Pitchfork’s editors are already thinking about what albums have left the biggest impressions and will land a coveted spot on our year-end list. So we’re spotlighting some of the 2024’s most outstanding releases to date by rounding up albums that have earned high scores and Best New Music designations with a quick list of RIYLs (that’s Recommended If You Like) and links to our coverage.
Unlike our year-end lists, this one is organized in reverse chronological order. To help you keep track of the year’s best music, we’ll be updating it periodically throughout the remainder of 2024.
(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)
May
Naemi: Dust Devil
RIYL: Sweeping mountain vistas; pranayama; staring at the sky and watching the clouds drift by; kankyō ongaku; mushroom foraging; sound baths; Laraaji; wildflower bouquets
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Yaya Bey: Ten Fold
RIYL: Smoking a blunt on the stoop with your crew; Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name; drinking eight glasses of water a day; completing your nighttime skincare routine; giving yourself grace even when it’s hard
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Chief Keef: Almighty So 2
RIYL: Samples incorporated into the lyrics of the song; being a rap veteran at 28; gothic grandeur; sparking blunts; kissing yourself in the mirror; Tierra Whack with the Twista flow; the undying influence of Scarface
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Mdou Moctar: Funeral for Justice
RIYL: Left-handed guitars; fractal patterns; pyrotechnics; environmental justice; rolling dunes; classic rock; crows; fuzzboxes; Frantz Fanon; righteous fury
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Jessica Pratt: Here in the Pitch
RIYL: Cosmic threads; a stitch in time; black cats; following the muse; flea markets; Joanna Newsom; analog tape; 27-minute albums; unexplained weather phenomena; liquid mercury
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
April
Hovvdy: Hovvdy
RIYL: Fraternity; twangy Pinegrove; tiny Modest Mouse songs; Richard Linklater movies; lone-star indie; Southern vowels; catching up with an old friend
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Cavalier: Different Type Time
RIYL: Backwoods; buttermilk drops; the writer’s notebook; Tribe, Nas, OutKast; jazz samples; being “a head”; your regular deli order; buying weed the old-fashioned way
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Shabaka: Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
RIYL: Yusef Lateef; new age jazz; flutes; not being in a rush; transcendental meditation; breathwork; the wind; the concept of cosmic harmony; discovering the new class of jazz artists
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Vampire Weekend: Only God Was Above Us
RIYL: “Why I’m Leaving New York” essays; the first three Vampire Weekend albums; self-mythology; self-referentiality; Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life”; albums that open with the word “fuck”; holding on loosely but not letting go
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
March
Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee
RIYL: The Velvet Underground; the Ronettes; Bradford Cox’s old Blogspot; drag queens; hypnogogic pop; Brill Building pop; double albums; listening to albums on YouTube; untagged .wav files; CD-Rs
Listen/Buy: Geocities | YouTube
Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter
RIYL: Square dancing in Dior; Cavender’s Boot City; late nights at the local saloon; impossible melismas; The Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo; hog-tying your man; smoked brisket; correcting the historical record
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Julia Holter: Something in the Room She Moves
RIYL: Uncontainable feelings; slips of the tongue; fretless bass; glissando; swimming-pool reverb; Fantastic Voyage; lava lamps; antique perfume atomizers; pressed flowers; faded Technicolor
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Jlin: Akoma
RIYL: Triplets; fractals; the intersection of rigor and whimsy; staccato; diamond-bit drills; rock tumblers; HBCU drumlines; classical minimalism; astronomical observatories; optical illusions; arcane quantization settings; physical modeling; ping-pong balls falling on mousetraps; AP math
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Tyla: Tyla
RIYL: Dipping your toes in the pool when it’s 90 degrees; Sade; wearing tiny sunglasses at the club; finally deciding to let go of a situationship; Savanna Dry; smoking hookah at a rooftop bar
