What a year it’s been for great music — as opposed to, say, everything else. But we’re almost halfway into 2025, and it’s already crowded with new albums that deliver what we need in terms of inspiration, catharsis, or just a little emotional elevation. Our list has a wide range of amazing music, from all different styles and sounds. We’ve got pop superstars like Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga. We’ve also got hip-hop poets, indie rockers, country singers, beatmasters, folk storytellers, and party monsters. This list is packed with up-and-coming artistic rebels ready to bring on the future. But it’s also full of seasoned veterans still out to keep building their legends. We’ve got melancholy brunettes, sad women, and general mayhem. It’s the perfect time to catch up with all the amazing music that 2025 has delivered so far — and to look forward to the rest of the year ahead.
Tunde Adebimpe, ‘Thee Black Boltz’
The first solo album from Tunde Adebimpe — of indie-prog titans TV on the Radio as well as the Star Wars multiverse — offers an extreme closeup of the human condition, using his mighty howl to tie its wild explorations of genre together. He defies the constraints of “the age of tenderness and rage” on the churning “Magnetic,” strips down and opens up on “ILY,” or charges up the tear-in-the-beer lament “God Knows.” Throughout, Adebimpe’s physical voice is a beacon, leading the way as he lets listeners know that he can see the world for what it is — and embraces the possibilities beyond it anyway. —Maura Johnston
Bad Bunny, ‘Debí Tirar Más Fotos’
On his sixth album, Bad Bunny brings listeners along for his triumphant homecoming with 17 songs that traverse Puerto Rico’s rich kaleidoscope of genres. It’s homegrown, jubilant, and fresh as Benito takes the best moments from his 2022 landmark, Un Verano Sin Ti, and pushes the limits of his continuously experimental sound into the unchartered territory of Puerto Rican folk music and salsa. While Bad Bunny honors his homeland and snapshots of his life there, he also finds important pieces of himself: the lovelorn poet, the dreamer, and, most of all, the proud puertorriqueño. —Maya Georgi
Julien Baker and Torres, ‘Send a Prayer My Way’
Julien Baker and Mackenzie Scott (a.k.a. Torres) are indie singer-songwriters with Southern roots. On Send a Prayer My Way, they get together for a great country record. The album’s wonderful first single, “Sugar in the Tank,” exalts in the kind of easygoing tunefulness that can equally lend itself to a roots-rock anthem or a country radio hit. As queer artists, Scott and Baker have said the album was about making country music they could see themselves in, and that others might, too. It makes Send a Prayer My Way feel like a rich tribute that also moves the genre forward. —Jon Dolan
Bartees Strange, ‘Horror’
Producer and songwriter Bartees Strange looks at the world’s monsters — including those lurking inside each one of us — on his third album. Horror takes the genre agnosticism that made Strange’s first two full-lengths so vital and blows it up, both sonically and figuratively (and with a little help from super-engineer Jack Antonoff). A blistering agitation animates Horror’s high points, like the scrappy, existentially bothered “Wants Needs” (“If I can’t get an angle/ Tell me how I am supposed to feel,” he begs on the clamorous bridge) and the simmering-then-exploding “Loop Defenders” (which takes direct aim at anyone trying to put him into a box). —M.J.
Beach Bunny, ‘Tunnel Vision’
Another album of jam-packed bubblegum hooks and angsty riffs from Lill Trifilio and company. On Tunnel Vision, the Chicago trio build on the sound of their last two albums while also expanding the band’s subject matter as well (less heartbreak, more anxious dystopia). The result is a band that sounds as restless as ever, even as it continues growing up. “The record talks a lot about mental health and darkness,” as Trifilio told Rolling Stone. “But we’re all in this together.” —Jonathan Bernstein
Blondshell, ‘If You Asked for a Picture’
For her second album as Blondshell, L.A. singer-songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum is figuring out how much of her life story she wants to tell the world — how much she needs to tell — and how much to hide away for herself. On her acclaimed 2023 self-titled debut, she was really letting it all hang out, in searing confessional indie rock. But on If You Asked for a Picture, Teitelbaum’s more ambivalent, more questioning, reckoning with her painful past, from childhood misery to dysfunctional young-adult romance. These are the songs of an artist who wants to figure out who she is by singing about it. —Rob Sheffield
Bon Iver, ‘Sable, Fable’
Justin Vernon’s lyrics have often led to him being considered a melancholy, lovesick songwriter. The nine tracks on his first album in five years see him finally relenting to lightness. “Time heals and then it repeats,” he sings, acknowledging the regenerative nature of all things. There’s a sense of transcendence running through the LP, with most songs resolving in a major key, carried by propulsive percussion and a whole lot of pedal steel and leaning into triumphant anthemic pop melodies. It’s the work of a man at his most hopeful and open, palms upturned, ready and willing to come up for air. —Leah Lu
Car Seat Headrest, ‘The Scholars’
Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest serves up the band’s epic latest album with the tongue-in-cheek claim that The Scholars is “translated and adapted from an unfinished and unpublished poem written by my great-great-great-great-grandfather, the Archbishop Guillermo Guadalupe del Toledo,” and he’s taken this project seriously enough to give his opera a libretto. The good news for the common listener is that as far as albums with librettos go, this one is surprisingly easy to bang your way through — sort of like a Guided by Voices LP expanded to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway scale. —J.D.
