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Each quarter, music fans are presented with an embarrassment of riches. That’s why our writers and editors round up a list of generally overlooked recent releases that deserve some more attention. None of these albums were named Best New Music, and some weren’t reviewed on Pitchfork at all, but we think they’re all worth a listen. From animal-themed orchestral folk to rowdy reggaeton break-up anthems, here are some albums you’ll want to listen to.
(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.)
Alice Longyu Gao: Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn and Retire
Like a toxic oil slick over the currents of popular culture, Alice Longyu Gao’s hard-edged hyperpop reflects a warped and rainbowed image of the influencers, algorithms, instruments of surveillance, and average white guys whose movements subtly shape our perceptions of the world. One of Gao’s baseline ironic poses is pretending to be an already tremendously famous star, a perfectly post-PC Music, creator-brained gag that continues to be a lot of fun on xyr new mini album Let’s Hope Heteros Learn, Fail and Retire, with the infernally catchy, Dylan Brady-produced “Come 2 Brazil” followed by the abrasive rap-rock hybrid “Believe the Hype,” which Gao boldly pitches as “the future of music.” Probably not—but that’s the kind of quasi-sadistic provocation Gao’s work often seeks to enact. –Anna Gaca
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Aya Nakamura: DNK
Aya Nakamura comes from a long line of griots, or traditional Malian poets and singers, but her fourth album, DNK, is firmly rooted in the present. Here, she travels across the Atlantic, linking her prismatic Afropop vision to Caribbean diasporic sounds. In some moments she's coy and playful, lusting after her “Corazon” and “Daddy”; in others, she's licking her wounds over an unfaithful lover, as on “J'ai mal.” As she bathes in buoyant zouk, ’00s R&B, and ripples of Jamaican dancehall, the ultimate effect is fresh and breezy, glittering like crystalline ocean waters. –Isabelia Herrera
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Boldy James / RichGains: Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones represents a slight change in approach for Boldy James. While the virtuosic Detroit rapper often favors gritty minimalism, the production from RichGains is lush and—there’s really no better shorthand for it—vibey: slinky electric guitars, soft-edged synths, guest singers crooning detached hooks, all EQ’ed and reverbed for maximum haziness. Fortunately, Boldy hasn’t suddenly started Auto-Tune sing-rapping, and he dishes out his usual dizzying wordplay over beats that another rapper might take as an invitation to coast. On “B22’s,” he rhymes “Delaware” with “well aware” with “derriere” with “Metal Gear”—and that’s just the chorus. –Andy Cush
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Bruiser and Bicycle: Holy Red Wagon
Will Bruiser and Bicycle help reboot the weirder side of ’00s indie rock? On their second album, Holy Red Wagon, the Albany freak-folk act continues channeling the prog art-rock of the Fiery Furnaces and the child-like singing of Animal Collective. With most tracks clocking in around seven minutes, they revel in the beauty of going long: unexpected change-ups, rhythmic grooves, and an escalation of vocal harmonies that verges on spiritual. Even without the nostalgia, Holy Red Wagon is a trip. –Nina Corcoran
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Cécile McLorin Salvant: Mélusine
Across history, the treacherous snake has been linked to exiled women from Eve to Medusa. On Mélusine—titled after the European folk legend who was cursed by her mother to become half-serpent, half-woman—McLorin Salvant channels the mythos of these misunderstood creatures. The 14-track album includes interpretations of surrealist poets, 12th-century troubadours, and obscure 1970s rock musical numbers while also including original work of her own. Salvant alchemizes suspenseful drums, twinkling pianos, and somber acoustics to connect the plight of women throughout the centuries. –Heven Haile
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Crosslegged: Another Blue
Keba Robinson’s watery, experimental indie pop takes its time. Her newest album as Crosslegged, Another Blue, was eight years in the making, and it features patient electroacoustics with indie rock guitar flourishes and subtle percussive marches. Her vocals are raw and childlike, reaching breathy, unexpected peaks that resemble that of a young Björk; other times, her sophisticated, soulful melodies channel Solange. She echoes her words with open-hearted intention, while still seeming carefree. –Margeaux Labat
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Crushed: extra life EP
After Temple of Angles vocalist Bre Morell and Weekend producer Shaun Durkan struck up a long-distance friendship during the pandemic, they formed the duo crushed. The dream-pop on their debut EP extra life has the fizzy satisfaction of a ’00s radio hit and the shaggy comfort of an album like Souvlaki. It’s fuzzy, sweet, and easy to love, with subtle electronic flourishes that elevate it beyond the usual ‘90s-inspired pop-rock. –Cat Zhang
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Doc Sleep: Birds (in my mind anyway)
The Jacktone label, co-run by Melissa Maristuen, is home to a wealth of idiosyncratic electronic music from under-the-radar acts like juneunit and gayphextwin. Her own music as Doc Sleep is equally distinctive. This album for Copenhagen’s Tartelet label flits between ambient-techno soundscaping and leftfield bass music; the production’s muted qualities are reminiscent of certain strains of vintage electronica, when hardware synths and samplers, rather than laptops, were standard issue. Birds (in my mind anyway) could easily pass for a forgotten cult classic of the mid ’90s—the kind of record passed along by devoted fans, from dubbed cassette to dubbed cassette, that grows in warmth as it gathers tape hiss. –Philip Sherburne
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Doug McKechnie: The Complete San Francisco Moog Vol. 2: 1968-72
Doug McKechnie is the synth pioneer you’ve probably never heard of. In the late ’60s, thanks to a deep-pocketed roommate, he got his hands on the fourth Modular Series III System to roll out of Robert Moog’s workshop. McKechnie demonstrated the machine’s psychedelic potential at art museums and hippie happenings around the Bay Area; he even got booked at Altamont, though his set was aborted just seconds in. (Eventually, McKechnie’s Moog got sold to Tangerine Dream.) The second volume of McKechnie’s previously unreleased tapes is a fascinating snapshot of an autodidact inventing his own language for a brand-new instrument, tapping into the kinds of pulses that still animate new-age and cosmic synth music over half a century later. –Philip Sherburne
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Genevieve Artadi: Forever Forever
Some of today’s most exhilarating not-jazz jazz relishes in an absurd and joyful virtuosity. Genevieve Artadi, who collaborated with Thundercat on a 2021 track from HBO’s Insecure, delivers mathy full-band chops and psychedelic giddiness of the highest order on Forever Forever, her second album for Brainfeeder. Imagine if Fievel Is Glauque got signed by International Anthem—and they destroyed video games in between slices of pizza and glugs of Mr. Pibb. Or just check out the title track, which finds eternity in a wordless chorus and a killer piano solo. –Marc Hogan
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H.C. McEntire: Every Acre
On her third solo album, the North Carolina singer-songwriter returns to a fertile plot of emotional insight, tilling through grief, lust, and heartache over gentle and twangy arrangements. Songs like “Dovetail” and “New View” showcase her rootsier sensibilities, while “Big Love” and “Rows of Clover” reach further into rock and psychedelic influences. It’s a graceful and confident step forward. –Allison Hussey
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James Brandon Lewis: Eye of I
In a 2020 essay titled “Molecular Systematic Music,” the New York tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis likened his creative philosophy to holding a shattered drinking glass, where the “fragments of beauty” unleash “freedom and possibility.” This penchant for unbound exploration remains alive on his 11th album of avant-garde jazz, Eye of I, also his Anti- debut. Working with cellist Chris Hoffman and percussionist Max Jaffe, Lewis’ loping, lyrical compositions sit alongside interpretations of Cecil Taylor and Donny Hathaway, and a collaboration with post-Fugazi trio the Messthetics, underscoring the audacity that binds post-punk and post-bop. –Jenn Pelly
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Joanne Robertson: Blue Car
The fifth album of acoustic dream pop from Glasgow singer, guitarist, and painter Joanne Robertson evokes the chill of winter thawing into spring. Floating between tape hiss and beauty, Robertson sounds a little like Grouper covering Jessica Pratt, thanks to the abstraction of her lyrics and the clarity of her melodies. She may also bring to mind her longtime collaborator Dean Blunt—she sang all over 2021’s Black Metal 2—but Robertson really creates an impressionistic, iridescent, and compulsively-replayable world of her own. –Jenn Pelly
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Key Glock: Glockoma 2
On his third album Glockoma 2, Memphis rapper Key Glock is a lone ranger, luxuriating in his spoils and charging toward a new horizon. He polishes the grit off his 2018 trap mixtape Glockoma, rounding out pyrotechnic beats and laser-focused punchlines with timeless traces of vintage soul and blues. Highlights include the bag-getting anthem “Randy Orton,” and the crunked-up call-to-arms “Homicide Gvng.” Glockoma 2 is also his first album since the death of his mentor Young Dolph, and Key Glock recalls the mischief they cooked up with songs like “2 For 1” and “From Nothing.” It’s a collection of lavish trap tracks that feel like freshly earned bounty. –Tati Rodriguez
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Kyeoshin: Aquatic Drill: Vol. 1
Lush, underwater melodies and tender lilts meet beats that make you want to jump around in the pit or dance until the nightclub stops serving. Lyrics are clearly secondary to feeling for Kyeoshin, who ranges from longing to pain-stricken; extended stretches are filled with atmospheric riffing and melty high notes that Kyeoshin holds almost eternally. She has the type of soft but hazy voice that would be right for casting spells, so if you end up in a trance don’t be surprised. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Lamp of Murmuur: Saturnian Bloodstorm
From the “wintermoons” and “frenzied fog” in the tracklist to the corpse paint and cryptic symbology in the liner notes, Lamp of Murmuur proudly wears its old-school black metal influence on its sleeve. But on its third album, the Los Angeles one-man band has the music to back it up. With eerily immersive arrangements and confident, slyly catchy songwriting, Saturnian Bloodstorm doesn’t just sound like classic metal (and, indeed, the influence of greats like Immortal, Satyricon, and Celtic Frost is immediate and apparent). Now their music feels classic, too. –Sam Sodomsky
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LCY: /Y\
Rising UK producer, DJ, and visual artist LCY is a world-builder at heart, merging heady concepts inspired by sci-fi and Celtic folklore into vaporous, off-center club music. They frame their latest EP, /Y\, as a “re-conceptualization of the genesis story,” and smoothly integrate various strains of club music in the process: Thumping jungle percussion and pitch-shifted coos lace together on the early highlight “Cherubim,” Jersey club beats collapse in on themselves during “Whatitcouldbe,” and the spectral closer “Sound” drifts off into a wash of ambient sound, providing a welcome comedown after the dizzying journey. –Eric Torres
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Lia Kohl: The Ceiling Reposes
On her second album, The Ceiling Reposes, the Chicago-based cellist and composer Lia Kohl plays with structure through an unpredictable means: radio. She tunes into multiple transmissions and manipulates each station—adjusting volume knobs, overlapping FM classical music with AM talk show prayers, turning antenna static into soothing ambiance—to lay the groundwork for her songs. Atop it all, she plays cello and MIDI keys. The Ceiling Reposes is a practice in finding peace in chaos. –Nina Corcoran
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Mark William Lewis: Living
“When you feel it you will know/It’s coming,” the London-based singer-songwriter Mark William Lewis opens his EP Living, which much like life itself, is defined by precarity. As he edges towards an amorphous state of being, he explores stress, power, and pain, his anxiety amplified by acoustic instruments that resound with delay. The record leaves us without any answers, mimicking the uncertainty of life and the feeling of trying to survive while on the brink of love and loss. –Arjun Srivatsa
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Masego: Masego
Masego sticks to his whimsical trap-jazz sound on his self-titled album, but adds a little more verve to his step. The singer-songwriter deflects fame and entertains his warring sensitive and cynical sides, lacing his dazed falsetto over dreamy sax trills and smooth trumpet blasts. Tracks like the silvery “Cha-Cha Slide”-sampling opener “Black Anime” and the stargazing “What You Wanna Try”—a spin on Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner”—flip familiar melodies into cheeky meditations. By the end though, Masego is still a loner in a dim lounge with little but his sax and sobering thoughts on how money, ambition, and romance misalign. –Clover Hope
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Memphis LK: Too Much Fun EP
Australian producer and songwriter Memphis LK’s plush and spacious combination of UK garage and bedroom-R&B vocals couldn’t be more au courant. Beneath their stylish crystalline bounce, her songs cloak emotional vulnerability in frisky wordplay and cool-girl confessional style. An off-screen heartbreak animates the fast-car fantasy of “Whip” and the dejected morning-after reflections of “Coffee,” putting speed and scent to their writer’s feelings without giving away her secrets. Not only a hook, “wheels spinning on the whip” flashes past as a measure of time: a nostalgic memento of a brighter future to come. –Anna Gaca
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Miss Grit: Follow the Cyborg
