As we head into the second half of 2023, Pitchfork’s writers and editors are already thinking about what albums have left the biggest impressions and will land a coveted spot on our end-of-the-year list. So we’re spotlighting some of the year’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, from our most recent faves to the December 2022 releases that just missed the deadline for last year’s list. To help you keep track of the year’s best music, we’ll be updating it periodically throughout the remainder of 2023.
Also check out the latest episode of our podcast The Pitchfork Review, where Editor-in-Chief Puja Patel, Reviews Director Jeremy D. Larson, and Senior Editor Anna Gaca discuss their favorite trends and records of the year thus far: existential-crisis pop, the indie rap brilliance of billy woods, Skrillex’s comeback, and more. Listen below, and follow The Pitchfork Review here.
(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
Water From Your Eyes: Everyone’s Crushed
RIYL: Shitty DIY basement shows; inscrutable poetry; Sonic Youth and Deerhoof; hijinks and tomfoolery; relentless shitposting; classic rock references; blaming things on late capitalism; weed logic
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp
Mandy, Indiana: I’ve Seen a Way
RIYL: Military documentaries; life-size chess; warehouse raves; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; polished silver; tarnished silver; the one house on the block that every kid swears is haunted
Read more: Mandy, Indiana Combat Our Dystopian Hellscape With Menacing Post-Punk
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
TisaKorean: Let Me Update My Status
RIYL: Soulja Boy; ringtone rap; learning HTML to design your Myspace; oversized basketball jerseys over oversized white tees; picking up boppers with a Sidekick
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Yunè Pinku: BABYLON IX
RIYL: Night lights; Lite-Brites; zoomers doing breakbeats; Celtic lore; every color of gel pen; the city skyline; the blue glow of the screen
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
billy woods / Kenny Segal: Maps
RIYL: Airplane safety cards; conch fritters; David Attenborough narration over Alchemist beats; privacy curtains in the limo; piff
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Nourished by Time: Erotic Probiotic 2
RIYL: Roller skating; ’80s karaoke nights; wingtip shoes; 12" extended dance remixes; day drinking on a quiet summer day
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Avalon Emerson: & the Charm
RIYL: Home hair dye; cross-country road trips; toy karaoke machines; Dido, Jewel, and Jem; sun visors; the warm waters of the Mediterranean
Read more: Why Techno Rule-Breaker Avalon Emerson Traded Club Bangers for Featherlight Dream-Pop
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
April
Jessie Ware: That! Feels Good!
RIYL: Gin martinis, extra dirty; ’70s disco; backless evening gowns; wedding jazz; beluga caviar; vibrators; inner glow
Read more: Jessie Ware’s Pleasure Principle
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Kara Jackson: Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?
RIYL: Reading an asshole with an articulacy that he could only aspire to; world-wearied wisdom; Lucille Clifton; the Chicago indie scene; protecting your peace; Joni Mitchell; Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism
Read more: Kara Jackson’s Mournful, Joyful, Unapologetic Guitar-Ass Music
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Yaeji: With a Hammer
RIYL: Comic books; old anime; ambient jazz; left-field electronic pop; meeting up with your friends at the protest; moving beyond “boba liberalism”; the Martin Luther King adage that “power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice”
Read more: Yaeji Gets Ragey
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Wednesday: Rat Saw God
RIYL: Making friends at a backyard BBQ while shotgunning beers, telling childhood stories, and sharing recommendations for short story collections and outlaw country deep cuts, then meeting up again months later to see Dinosaur Jr. on tour
Read more: Wednesday’s Curdled Beauty
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
March
Boygenius: The Record
RIYL: Excruciatingly intense homoerotic friendships; long road trips; non-dairy milk; hitting your Goodreads goal; Simon & Garfunkel; Elena Ferrante and Elif Batuman; being seen for who you really are; being loved in spite of your most self-destructive tendencies
Listen: Supergroup Therapy With Boygenius’ Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
ICECOLDBISHOP: Generational Curse
RIYL: Reality; low-rider music to drift through hell to; intergenerational narratives; calling out undercover cops; getting snaps on the petrol
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Arooj Aftab / Vijay Iyer / Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile
RIYL: Mixed emotions; time-lapse videos of blooming flowers; collaborative jazz records by artists at the top of their game
Listen: A Conversation With Improvisational Geniuses Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Angel Bat Dawid: Requiem for Jazz