Central Cee, ‘Can’t Rush Greatness’
The 25-year-old West London rap sensation Central Cee has proven he can be a reliable Gen Z hitmaker with the streaming stats to back it up, all before dropping a debut album. With Can’t Rush Greatness, he’s out to show that he can live up to the hype, and at 17 tracks spanning a range of sounds and styles, the album makes his case mightily. A true representative of his generation (“Gen Z Love” has the makings of an anthem for an era), Cench is as attentive to the music as the optics surrounding it, and his acumen for both is what makes his debut album a success. —Jeff Ihaza
Eric Church, ‘Evangeline vs. the Machine’
Erich Church has never paid much mind to fulfilling expectations, and instead of shying away from the gospel sounds he debuted at the country fest Stagecoach in 2024, he brought the choir with him into the studio and doubled down with orchestral strings and horns. The result is a record that is both dazzling and challenging, upending the idea of what country music is — or at least the type of country music that first made Church a Nashville star. It is also a masterwork, furthering cementing Church’s legacy as a try-anything artist, one with more in common with David Bowie or Bob Dylan than his Nashville peers. —Joseph Hudak
Hannah Cohen, ‘Earthstar Mountain’
In the six years since Hannah Cohen released an album, she relocated from New York City to the Catskills. Earthstar Mountain is a dazzling love letter to her new home. The album navigates loss (“Mountain”), family drama (the Sly and the Family Stone-inspired “Draggin’”), and obscure 1960s Italian thrillers (the Ennio Morricone cover “Una Spiaggia”), and features her upstate pals Clairo and Sufjan Stevens. “I think that’s what the Catskills are: this open door for people to take in the beauty of this place,” Cohen told RS. “Everyone who comes here wants other people to experience the magic that we feel here.” —Angie Martoccio
Charley Crockett, ‘Lonesome Drifter’
The Texas songwriter, along with producer Shooter Jennings, finds his most dialed-in sound yet on Lonesome Drifter, a record that literally rumbles from the opening notes of the title track, setting a cinematic tone for what’s to come. Never afraid to thumb his nose at the music business, Charlie Crockett offers a warning about bad Nashville deals in “Game I Can’t Win,” and pokes holes in the perceived glamor of a troubadour in “Life of a Country Singer.” Since his 2015 debut, he’s been a wildly prolific artist, releasing albums at a brisk pace seemingly in search of something: With this one, Crockett found it. —J.H.
Cuco, ‘Ridin”
The L.A. singer-songwriter’s music often has a futuristic psych-synth feel. But Ridin’ is Cuco’s most grounded and tradition-loving to date, a lavish love letter to the Mexican American “brown-eyed soul” of the Sixties and Seventies. With it’s hopeful organ, swirling strings, sharp horns, cracking snare shots, tender melody, and flower-bearing vocals, “ICNBYH” could have absolutely been an R&B hit in 1971, while “My 45” is a rolling along with your girl. More than just historical cosplay, Ridin’ makes an old-school sound feel joyfully present. —J.D.
Miley Cyrus, ‘Something Beautiful’
On Something Beautiful, Miley Cyrus is aiming higher than ever with her most ambitious and introspective tunes. “Walk of Fame” is her electro pep talk on self-esteem (“Every time I walk, it’s a walk of fame”), with guest Brittany Howard making herself right at home in the disco glitz. But the sentimental favorite has to be “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved,” a fantastic disco twirl with Nineties fashion icon Naomi Campbell as Miley’s hype woman. All over the album, Cyrus sings about keeping her chin up and looking on the positive side, even in times of trouble. —R.S.
d4vd, ‘Withered’
If you were to look up “bedroom troubadour” in the dictionary, you’d surely find a mugshot of a cocky d4vd. From his homespun BandLab setup to his TikTok tremors, the Houston viral-pop newbie has mastered the wounded-heart torch song. On his debut LP, d4vd simply gushes it all out. Pent-up emotions, regrets, and bestial longings all burst forth in an expansive baritone that distinguishes him from wispier alt-centric brooders. There’s patience and craft expressed in the quiet vocal calisthenics, and the restful mood feels ripe for nestling in the grass, which he does on the cover. —Will Dukes
Lucy Dacus, ‘Forever Is a Feeling’
“I’m thinking about breaking your heart someday soon,” Lucy Dacus confesses in “Limerence,” one of the highlights from her fourth album. On Forever Is a Feeling, she aims for adult-specific love songs, rather than the coming-of-age and coming-out tales that made her name. “If the devil’s in the details, then God is in the gap in your teeth,” she sings in “For Keeps.” In the jubilant title song, she takes a romantically charged road trip over sped-up piano. These songs take place in the middle of long-running messy relationships — some desperately romantic, some just painful. —R.S.