Inspired by a phrase from Jia Tolentino’s 2019 essay “Always Be Optimizing,” Margaret Sohn explores the idea of cybernetic organisms as a metaphor for self-actualization on their second record as Miss Grit, Follow the Cyborg. Sohn utilizes computers and audio plugins to make a rock record with a human heart and a robot soul, drawing from Ex Machina, Ghost in the Shell, and Pinnochio in equal measure. Sohn’s debut is a rejection of prescribed identity, a quiet rebellion against the tyranny of expectation. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz
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Nia Archives: Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against tha Wall EP
While writing Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against tha Wall EP, London-based artist Nia Archives was thinking about those after-party hours when a high morphs into a hangover. The result is a collection of contemplative, lo-fi jungle cuts that occasionally burst open with vibrant samples. On opener “Baianá,” Archives fires off a ricocheting breakbeat, letting a vocal snippet from Barbatuques—a Brazilian choir that performs using body percussion—ripple like a bright flag. She nods to her Jamaican roots on the title track, her smoky timbre drifting across a warped dub revamp. The six-song Sunrise EP courses through vignettes of love and loss; it’s all in a night out for Nia Archives. –Madison Bloom
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Nikki Nair / Sam Binga: The Brislanta EP
The Brislanta EP might be named after its two producers’ hometowns—Bristol for Sam Binga and Atlanta for Nikki Nair—but it takes much from raucous dance styles of other locales: Baltimore and Jersey club, New Orleans bounce, Miami bass, old-school New York electro. The three tracks here are id-fueled and unpretentious, riding massive kick drums, sci-fi synth stabs, and chopped-up voices exhorting you to get loose and move your body. The highlight is “The Only Way Out,” which teases tiny snippets of a vocal sample, then comes with chord changes dramatic enough to soundtrack a power ballad, played on synths so distorted you might wonder whether you blew a speaker. It’s huge, cathartic, and proudly dopey, with a touch of fuck you for those who prefer their electronic music restrained. –Andy Cush
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Núria Graham: Cyclamen
Núria Graham’s Cyclamen is a wondrous blend of orchestral folk and chamber pop with whimsically long-winded song titles (“Fire Mountain Oh Sacred Ancient Fountain”) and oblique nature and animal metaphors, like in a song from the perspective of a goldfish in a tank (“Yes It’s Me, the Goldfish!”). Graham doesn’t shy away from playfulness in her poetic ruminations, deploying blunt, casually-delivered humor. Even the simplest of moments find ways to flourish and swell, with fluttering strings and ornate horns decorating Graham’s depictions of life's strange beauty. –Margeaux Labat
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Phiik / Lungs: Another Planet 4
On his freestyle for Topshelf Premium’s “Off Top” series, the wiry Long Island kid who calls himself Lungs on the mic and LoneSword behind the booth raps in a hardened yammer while burning a hole in the lens with his gaze. The whites of his eyes are enormous, unforgiving, inescapable. Behind him, his partner Phiik stalks restlessly, acting out his partner's verse to himself. This martial intensity animates the razorwire music the duo makes together on the Another Planet series. For the fourth installment, they spill their thousand-word verses with the laser-beam urgency of someone communicating illicit information in full view of law enforcement. This is Def Jux worship as survival mechanism, rap music as relentless awareness. –Jayson Greene
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Rome Streetz / Big Ghost Ltd: Wasn’t Built in a Day
New York rapper Rome Streetz and anonymous underground producer Big Ghost Ltd keep it simple on Wasn’t Built in a Day. Big Ghost Ltd’s beats are menacing and understated, evoking the grit of ’90s New York without falling head first into Wu-Tang Clan or Mobb Deep worship. Streetz’s timbre—a little high and nasal, but not to the degree of his Griselda colleague Westside Gunn—fits the theme, sticking out like a shiny shard of glass. Streetz keeps his wordplay slick and his head down, rarely wasting a bar. –Matthew Strauss
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Rosa Pistola: Cumbiaton Total
A storm of snarled vocals, dog barks, and guacharaca scrapes, Cumbiaton Total is so electrifying it’ll leave you with your hair standing straight up. The album, compiled by NTS and Mexico City-based DJ-producer Rosa Pistola, showcases the metropolis’ cumbiatón movement, summoning street realness: Take the coy playground taunts of Nath Vega’s “Piketon,” or the growled commands of Alnz G, who literally instructs you to break the floor with your ass-shaking on “Quiebra Todo el Piso.” Grab your michelada, stretch those knees, and let the perreo intenso begin. –Isabelia Herrera
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Sideshow: 2MM Don’t Just Stand There!
Sideshow’s raps are a slightly darker take on the grateful koans of MIKE and Mavi, but it’s his ear for beats that makes him distinct. 2MM Don’t Just Stand There! expands on his usual mix of warped boom-bap and plugg beats with flourishes of trap and dance music, wrapping hard truths and sweet victories in a bouncy rap package. Though Sideshow is becoming increasingly annoyed by the trappings of fame (“WHITE FANS”) and is battling a lean addiction he bluntly calls “the worst kind ever” on “2UNCHI MUSIC,” love from his family and friends gives him all the confidence he needs to move forward. –Dylan Green
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Spirit Possession: Of the Sign…
It’s already been a banner year for multi-instrumentalist S. Peacock. In February, the Portland musician released an ambitious pair of companion albums with his death metal trio Ulthar: a gnarly, intricate epic that spoke to the heady compositional skills concealed in his gnarly riffage. A month later came the pure fucking mayhem of Of the Sign…, the second full-length from his black metal duo Spirit Possession. It peaks with the kind of hell-raising, studded-leather debauchery more commonly associated with speed metal, thrash metal, or the kind of primitive early ’70s rock’n’roll that helped spawn all those subgenres. Paired with its murky, straight-out-of-the-garage production, it’s the closest we’ll get to hearing this shapeshifting virtuoso just jamming out ’til the sun rises. –Sam Sodomsky
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Swami Sound: Back in the Day
UK garage has been a potent source of nostalgia basically ever since the government’s early-2000s rave clampdown, but Swami Sound isn’t reminiscing on his first MDMA pill or deconstructing the hardcore continuum. Back in the Day, the debut album by Brooklyn producer and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Harley, blends velvety vocals, skittering breakbeats, and walloping sub-bass for disarmingly personal introspection about his Bronx upbringing and lingering self-doubt. It makes a wistful complement to the Y2K grooves from like-minded up-and-comers on both sides of the pond, and when Harley admits “I guess I’m sticking around” at one point, it feels like the truth. –Marc Hogan
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TisaKorean: Let Me Update My Status
TisaKorean seems to have studied Yung Nation singles and the first three Soulja Boy albums like a priest would the Bible. On Let Me Update My Status, the barking Houston rapper, producer, and lowkey choreographer burrows into choppy, rule-breaking flows and beats with GarageBand fingersnaps and booming 808s. For 16 songs, he whips between cartoonishly animated tracks like “HeLiCoPtEr sWaG” and sweet-sounding ones like “SiLlY MoAn” that will still make you want to move like Fabo. It’s more than a blast from the past, it’s a rebirth. –Alphonse Pierre
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Yazmin Lacey: Voice Notes
UK singer-songwriter Yazmin Lacey’s debut album traverses jazz, neo-soul, dub, and R&B with the intimacy of a dimly-lit open mic session. Her bluesy alto is a soothing centerpiece on songs about frenemies (“Bad Company”), heartbreak (“Pieces”), and existentialism (“Tomorrow’s Child”), evoking Little Dragon or Corinne Bailey Rae; the flickering dance standout “Late Night People” is like a stoned rendition of Erykah Badu covering “Hey Ya.” Across 14 tracks, Lacey’s velvety arrangements and feel-good romanticism compel you to keep calm and carry on. –Gio Santiago
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