RIYL: Records that demand your full attention; theoretical rabbit holes; the climactic final scenes of multi-part documentaries; avant-garde music with choirs and Auto-Tune and sampled monologues
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Liturgy: 93696
RIYL: Taking hallucinogens and analyzing the YouTube comments on black metal drum tutorial videos until you’re convinced you‘ve discovered the true meaning of the universe
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Lana Del Rey: Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
RIYL: Long, messy, borderline incomprehensible cult-classic films starring a lead actress who somehow totally sells it
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Yves Tumor: Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
RIYL: Tight leather pants; post-punk; Slipknot, Linkin Park, and My Bloody Valentine; campy horror films; The Crucible; long and ridiculous titles; asking your faves to step on you
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
100 gecs: 10,000 gecs
RIYL: Throwing a “gm” in the Discord chat with fingers that smell like gas station corn chips; slap bass; Blink-182 and Primus; going stupid; being stupid; Whip-Its; ironically watching TikTok hype house content; rhyming things with “penis”
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My
RIYL: Rocking chairs on the front porch; Sun Ra; oral histories; spiritual journeys; herbal remedies; grandfatherly wisdom
Read more: The Music That Made Cosmic Bluesman Lonnie Holley
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Fever Ray: Radical Romantics
RIYL: Feeld; Verso Books; alien music; threatening children; grazing knees under the table; transformative one-night stands; vocal modulation; the subversive power of love
Read more: Fever Ray’s Voices of Desire
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Kali Uchis: Red Moon in Venus
RIYL: Silk peignoirs; crystal balls; being faded at sunset; rose petals strewn over the bed; planetary alignments; lip oil; music that can only be described as “a vibe”
Read more: Welcome to Kali Uchis’ High-Femme Fantasy
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Model/Actriz: Dogsbody
RIYL: Jitters; adrenaline; dark, sweaty concert venues where the shows don’t start until very late at night; post-punk that embraces pop; the theatricality of Lady Gaga; Cats the musical
Read more: For Post-Punks Model/Actriz, Confrontation Is an Opportunity for Intimacy
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
February
Maxo: Even God Has a Sense of Humor
RIYL: Waking up on Sunday morning, making pancakes for breakfast, rolling a blunt, and talking to the big guy one-on-one
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Iris DeMent: Workin’ on a World
RIYL: Reconnecting with your favorite college professor and having a long, profound discussion about aging, Chekhov, and gun violence over coffee and cigarettes
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Liv.e: Girl in the Half Pearl
RIYL: Drinking a martini unbothered as you ignore the advances of the imbecile trying to buy you another; acknowledging the lonely beast inside of you; phone dial tones; drum’n’bass; warped R&B; late-night calls from your sneaky link
Read more: R&B Experimentalist Liv.e Sings Through the Bullshit
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
RIYL: Limerence; The White Lotus; the Blumarine Fall Winter 2021 campaign; ancient European folklore and mythology; The Lizzie McGuire Movie; Madonna’s Ray of Light; Kate Bush’s The Sensual World; the collected works of theorist Lauren Berlant
Read more: Caroline Polachek on Divas, an Acid Trip, and Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Kelela: Raven
RIYL: Standing at the base of a waterfall; reaching flow-state at the club; soft rave music; LSDXOXO, Bambii, and Kaytranada; consciousness-raising reading lists and cultivating intentional community
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Yo La Tengo: This Stupid World
RIYL: Road trips; parties in basements; long walks late at night; long-term relationships; group hugs; amplifier noise
Read more: Forty Years In, Yo La Tengo Are Still Making It Up as They Go
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
파란노을 (Parannoul): After the Magic
RIYL: Listening to 2000s indie-rock comfort food as loud as possible in wired earbuds while going for a run on a snowy day
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
January
Kali Malone: Does Spring Hide Its Joy
RIYL: Extending the length of a deep-tissue massage both because it feels so good and because you might be on the verge of an epiphany
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Tujiko Noriko: Crépuscule I & II
RIYL: Land art; gentle ombre; walking through an endless hallway of books and looking for the one that will teach you to build a piano by hand
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
December
SZA: SOS
RIYL: Getting mad at your man for cheating on you in your dreams; being “wifey” even if you’re not a girlfriend; R&B with both harp and 808s; Hannah Montana; immaculate and conversational melodies; running up your therapy bill
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
