The Best Albums of 2024 So Far

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.

For her third record, the singer-songwriter, who records as Beabadoobee, steps outside of the whimsical world she built on 2022’s Beatopia and faces the messy reality of becoming an adult. For someone who is still figuring it all out, she has never sounded as self-assured. Thanks to the help of Rick Rubin’s attentive production style, the album ventures into new territory but makes it feel worn-in. On “Coming Home,” Beabadoobee rounds out the mundane sweetness of missing her partner with jaunty, jazz-inflected jumps. Meanwhile, the sexy, bouncing bass on “Real Man” channels Bea’s inner Fiona Apple and serves as a perfect companion to her flawless falsetto.–M.G. 

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.

Play Cash Cobain, a follow-up to last year’s Pretty Girls Love Slizzy, arrives at a moment when the Bronx-born producer’s sound is as red-hot as anything the rap world’s seen in some time. Quavo arrives on album opener “Slzzy Hncho 2” like Cash’s long lost twin, the slinky, rhythmic flow he perfected with the Migos slotting into Cobain’s production style with ease. Similarly, Don Toliver sounds enlivened on the track, tapping into the chemistry he and Cash exhibited on their smash single “ATTITUDE.” here, Toliver is more subdued, his impressive vocal range arriving at its most dynamic over Cash’s boisterous, undulating drum loops.–J.I.

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

When Charly Bliss came out of Brooklyn with their excellent 2017 debut Guppy, they were snappy Nineties alt-rock revivalists, On Forever, they’re back to put their own stamp on brat summer, leaning way into the pop side of their sound. Indie bands often dream of writing songs that connect with the larger Top 40 world while still maintaining their own musical and emotional integrity, Few do it this well. “I’m Not Dead” suggests Olivia Rodrigo after binging Weezer’s Blue Album. “I Don’t Know Anything” is shoegaze teen-pop, like Hotline TNT soundtracking a pivotal scene in a Netflix coming-of-age drama.–J.D.

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.

On her third album Charm, Clairo elevates the bedroom-pop aesthetic she introduced on Sling and forges deeper into a lush palette of Seventies melodies. Now 25, she is playfully blurring the lines of pop, R&B, soul and folk with the sounds of the Wurlitzer, mellotron, organ and piano swirling around her. This palpable shift of self-assuredness is due in part to her own coming of age, but also a consequence of her tapping soul and funk savant Leon Michels as co-producer. While her hushed vocals have always established a sense of closeness within her work, the Clairo of Charm exists as a much more intimate foray. –I.K. 

Yet, with her full-length debut, Alligator Bites Never Heal (a gesture to the Florida roots of the self-proclaimed “Swamp Princess”), Doechi makes herself more than a successor. She’s a fully realized artist, with immense technical and curatorial skill. On it, she slickly glides from gritty boom-bap, sensual electronic, dance music, Miami jook, and earnest soul with a wicked pen and brilliant charisma. Her varied vocal tics and beat selections are often akin to Kendrick Lamar’s — but she also sounds like as much a student of A Tribe Called Quest, Missy Elliott, and Nicki Minaj.–M.C.

“I have got some questions/Filed with discontent,” Cola singer-guitarist Tim Darcy informs us on the Montreal post-punk band’s second album. Cola have their own fun little take on modern alienation. Laying bright, bracing guitars over taut, tetchy, minimalist drums and bass, their sound brings to mind Wire and the very earliest Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen. Yet where those bands had the decaying post-industrial England of the 1970s as a backdrop, Cola are products of our own more ambiently dehumanized times.–J.D.

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

Romance is wildly expansive, and Fontaines’ bullheaded integrity still stands, perhaps with a stronger spine than ever.It takes a true romantic to be a world-builder, and Fontaines D.C. have mastered the art. Each song on Romance acts as its own fantastical cinematic universe, fleshed out with fictional characters, in-depth monologues, and pristinely-curated sonic elements to match. That’s partially indebted to the band’s decision to work with producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Blur) on this record.--L.L. 

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.

There’s always been a spine-tingling profundity and a solemn intensity to the universe of sound created when Nashville duo David Rawlings and Gillian Welch stood around a single microphone. Woodland marks a merging of all the various monikers and configurations of their artistic partnership: there’s gentle soft-rock, there are newly written American epics that sound hundreds of years old (“The Day The Mississippi Died”), there are songs that feel like whispers (“The Bells and the Birds”), and songs that conjure chilly alienation and displacement (“North Country”) in the only the way Gillian Welch can.–J. Bernstein

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.

Over the last four years, Gracie Abrams has skyrocketed to the top of every sad girl summer playlist. Her new folky-pop LP The Secret of Us is a proper showcase of Abrams’ songwriting, sharpening up some of the clichés and adolescent metaphors from her debut. The songs are a complex picture of a relationship gone sour, full of heartbreak songs that capture the messiness of dating in your early twenties. Many of the lyrics feel as much like an open letter to an ex as it does a text relaying your deepest, darkest secrets to your closest confidant in the middle of a sleepless night.–B.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.

Sarah Tudzin, a Los Angeles singer-songwriter-producer-multi-instrumentalist who has been recording as Illuminati Hotties since the late 2010s, has called her openhearted DIY ethos “tenderpunk.” As a producer and recording engineer she’s worked with artists from Weyes Blood to Coldplay, and won a Grammy for her production on Boygenius’ 2023 landmark, The Record. With Power, she delivers a studio-craft masterstroke without scrimping a bit on the hard-hitting honesty that fuels her writing.--J.D.

No Name fuses the two sides of his persona — the rocking and the weird — about as fluidly as he ever has. It’s some of the thickest, ickiest thump he’s delivered in about 20 years. As the album progresses, White dips into his Willie Dixon bag, his Jimmy Page bag, his Stooges bag, his James Gang bag, wandering from the Rust Belt to the Delta to the murky English moors, all familiar spots for White, keeping the songs concise, heavy, and lean. He isn’t second-guessing himself, or trying to confuse us with inane studio tomfoolery.–J.D.

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.

John Cale is on a formidable hot streak in his 80s. When the Welsh avant-garde legend released Mercy last year, it was his first album in a decade. POPtical Illusion is full of grim songs about a planet in flames, yet it’s full of playful energy, blending synths and guitars with electronic beats from an elder hip-hop fiend. But it rests on his unique vocal presence, as Cale details his nightmares in his deep, grave, deadpan Welsh brogue. As a guy who’s always thrived on his negative mojo, these songs bring out all his mordant humor. –R.S.

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

Wilson’s been steadily released catchy, punchy albums that mash up Southern rock, soul, and classic Nashville ideals into a genre that she’s dubbed “bell-bottom country.” On Whirlwind, her finely-tuned lyrics and immediate hooks make the feelings she’s singing about feel massive and ready to bring in any listeners for comfort, particularly on the arena-ready drinking lament “Bar in Baton Rouge” and the keep-your-head-up ballad “Middle of It.” While Whirlwind has its more playful moments, it’s at its best when Wilson is in full-on power-ballad mode.–M.J.

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.