Davido, ‘5ive’
On 5ive, the Nigerian pop star counts his blessings, leaning into love and legacy at the ripe age of 32. Luckily, Davido makes these contemplations an easy listen. He celebrates the resilience of love, lilting to his partner that she’s the most important thing that he could sing about on “10 Kilo.” The album is pleasant enough to play top to bottom at a turn-up or on a long drive, rich with layers of perfectly programmed percussion and flowing easily between lust, pain, and triumph. Aptly, it’s at its best on songs like “CFMF” and “Funds,” where Davido trades the amapiano-indebted Afrobeats her has refined for refreshing romances. —Mankaprr Conteh
Deafheaven, ‘Lonely People With Power’
The latest (and best) album from the endlessly inventive metal band Deafheaven perfectly sums up their magic-trick mix of raw aggression, painterly lyrics, and earworm melodies. Lonely People With Power is an ambitious and oddly gorgeous suite, vacillating between aching isolation and introspective rage. It’s a kind of culmination of a decade and a half of innovation — a mixing and merging of melody and metal, pain and poetry. Some moments explore conventionally masculine rage, but there’s alao a membrane of beauty that holds the whole album together. —Brenna Ehrlich
Djo, ‘The Crux’
After two LPs that weaved mellow pop rock and sleek, danceable indie bops, Djo has taken a heartfelt leap into Seventies- and Eighties-loving territory with The Crux. Djo upgraded the bedroom-recorded sonics of his previous work and booked into New York’s legendary Electric Lady Studios. He wrote or co-wrote every song and co-produced each track, playing many of the instruments himself, from Mellotron to percussion. You can hear his musical growth in the record’s polished production as well as its more personal lyrics, which reflect on love and connection. —John Lonsdale
Drake and PartyNextDoor, ‘$ome $exy $ongs 4 U’
Billed as an R&B album in time for Valentine’s Day, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U is the first official project, albeit a collab, from Drake after a year of basically the entire world dragging his name through the mud. It’s a savvy diversion, given it was only a few weeks before its release that the entire country wondered if he’d get called a pedophile at the Super Bowl. That in mind, the LP is a clean, well-executed production of Drake’s signature product meant to push the plot along — a slick new offering from the embattled Drake Cinematic Universe. —J.I.
Dutch Interior, ‘Moneyball’
This highly buzzed SoCal six-piece might sound like a chill alt-country band at first, but they’re far less predictable than that. (Is it any wonder that they’re often compared, favorably, to forefathers like Wilco and Pavement?) On “Sweet Time,” two of the band’s three guitarists face off with dueling slick-pickin’ solos; “Sandcastle Molds” blooms with jittery rhythms and flashes of dissonance. The songs on Moneyball are full of similarly inventive twists that make the back-porch ballads even sweeter — and leave you to wonder where Dutch Interior will swerve next. —Simon Vozick-Levinson
Craig Finn, ‘Always Been’
The Hold Steady frontman has an impressive solo catalog, but Always Been is its pinnacle. Over 11 songs, Craig Finn delivers tales of faithless preachers (“Bethany”), broken homes (“Crumbs”), and relationships that should have ended long ago (“Luke & Leanna”) in his infamously idiosyncratic talk-sing style. But what distinguishes Always Been from Finn’s other solo projects is its clear California piano-rock roots. Even the album cover drives it home, with Finn re-creating the photo from Randy Newman’s 1977 LP Little Criminals. —J.H.
Franz Ferdinand, ‘The Human Fear’
Franz Ferdinand conquered the world in the early 2000s with their gloriously frenetic art-punk dance-whore sound, scoring hits like the video-game staple “Take Me Out.” The Human Fear is a snazzier return than a fan would expect at this point. The tunes go for three-minute punch, with occasional backup vocals from frontman Alex Kapranos’ wife, French star Clara Luciani. “Cats” is an eerie ode to trying to tame your animal impulses, while the indie-sleaze synth friction of “Hooked” is enough to trigger vodka-breath flashbacks of sloppy strangers making out in the coat-check line. —R.S.
Girlpuppy, ‘Sweetness’
Atlanta singer-songwriter Becca Harvey’s Sweetness is a deeply observed relationship autopsy set to blue, buzzy guitars. On “I Just Do!” she gives us a crushed-out, grunge-pop masterpiece, while pretty subdued songs like “In My Eyes” and “Windows” see her work through love’s murky middle stages, and she closes it out strumming farewell on “I Think I Did.” Working in the tradition of classics like Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear and Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, she delivers a post-breakup banger. —J.D.
Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco, ‘I Said I Love You First’
For Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco, turning their love story into an album is the least they could do. I Said I Love You First is a valentine that delivers exactly what it promises — a pop icon and a superstar producer celebrating a real-life romance that we all can root for. The album peaks in the middle with a trio of bangers starting with “Sunset Blvd,” a romantic fantasy of coupling in the middle of the street until the cops arrive to pry them apart. These two crazy kids are young, they’re in love, and they can’t keep their hands to themselves — well, they could, but why would they want to? —R.S.
Great Grandpa, ‘Patience Moonbeam’
The first album in over five years from Seattle indie-rock band Great Grandpa isn’t just their most fully-realized (though it’s also that), it’s also a genuine band record. The quintet collide influences — glitchy industrial electronic flourishes, lonesome country & western instrumentation, ornate chamber pop — and tinker with all sorts of pop-rock conventions. Hidden in plain sight, amid the off-kilter impressionism and untraditional arrangements, is the band’s innate sense of melody. They can turn a nonsense six-word refrain like “it’s closer when I see you, damn” into something profound. —J. Bernstein
Caylee Hammack, ‘Bed of Roses’
Caylee Hammack is a should-be country star who has been flying just under the radar for the past half decade. Her latest, Bed of Roses, is Hammack’s finest work yet, one that displays her command of stomping rockers and hushed lullabies alike on songs like “Oh, Kara” and “Breaking Dishes.” It’s a knockout collection of brightly polished traditional country that highlights Hammack’s warbling voice, which bears more than a little resemblance to one of her clearest influences: Dolly Parton. —J. Bernstein
Horsegirl, ‘Phonetics On and On’
After making some of the most righteous guitar noise since Sonic Youth split up on their 2022 debut, the Chicago trio graduate to subtler sounds and softer feelings on album two. Phonetics On and On opens up a whole new world for this band with its playful, minimalist studio approach (assisted by producer Cate Le Bon, who knows a thing or two about that). Trading howling feedback for tender-hearted ballads like “Frontrunner” and ambivalent singalongs like “I Can’t Stand to See You,” it feels like an instant contender for any list of great albums where a loud band mellows out. —S.V.L.
Infinity Knives and Brian Ennels, ‘A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears’
Producer Infinity Knives’ adventurous, electronic-driven tracks have been the perfect sound bed for Brian Ennals’ sharp social commentary and self-effacing sense of humor, going back to their joint 2020 project, Rhino XXL. That mesh is displayed on the Maryland artist’s latest LP. On “The Iron Wall,” Ennals declares “genocide’s as American as apple pie, baseball, and mass shootings.” The song, like the album, is an unabashed rebuke of Israel-U.S. relations and America’s overall warmongering. Ennals raps with a deliberate pace that gives every word its just space, evoking hip-hop’s original golden era in the best way. —Andre Gee
Japanese Breakfast, ‘For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)’
Michelle Zauner’s fourth record may thrum with melancholy, but it’s way more than just “sad girl music.” For Melancholy Brunettes is an evolution of everything she’s done before — merging imagery both mythic and mundane with A-class instrumentation. Zauner grapples with the fickle nature of the muse — whether you’re a long-ago poet or a small-town strummer; see “Orlando in Love,” a Greek legend of a track that tells the tale of the titular poet and the sirens that drag him down. This LP is a folk tale, a small-town barroom yarn, a gothic novel, and a ghost story, all in one. Don’t even try to pin her down. —B.E.
Jennie, ‘Ruby’
The latest in this year’s series of solo projects from Blackpink’s four members, the quick-moving Ruby leans heavily into the ideas that dominated R&B-leaning pop in the 2000s and ’10s, sometimes updating them in intriguing fashion. If there’s any artist whose specter hangs over the album, it’s Rihanna. Not only does Jennie have an impressive ability to command the center of candy-coated pop-R&B, there are some moments that feel like if not direct at least second-generation descendants of the hazy introspection shown by the Barbadian mogul on her 2016 classic, Anti. —M.J.
Lola Kirke, ‘Trailblazer’
Lola Kirke’s latest album does what all the best country music should do: it tells damn good stories. In this case, they’re about coming-of-age for the U.K.-born, New York-raised singer-actress, who now calls Nashville home. She reimagines the classic drinking song in the twangy “241s,” takes stock of her unconventional upbringing in “Raised by Wolves,” and goes on a Delta road trip in the gloriously monikered “Mississippi, My Sister, Elvis & Me.” Kirke’s gift for song titles is reason enough to seek out the album: From “Marlboro Lights & Madonna” to “Zeppelin III,” Trailblazer revels in the details. —J.H.
Lady Gaga, ‘Mayhem’
In the lead-up to Lady Gaga’s latest album, Mayhem, there was a lot of talk about Gaga returning to her roots. For Little Monsters, it’s been too long. Mayhem is the type of fan service that doesn’t dilute the artist herself. Gaga feels like her most authentic self from start to finish on this album: There’s no characters, concepts, or aesthetic impulses overshadowing the songs. Instead, she’s made one of her most sonically challenging and uniform albums yet: a mix of Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, Prince, and her Fame Monster-era self, rolled into the year’s strongest pop release yet. —Brittany Spanos
Lambrini Girls, ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’
On Who Let the Dogs Out, the U.K. duo of singer-guitarist Phoebe Lunny and bassist Lilly Macieira are agit-noise radicals for our time. Standouts like “Big Dick Energy” and “No Homo” lash out at misogyny and sexism, while “Bad Apple” is a bracing bowshot at racist policing with a dervish beat and a sandblasting guitar riff, and “Filthy Rich Nepo Baby” defenestrates a fake lefty-rock poseur “who wouldn’t know what socialism is if it punched him in the dick.” This is a fantastically violent album, and an inspiring one too — every dick punch they throw hits your heart just as hard. —J.D.
Jensen McRae, ‘Don’t Know How But They Found Me’
On her second album, Jensen McRae rides love ’til the wheels fall off, sending it plummeting off the road, down the side of a cliff, and exploding in a fiery blaze. “Novelty” is a puncture wound sustained in the moment she realizes she’s become less valuable to someone, while “Tuesday” offers a shattering, lovelorn performance. McRae’s lyrics cut vividly against her thrumming melodies. The narrative progression from “I Can Change Him” to “Praying for Your Downfall” makes the perilous battle she fights on “Daffodil” all the more searing. It all affirms her position as one of pop music’s sharpest and smartest newcomers. —Larisha Paul
Tate McRae, ‘So Close to What’
Tate McRae’s perpetual-motion mind has made her one of pop’s most exciting young stars, and it fuels So Close to What, a sleek, fast-moving collection of darkly hued pop confections. “Sports Car” sculpts synth squelches and grinding-gears rhythms into hooks, McRae’s whispered come-ons acting as the connective tissue. Her vision of love is, perhaps unsurprisingly, riddled with introspection and angst. But her ability to dig into those intricacies and turn them into arena-worthy singalongs makes So Close to What a pop album worth digging into. —M.J.
MIKE, ‘Showbiz!’
MIKE’s Showbiz! is a stellar glimpse into the human experience — 24 songs that offer a wide-ranging glimpse of the Brooklyn-based rhymer’s personal excavation over a variety of beats. On “Watered down,” he admits, “I get hotheaded and mean sometimes, my fault, forgive me” over a chipper, high-pitches sample. “Man in the mirror” shows him rhyming over an upbeat, dance track, while “When it Rains” has a groove that harkens to his excellent Pinball series with producer Tony Seltzer. There aren’t many artists as vulnerable as MIKE, and even fewer craft their reflections with his technical precision. —A.G.
Ela Minus, ‘Dia’
The Colombian artist Ela Minus has long used her propulsive electronic music as a space for recovery and reflection. Her debut album, Acts of Rebellion, put it all out there, allowing her to celebrate and connect and find herself in thundering dance-floor sounds. Her follow-up Dia is a far more interior, with roomier, more expansive architecture that lets her explore new electronic sounds while seeking catharsis during tumultuous personal and political times. The healing still happens: “I’ll keep writing melodies/To sing away the gloom,” she declares on “Broke.” —Julyssa Lopez
Model/Actriz, ‘Pirouette’
On Pirouette, Model/Actriz follow up their excellent debut, Dogsbody, with an album that feels entirely unaffected by expectations. The Brooklyn-based noise rockers play with new sounds throughout, starting off with a jackhammering opening stretch in which every instrument is treated like a disobedient drum, before collapsing into melodic reveries only hinted at on their first LP. But the biggest evolution may come from the wildly charismatic frontman Cole Haden, whose impressionistic lyrics have become more diaristic, recalling childhood Cinderella fantasies with kinky, curdling rage. —Clayton Purdom
Momma, ‘Welcome to My Blue Sky’
Momma deliver their fantastic new album, Welcome to My Blue Sky, just in time for a whole new summer of grunge. On their last album, they sang about riding around listening to “Gold Soundz”; it didn’t take long before they were opening for Pavement, and this album is twice as great. “Ohio All the Time” is a bittersweet but damn-near-perfect guitar vignette about two kids getting lost in the road in the Midwest, trying to figure out if they’re in love, yet neither one brave enough to speak up. Welcome to My Blue Sky is totally brash, always loud, always effusive, and usually funny even when their lives are falling apart, which is constantly. —R.S.
Cornelia Murr, ‘Run to the Center’
In 2018, Cornelia Murr released her magnetic debut, Lake Tear of the Clouds, co-produced by Jim James of My Morning Jacket. Seven years and one EP (2022’s Corridor) later, Murr returns with the stunning dream-pop record Run to the Center. Its title is literal: To make the record, she headed to rural Red Cloud, Nebraska, a town of 948 people that falls right in the middle of the country. There, Murr restored a house while cutting the 10 sweeping tracks that would make up the album, including the highlight “Meantime” and the gorgeous closer “Bless Yr Little Heart.” Wherever Murr goes next, we’re sure to follow. —A.M.
Niontay, ‘Fada<3of$’
Niontay recently told Rolling Stone that he’s not preoccupied with being #eclectic: “It’s going to happen regardless … I’m not trying to, like, ‘show you my range.’” The result is his debut album, Fada<3of$. Over the bass riff and searing synth of “Old Kent Road Freestyle,” he offers the tao of the Niontay experience, rhyming, “Nigga I’m on my fuckin’ 13th flow of the song/I don’t need a hook or a bridge the fuck is those.” On the funkily titled “GMAN balaclava(like09),” he raps over a Louisiana-flavored beat, while on “Mumbleman,” he’s playfully pushing back on people who criticize his delivery. We hear it, loud and clear.—A.G.
Obongjayar, ‘Paradise Now’
For British-Nigerian genre-bender Obongjayar’s second album, Paradise Now, he was inspired by Bowie and Prince. “There’s not too much fat,” he told Rolling Stone of their work. “It’s been distilled to a point where it’s so fine and understandable and also very unique.” Album cut “Talk Olympics” with Little Simz is great at this. The frenzied percussion elicits the commotion of an African market, but mirrors the similarly incessant chatter that can spill from the internet into real life. It’s one of the most distinctly African-sounding songs on the album, where Obongjayar plays with high life, electro-pop, all kinds of rock, and a touch of rap. —M.C.
Oklou, ‘Choke Enough’
The debut album from avant-pop favorite Oklou is steeped in bleepy-bloop romanticism. The French musician (real name Marylou Mayniel) does wondrous things with synth loops and her plucked-from-the-heavens vocals, gesturing to myriad realms of electronic and pop music, as much as her classical training and regional French folklore. The result is a wonderland that often feels pixelated and impressionistic, but never far from the natural world. Oklou reaches crystalline peaks on closer “Blade Bird” and “Take Me By the Hand,” a duet with Drain Gang’s Bladee that confronts uncertainty and anxiety with the clarity of touch. —Jon Blistein
Osamason, ‘Jump Out’
Osamason’s Jump Out makes a sonic case for chaos as the language of the coming generation, and why wouldn’t it? The 22-year-old rapper at the forefront of the current vanguard of rage-rap luminaries balances a melodic sensibility with a maximalist approach to rap. Razor-sharp synths set ablaze in digital audio workstations, drums modulated to frequencies at the edge of the ear’s functional limit, and lyrics like mantras punching straight through to one’s lizard brain. A product of rending emotional precision from the endless feed of information available everywhere all of the time. —J.I.
Perfume Genius, ‘Glory’
Glory opens with a taste of the monumental catharsis that’s become a calling card for Perfume Genius. But the booming raptures on “It’s a Mirror” ultimately open up more meditative corridors for Mike Hadreas to explore with his ace backing band and longtime collaborator/producer Blake Mills. That’s not to say the tones and sounds aren’t immersive and adventurous, but they tend to linger and keen, rather than leap and cry out. It’s a sonic mood to match Hadreas’ explorations of the depression that consumed him during the pandemic. “I was craving not a solution,” he told Stereogum, “but a grace inside of it. A perspective shift.” —J. Blistein
PinkPantheress, ‘Fancy That’
Fancy That draws much of its energy from turn-of-the century British bangers, and the sort of brazen sampling that made hip-hop and dance music so exciting back in the day. Basement Jaxx disco-funk stomper “Romeo” gets flipped on “Girl Like Me,” and Jaxx DNA appears elsewhere on the mixtape, including an original track called “Romeo” that’s just faintly indebted to its namesake. Elsewhere, Fancy That chops up Jessica Simpson and Panic! at the Disco and teams Victoria Walker up with “indie-sleaze” brat the Dare on “Stateside.” The upshot is nine crispy song nuggets that don’t overstay or overshare. —Will Hermes
Pink Siifu, ‘Black’!Antique’
Pink Siifu’s catalog is ever-growing and inherently pro-Black in its themes and influences. And he’s never been more overt than on Black’!Antique: “My people are original and divinely unique/And our value will keep rising, like some Black antiques.” That line closes a 19-track extravaganza on which Siifu and friends like Bbymutha, WifiGawd, and Ho99o9 appear over a smoky, surging soundscape. He can be artfully discordant (“Alive & Direct’”), but also soulful and reflective (Outside’!). The project’s sonic choices are bold but minimalist, allowing room to affirm his thesis on the vitality of Blackness. —A.G.