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
1010Benja: Ten Total
RIYL: Art Dealer Chic-era Miguel; The-Dream but weirder; auteur R&B; arthouse maximalism; one good guitar solo; swaggy feelings; hurt feelings
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Empress Of: For Your Consideration
RIYL: Rhinestone eye makeup; heated romances; stainless steel chokers; drinking straight from the bottle; corset tops; jagged synth-pop arrangements; sweaty perreos with a stranger
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Waxahatchee: Tigers Blood
RIYL: Indie-country; Sheryl Crow; Gillian Welch; that Brad Cook Sound; MJ Lenderman showing up; catchin’ skinks down by the creek; ice cream stand off the highway; letting your legs dangle off a pier
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Adrianne Lenker: Bright Future
RIYL: Solar-powered camp stoves; 10-gallon hats and weightlifting gloves; anagrams; involuntary punning; metaphysical conceits; bestiaries; seeing all your friends at once; fistfuls of dirt; farmer’s markets; heartbreak; recording live to tape
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Bolis Pupul: Letter to Yu
RIYL: Epistolary novels; incense; urban soundscapes; late-night ferries; vintage synths; Belgian new beat; genetic memory; diasporic pride; making up for lost time
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Kim Gordon: The Collective
RIYL: Leather jackets; getaway cars; dead stares; sunglasses; free association; no free will; experimental film; formant shift; Playboi Carti
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Hannah Frances: Keeper of the Shepherd
RIYL: Alternate tunings; close harmonies; fantasy-league John Fahey x Joni Mitchell collabs; freight-train clatter; the changing seasons; old-growth forests; the Old Farmer’s Almanac; catharsis
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Schoolboy Q: Blue Lips
RIYL: Ignoring dread through partying; anxious joyrides; chameleonic flows; lyrical TDE rap; going hard; daddy issues
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven
RIYL: Jesus impersonators; stage diving; carnal knowledge; biting (consensual); raw egg; the best revenge
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
February
Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Past Is Still Alive
RIYL: Hitching a ride; helping a friend; road movies; stick-and-pokes; pedal steel guitar; Eileen Myles; tombstone rubbings; eternal life
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Rafael Toral: Spectral Evolution
RIYL: Aurora borealis; the Voyager Golden Record; shortwave radios; numbers stations; whistling tea kettles; metal birds; eolian harps; the curvature of space-time
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Grandaddy: Blue Wav
RIYL: Placid ’00s indie rock; Acetone and Sparklehorse and Songs: Ohia that kind of thing; a touch of pedal steel; playing sad songs on a jukebox; bummer jams; self-sabotage; the phrase “everywhere you go, there you are”
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Brittany Howard: What Now
RIYL: Experimental soul; a futuristic Muscle Shoals sound; magic spells; sound bowls; incredible vocal performances; saying things like “good separation; wide soundstage;” a surprise house song
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Kali Malone: All Life Long
RIYL: Liturgical splendor; secular beliefs; microtones; mirages; horizons; polished metal; ECM New Series; madrigals; dogeared poetry books; solar eclipses; stone labyrinths; pulling out all the stops
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Helado Negro: Phasor
RIYL: 800 thread count sheets; Sunday morning jams; full-recline lawn chairs; beep boop; Pauline Oliveros; doodling; zoning out
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
January
The Smile: Wall of Eyes
RIYL: Hot takes about this being better than Radiohead; The King of Limbs; side projects; paranoia; prog; kosmische; noise interludes; Thom York fronting a Brit-funk band at times; almost being so back
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Xaviersobased: Keep It Goin Xav
RIYL: Weed; polarizing Gen-Z culture; living forever; zooted dance rap; New York; samples of online porno games; Chief Keef; Lil B
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Kali Uchis: Orquídeas
RIYL: Milk baths in clawfoot tubs; fur-trim silk robes; sapphic reggaeton; arepas de choclo; nail art that takes hours to complete; charm thongs; rose hip tea; protecting your peace
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal