The return of clubs and festivals this year meant that dance music finally felt like it was back to normal—not 2021’s “new normal” of tours on tenterhooks and will-they-won’t-they headliners, but the good-old normal-normal of closing down the joint at 6 a.m. with a floor-filling piano-house anthem. There was no shortage of supersized crowdpleasers to suit the mood, from Eliza Rose’s throwback garage to Two Shell’s chipmunk mischief to Nick León’s jugular-lunging spin on Venezuelan raptor house. On the margins, meanwhile, it really felt like all bets were off: Hagop Tchaparian found rave release in Armenian folk instruments; Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon returned from a long hiatus to strike yacht-rock gold with Panda Bear; and Ezmeralda and DJ Python dissolved the rhythms of cumbia and reggaeton into experimentally atmospheric new forms. The Soft Pink Truth winkingly titled his house epic Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?; day after day, his peers responded in the affirmative.
Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist.
Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2022 wrap-up coverage 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.)
Alan Braxe / DJ Falcon: “Step by Step” [ft. Panda Bear]
French house kingpins Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon made their long-awaited return on “Step by Step,” rolling out gentle waves of modular synths that sound like they come from an old AM radio. Panda Bear gives the duo’s subtle glow a narrative framework, singing about the aftermath of an idyllic past. But “Step by Step” is really about moving forward: The synths suddenly come alive, acoustic drums breathe momentum into the song’s sails, and Panda Bear—multi-tracked into an elated choir, and delivering the crown jewel of his already laudable 2022 discography—becomes a chorus of trusted advisors whose collective force, and copious repetitions, transform an old self-help chestnut into a life-changing belief system. –Evan Minsker
Listen: Alan Braxe / DJ Falcon, “Step by Step” [ft. Panda Bear]
Arca: KicK iii
The centerpiece of a sprawling, five-album cycle, Arca’s KicK iii is a protean climax wedged between more focused experiments in squelching reggaeton and whispery ambient pop. Delving deep into the gnarled industrial textures of her back catalog, the record is governed more by mood than genre, embracing a diabolical temperament that blurs the lines between sadism and masochism. From the rubberized low end of “Señorita” to the nightcored hyperventilation that shakes “Skullqueen,” Arca gives into her most brutal impulses, turning the dancefloor into a brilliant, Boschian hellscape you won’t mind being banished to. –Jude Noel
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Axel Boman: LUZ / Quest for Fire
Nearly a decade after his solo debut, Swedish producer Axel Boman returned with a captivating dance-music diptych that effortlessly bounds between breezy moods and shadowy atmospheres. Partially inspired by the 1981 fantasy film Quest for Fire, the set revolves around a keen sense of balance, with bright disco chords and percussive congas providing a counterpoint to stretches of pulsing, meditative deep house. Each pinwheeling variation is filtered through Boman’s precise sound design, making for an atmospheric, inventive double feature from a producer at the top of his game. –Eric Torres
LUZ: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Quest for Fire: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Burial: “Strange Neighbourhood”
You could say that “Strange Neighbourhood” and the almost-album it comes from, Antidawn, are formulaic—but it’s a formula Burial patented. He owns this sound: the shivery shards of imploring vocals that flare up like embers aloft on the wind, the funeral-parlor organ swells, the moist reverberance and muffled found sounds, the disconcerting pauses and glitchy lapses where it feels like the track is giving up the ghost. Rather than seeming like déjà vu, this 11-minute audio-movie evocation of the hauntedness of urban space feels as fresh and original as the first time you heard Burial. You start to think he could carry on like this forever. –Simon Reynolds
Listen: Burial, “Strange Neighbourhood”
Call Super: “Swallow Me”
Big-room sounds—gargantuan basslines, ham-fisted riffs—were ubiquitous in 2022, but this beguiling single from Call Super proved that more subtle, slippery sounds could be just as effective. In a year when even underground producers reached en masse for hoary nostalgia, Call Super’s JR Seaton opted for something bespoke, slicing up his own breakbeat-inspired rhythm and festooning it with filigreed chimes. The real magic happens as the beat falls silent and a hitherto almost subliminal cluster of vocal tones rise in a slow explosion of alarming dissonance. The voice is that of experimental opera singer Kamala Sankaram; the sample comes from a 2019 performance exploring an ancient Greek form of ritual shrieking. An expression of anger and mourning, Sankaram’s piece was meant as a response to the results of the 2016 election. Removed from that context, her voice takes on new resonance in Call Super’s track: Danger is at the door, it seems to say; safety lies in the beat’s communal embrace. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Call Super, “Swallow Me”
Carmen Villain: Only Love From Now On