Playboi Carti, ‘Music’
Music finds Playboy Carti decidedly aware of his potential as a generational talent. There are a handful of moments where synthesized washes burble and soar, the net effect of arena lights splashing onto a crowd of thousands. As Carti stands on the mountaintop, he finds himself looking back at his journey and inspirations as well as admiring the view and puzzling over his inevitable descent. Even when he slips into an uninspired chant or exhausts with his monomaniacal focus on drugs, women, cars, and taunting opps, he still magnetizes as a wholly unique pop star. —Mosi Reeves
Pup, ‘Who Will Look After the Dogs?’
The Toronto punk boys in Pup are veterans by now, going strong on their fifth album, Who Will Look After the Dogs? Twelve years past their frantic, funny debut, Pup, they still crash through their tunes with frantic guitar overdrive, as Stefan Babcock’s snotty one-liners break out into brotherly dude-unison sing-alongs. But Pup are taking on tough adult emotions these days. Babcock speaks for us all when he asks the philosophical question: “Always feeding on the rotting corpse of goodwill and what’s left of humanity/What the fuck is wrong with me?” —R.S.
Chris Yellen*
Rico Nasty, ‘Lethal’
Since her early days as a Maryland teenager uploading aggressive, trap-influenced music on Soundcloud, rapper Rico Nasty has carved out her own unique place as a colorful rager. Her third album takes a more introspective tone; “Smile” movingly addresses her son, and “You Could Never” shows her reflecting on how far she’s come. But Lethal is still the kind of rowdy celebration of femininity and bold, sexual fluidity that’s been her calling card, with songs like “Son of a Gun” and “Smoke Break” showing the influence of alt-rock touchstones such as No Doubt, Avril Lavigne, and Paramore. —Mark Braboy
Saba and No I.D., ‘From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D.’
Saba and No I.D. are two legends of Chicago hip-hop, from two different generations. Saba is the cerebral rap poet who made his name with corrosively pained classics like 2018’s Care for Me and 2022’s Few Good Things. No I.D., the “Godfather of Chicago Hip-Hop,” has spent his life making the beats that Saba grew up on. Private Collection is a labor of love for both artists — relaxed in the grooves, spiritual in the rhymes. It’s a an experimental masterpiece where old school meets next school, with both artists rising to the challenge. —R.S.
Samia, ‘Bloodless’
On Bloodless, indie singer-songwriter Samia digs deeper than ever and delivers a meditation on modern womanhood that’s both eerie and unflinching in its honesty. She dismantles belief systems and reassembles her identity with a ferocity that’s both unsparing and blissful. Whether she’s making metaphors to cattle mutilation (“Bovince Excision”) or writing odes to Sid Vicious (“Hole in a Wall”), each song spins and swirls to create something that feels like a major leap from an already must-hear artist. —M.G.
Skrillex, ‘F*ck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol But Ur Not!!’
As always with Skrillex, you got everything, everywhere, all at once, the bass tones turned to taffy, the spoken sound bites knowingly and proudly cheesy. There’s something refreshed and charged about the EDM star’s latest. It’s a beginning-to-end journey that unveils new details over many plays. Skrillex’s sound remains sharply textured — there’s space in the mix even when he’s stacking bass tones, bent to hell and all playing the same silly pattern. His low end still gleefully warps and woofs in almost comically outsized patterns. It’s his cultivated style, a sonic trademark, an aural Skrillex logo. —Michaelangelo Matos
Stereolab, ‘Instant Holograms on Metal Film’
Any moment is an excellent one for new music from the long-running retro-avant pop band Stereolab, but Instant Holograms on Metal Film, their first full-length since 2010’s Not Music, is particularly well-timed. Blending gliding grooves, wowing-and-fluttering synthesizers, and lyrics that elegantly pine for more, Stereolab’s music blisses out without tuning out. Precisely crafted pop gems like the vibey “Transmuted Matter,” an abstracted love song with a wordless breakdown, flow into hypnotic instrumentals like the whirling “Electrified Teenybop!” and stretched-out jams like the forceful “Melodie Is a Wound.” —M.J.
Malcolm Todd, ‘Malcolm Todd’
Malcolm Todd wants to be the next Main Pop Boy — and his debut album, Malcolm Todd, proves that he’s willing to fight for it, even if he gets a little bloody and bruised in the process. At 21, he knows that pop doesn’t function quite the same way that it did when juggernauts artists like Justin Bieber and Harry Styles first arrived. Their playbooks can’t be replicated. Now, he’s stepping into the ring with a strategy built around careful observations, bluesy guitars, and warped synths, and an intriguing vision for a new kind of male pop star — one who makes self-awareness and even self-doubt part of his sales pitch. —L.P.
