
Taylor Swift might be the self-proclaimed “Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department,” but judging by these songs, business is booming. Even by Swiftian standards, she gets wildly ambitious with her songwriting here. Tortured Poets has the intimate sound of Folklore and Evermore, but with a coating of Midnights synth-pop gloss. The songs go for that detailed Folkmore style of storycraft, yet instead of fictional characters, she’s pouring her heart into her own deeply personal exorcisms. —R.S.
Tems has already remade Nigerian pop in her own image. Her debut album measures the soul work it’s taken to get here. All of it — the professional, the familial, the spiritual — has paid off on an album so rich that the listening experience is a physical one as much as it is emotional. It’s a vision made timeless via a seamless blend of stripped-down ballads, the cool of 1990s R&B with flecks of SWV and Sade, joyous highlife, Afro–dance music like Amapiano, and rugged hip-hop. —M.C.
One of the things that makes World Wide Whack such an impressive feat, cementing Tierra Whack’s distinct reputation as a unique hip-hop artisan, is that she fleshes out the dark corners of her interior life while maintaining the technicolor impishness that’s been her hallmark. At a time when it often feels like artists can break through with barebones music and personas, Whack walks the tightrope between minimalism and maximalism without wobbling. —M.C.
The long-awaited debut by 22-year-old Johannesburg native Tyla Laura Seethal arrives at a time when South African amapiano is poised to globalize like never before. Bring it on. Her global hit “Water” was undeniable, but what’s more captivating here are the songs that feel less designer-hotel happy hour and more after-hours. “Truth or Dare” pushes the log drum beats out front, while the stacked vocal chorus achieves liftoff. Ditto “No. 1,” Tyla’s team-up with Afrobeat queen Tems. —W.H.
Vampire Weekend’s recordings have frequently been characterized by a kind of tidiness, a clean fusion of Ezra Koenig’s pop-songwriting smarts and the group’s instrumental economy. The band’s new album, Only God Was Above Us, offers something different, with a decided bent toward experimentation and surprising, often harsh, new textures. The results showcase a band that, nearly two decades in, is willing to issue a challenge to its fans and produce a soundtrack for a reality that is teeming with noise and discord. —J.F.
As the title suggests, Dark Times is another dose of raps about Staples taking stock of his Long Beach, California, upbringing. The bulk of the album shows Staples contending with the tumult of his environment, including how his trauma has led to dysfunctional relationships. On album standout “Justin,” he writes a story that steadily builds tension to an anticlimactic ending that brilliantly encapsulates the seemingly omnipotent risk of toiling in the streets. —A.G.
The longtime indie-rock underdog hero won herself a lot of new fans with Saint Cloud, her 2020 breakthrough hit, going for a laid-back style of heartland rock & roll twang. But Tigers Blood is even more rugged and confident, a master storyteller fully aware she’s on a hot streak. She sings about adult romance, struggling for sobriety, the day-to-day work of holding it together — in the poetic voice of a Lucinda Williams who came of age playing DIY punk-house basement shows. —R.S.
If Young Miko’s debut album, Trap Kitty, made her a promising Latin trap act, Att. cemented her as a pop star here to stay and thrive. Over the album’s 16 tracks, Miko delivers smooth rap verses on “Arcoiris” and “Wiggy,” reintroduces the “Ketchup Song” to a new generation on “Wiggy,” and delivers the housey “Madre” with Villano Antillano, the perfect getting-ready soundtrack for a night out. Att. is a diverse, queer love-infused perfection with hints of Y2K. —M.T.
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