After a decade spent steadily moving from her origins in reverb-soaked indie rock toward purely electronic landscapes, Carmen Villain delivered her ambient masterpiece with Only Love From Now On. Synthesizer and woodwinds swirl above submerged dub-techno pulses, and trumpeter Arve Henriksen and flutist Johanna Scheie Orellana add washes of color to Villain’s richly pigmented palette. The interplay of shape and shadow suggests the dark tangle of a tropical rainforest; the album’s seven tracks feel like snapshots of a single patch of jungle captured across seven days of shifting light and weather. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Coby Sey: Conduit
Harnessing collaborative instincts honed working alongside artists like Tirzah and Mica Levi, the native South Londoner sculpts free-ranging jams into tense, impressionistic tracks bursting with the controlled chaos of a crowded street. His debut LP retains the leftfield beats and lo-fi introspection of previous releases, but it also pushes into startling new zones informed by post-punk, free improv, noise, and the desolate beauty of RZA’s Ghost Dog soundtrack. Sey’s murmured rapping has a subdued, hypnotic quality, eking out a point of calm amid a landscape of upheaval and decay. –Philip Sherburne
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Daphni: Cherry
Technically speaking, not much goes on in any given track from Dan Snaith’s third album as Daphni, the Caribou mastermind’s dancefloor outlet. Even the record’s most elaborate arrangements generally come down to a slim handful of elements. In such spartan settings, minor details register with unusual force. A tiny rhythmic irregularity in the title track becomes strangely transfixing as it repeats; gradual modulations make two minutes of unaccompanied synth arpeggio into a bite-sized eternity. The music is minimal but not exactly rigorous, its subtle shifts coming off as instinctive and emotional rather than systematic. The only plan, it seems, is to make your body move. –Andy Cush
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Ela Minus / DJ Python: “Pájaros en Verano”
What’s there to be grateful for in a hopeless world? According to Ela Minus, clouds, crickets, and sleep, to name a few. “Pájaros en Verano” is an ode to the quotidian pleasures we often ignore. Her praise for the small stuff pairs perfectly with DJ Python’s bubbly production, led by a bright, sweet mallet-like synth that meanders through minimal percussion. It’s a subtle anthem that invites you to slow down and linger on life’s simple delights. –Arjun Srivatsa
Listen: Ela Minus / DJ Python, “Pájaros en Verano”
Eliza Rose / Interplanetary Criminal: “B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)”
Taking inspiration from an immaculate poster for the 1973 Pam Grier blaxploitation film Coffy, every flirty bar and bubbly riff of “B.O.T.A.” oozes cool. Sassy organ house has long lit up British dancefloors, but topping the charts was hardly a forgone conclusion for underground UK Garage producer-DJs Eliza Rose and Interplanetary Criminal. After meeting the accelerant of TikTok, though, the tune’s explosion felt inevitable; it began festival season as a limited pressing and ended it as the hottest record in the UK and Ireland. In a year that resurfaced important debates about the ownership and authenticity of dance music, two things about “B.O.T.A.” ring true: It belongs to the people, and it’s real as fuck. –Gabriel Szatan
Listen: Eliza Rose / Interplanetary Criminal, “B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)”
Ezmeralda: En Átomos Volando
On En Átomos Volando, Ezmeralda slows and slackens cumbia’s rhythm, transforming its scratchy, steady percussion into frigid ectoplasms. The effect is bone-chilling, but the Colombian producer, better known as Nicolás Vallejo, isn’t trying to frighten. When he summons cumbia’s ghosts, Vallejo asks us to consider the memories and silences they carry. These percussive traces feel supernatural, but they are also whispers of the painful colonial histories contained within. –Isabelia Herrera
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Fever Ray: “What They Call Us”
This is the sound of crisis approaching from all sides: the escalating cruelties against its subjects (“did you hear what they call us?”) and the indifference of those watching it happen (“can you fix it, can you care?”). In a desperate plea for mercy, Karin Dreijer sings as if they’re grinding their teeth down to the nerve; the track shudders and startles at every turn, desolate synths circling the arrangement like vultures above wasteland. Despite this, “What They Call Us” is not the sound of defeat. It’s a defiant snarl in the face of circumstance: “I will stay if I dare.” –Katherine St. Asaph
Listen: Fever Ray, “What They Call Us”
Floating Points: Someone Close EP
Having delivered an instant classic of the ambient-jazz canon alongside late saxophonist Pharoah Sanders with last year’s Promises, Floating Points’ Sam Shepherd bounced back sounding wildly energized. The four-song Someone Close EP contains some of the London electronic musician’s most boisterous work to date. “Grammar” is a squirrelly, spring-loaded acid jam, while the rollicking garage grooves and vocal chops of “Vocoder” and “Problems” rival his buddy Four Tet’s most muscular—yet still intricate—anthems. The title track, on the other hand, is a gentle, steadily expanding maelstrom of keening synth tones—welcome proof that Shepherd appears far from having exhausted his cosmic inspirations. –Philip Sherburne
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Hagop Tchaparian: “Right to Riot”
The most immediate cut on British-Armenian producer Hagop Tchaparian’s startling debut album Bolts, “Right to Riot” merges worlds. Droning zurna melodies and tumbling dhol drums vie clamorously for our attention, but Tchaparian’s mastery of more traditional tactics—rising bass, cleansing releases, and a sample looped to sound like an alarm—make the track a gem of contemporary techno, whittling down the Four Tet collaborator’s sweeping vision into a sharp point. –Daniel Felsenthal