Sharon Van Etten, ‘Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory’
Sharon Van Etten tries a different musical role here: one of the band. She even names the album after her new quartet, Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory. It’s her most groove-oriented music, the first time she’s composed by jamming with other musicians. Attachment Theory goes deeper into the synth-heavy sound she dove into with 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow. It’s propulsive, with extremely Vince Clarke electro burbles driving the beat. Yet it still has her signature indie torch-ballad candor, the style she perfected a decade ago with her masterwork Are We There. —R.S.
Pictoria Vark, ‘Nothing Sticks’
Pictoria Vark is the spoonerism alias of the young singer-songwriter Victoria Park, who turned heads with her 2022 debut album, The Parts I Dread. She aims even higher on her excellent Nothing Sticks — it’s the perfect springtime road trip indie-rock album you didn’t realize you deserved, full of soft-spoken guitar haze and emotional travelogues. The album unfolds like the journal of a wandering young heart who rambles from town to town, from feeling to feeling, but without feeling connected anywhere. As she sings in the witty “San Diego,” “I’m wherever I go.” —R.S.
Suzanne Vega, ‘Flying With Angels’
Four decades after her new-waif debut, Suzanne Vega retains her knack for lucid reflections and crisp music to match, whether she’s singing about a loved one’s unexpected malady or Ukrainians fleeing their country after the invasion. The brittle title song and the aptly lush “Galway” recall her early, folkish work, as does her voice, which remains both knowing and observant. But she and former Bowie guitarist Gerry Leonard, who contributes guitars and melodies, also show off her wry, playful side with a tweaking tribute to Dylan (set to “I Want You”) and a stomper about city rodents. —David Browne
Cameron Winter, ‘Heavy Metal’
Cameron Winter, frontman for Brooklyn post-punks Geese, shows a Harry Nilsson-esque knack for coaxing the weird from the poignant, and vice versa, on his solo debut. The Seventies pop-rock palette clatters as it grooves, wobbles as it swoons, while Winter flexes his baritone from strung out and weary to high-wire alive. He courts destruction and love, disillusionment and transcendence, with awe, sincerity, incredulity, and suspicion. And as his search for meaning approaches God on “$0,” Winter finds everything and nothing: “You’re making me feel like a dollar in your hand/You’re making me feel like I’m a zero dollar man.” —J. Blistein
The Weather Station, ‘Humanhood’
On the Weather Station’s widely acclaimed 2021 album, Ignorance, singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman focused many of her lyrics on the impending doom of climate change. This time out the challenges are closer to home. With her seventh album, Lindeman gets dangerously close to making the 2020s version of Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark that so many modern indie artists dream of coming up with. It’s an album that beautifully mixes pop, folk, rock, jazz, and ambient music, taking on moments of personal crisis, transition, and catharsis with engrossing poetic resolve. —J.D.
Billy Woods, ‘Golliwog’
Billy Woods rose out of the Brooklyn rap underground as a virtuoso poet, one of hip-hop’s most independent and brilliant minds over the past two decades. On Golliwog, he goes for an album full of horror stories. It’s a densely poetic, totally masterful tour de force where Woods lets his expansive imagination run loose in a dystopia where the real-life monsters are scarier than anything he could invent. Golliwog is a horror show that demands — and replays — close attention. But it’s an album that offers no comfort — for Woods, the monsters are everywhere, and survival means keeping on your toes, never more than a step ahead of them. —R.S.
Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard, ‘Tall Tales’
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and producer Mark Pritchard have been working on this minimalist electronic project since the dark days of 2020, passing tracks back and forth, with Yorke adding vocals that are hauntingly opaque and ensnaringly eerie even by his high standards. On “Ice Shelf,” his voice is mutated into a robotic wallow over gray-noise ambience and subterranean drum boom, while “The Conversation Is Missing Your Voice” is like a photo negative of an R&B banger. Pritchard wisely keeps his tracks uncluttered and varied, offering Yorke endless room to stretch out. —J.D.
Zinoleesky, ‘Gen Z’
Though 25-year-old Zinoleesky hasn’t had the same inescapable crossover success as his Nigerian street-pop peer Asake, his cleverly titled second effort, Gen Z, is a testament to the radiant taste in rich production, cool wit, and youthful zeal that has made him beloved at home. He’s subtly a master of all moods, from the triumphant “2Baba Flex” where he name checks Afrobeats stars by their golden ages, to the sexy, electric “Suit & Tie” with hip-hop crooner Toosii. The latter, plus link-ups like “Ayamase” with British rapper Ms Banks, prove he’s he’s a malleable collaborator too. World domination might not be far off. —M.C.
From Rolling Stone US.