Listen: Hagop Tchaparian, “Right to Riot”
Huerco S.: Plonk
These brittle jitters aren’t what anyone might expect from the maker of 2016’s contemporary ambient classic For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have). Instead, the pointillistic, percussive sound Brian Leeds, aka Huerco S., developed this time establishes a mood of delicate disequilibrium and suppressed unrest. There’s a pained beauty to the irregular, plucked patterns of “Plonk I,” like a player tentatively grappling with a harp that’s been fitted with serrated strings. Elsewhere, there are echoes of the itchy, intricate ’80s electronic funk of Ryuichi Sakamoto, the parched postmodern jazz of Jon Hassell, and the needlepoint snares of ’90s drum’n’bass, underlining the sense that this album purposefully pulls from across history. File under “nervous ambient.” –Simon Reynolds
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Jessie Ware: “Free Yourself”
The beloved British singer responsible for one of the pandemic’s premiere pop albums teamed up with studio whizz Stuart Price and returned this summer with another ode to love and dancing. “Free Yourself” takes Ware’s blend of ’70s disco and ’80s boogie and shimmies it ecstatically into the ’90s—jacking acid house drum fills, flamboyant male backup singers, gospel piano—without losing an ounce of charm. And when, this fall, she finally sang it live in front of a New York crowd pitched to Judy-at-Carnegie-Hall pandemonium? It became a new classic. –Jesse Dorris
Listen: Jessie Ware, “Free Yourself”
Jockstrap: I Love You Jennifer B
Even though we’re a good 20 years into the internet-accelerated obliteration of genre boundaries, the debut full-length from UK duo Jockstrap proves there’s still something illicitly thrilling—and occasionally disturbing—in jamming seemingly incompatible sounds together. I Love You Jennifer B alternately comes off like an early-’70s psych-folk album being subjected to a hyperpop remix, a ’90s house party breaking out at a conservatory recital, and Third-era Portishead trapped inside a TikTok feed. Teeming with jarring and joyful juxtapositions, the album’s ugly elegance knows no bounds. –Stuart Berman
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Joe Rainey: Niineta
Joe Rainey’s first album combines the pow wow singing of his upbringing as a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe people with electronic production from Andrew Broder, a veteran of Minneapolis’ indie-rock and hip-hop scenes. The results are fierce and urgent, more likely to snap you to attention than ease you into a new-age daydream. Rainey has tremendous expressive range as a singer, and Broder matches him well, sometimes with triumphant chord changes and others with noisy percussive mayhem. Reaching for comparisons with other artists is futile: Niineta sits in a genre of one. –Andy Cush
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
KH: “Looking at Your Pager”
Kieran Hebden’s flair for tunes that intersect credibility and popularity already put him in a lofty position, but “Looking at Your Pager” proved another beast entirely. With fangs added to 3LW’s kiss-off and those signature pearlescent Four Tet chimes dashed against a pair of impudent basslines—like fine snow gracing an enormous, stinking cement mixer in mid-churn—2021’s fervently sought track ID became 2022’s great dancefloor unifier: It runs with the current UK vogue for growling mechanical steppers while offering sanctuary to nomads wandering America’s post-EDM plains in search of a new thrill. Although “Pager” gifted countless DJs a get-out-of-jail card this summer, they should be on red alert. Hebden’s ear for a monster hit is only getting stronger. –Gabriel Szatan
Listen: KH, “Looking at Your Pager”
Lila Tirando a Violeta: Desire Path
On her second album for Mexico City’s NAAFI label, the Uruguayan producer Lila Tirando a Violeta gathers the fragments of a scorched earth, salvaging its scraps and refashioning them into dystopian daydreams. She collects corrosive blasts of noise, spectral susurrations, and solemn pre-Hispanic flutes and ocarinas—a morose archaeological record of club music’s textures. But the album also contains vivid flashes of life: stuttering dembow riddims and propulsive bass, all rendered with the dancefloor in mind. The dystopia may be dark, but that won’t stop Lila Tirando a Violeta from dancing—or thrashing—on the world’s grave. –Isabelia Herrera
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Logic1000: “Can’t Stop Thinking About”
Australian-born, London-based producer Logic1000’s wiry electronic music is laced with nostalgia for sweaty, effusive club anthems of the past. On one-off single “Can’t Stop Thinking About,” she crafts an immaculate spin on ’90s deep house, with swinging drums, thick synth pads, and a jittering, looped vocal sample moving together in balletic unison. The song is a sparkling and immediate upper, eliciting a brief but exhilarating high. –Eric Torres
Listen: Logic1000, “Can’t Stop Thinking About”
Marina Herlop: Pripyat
With Pripyat, conservatory-trained pianist Marina Herlop tears up the rule book in its entirety, transforming each musical element into a toy to play with. Phonetic whoops, spiky piano chords, and thousands of Ableton Live presets splinter into knife-edged shards in the Catalan artist’s music. Her experimental compositions burst with enthusiasm, as multi-tracked choral arrangements flicker over jittery time signatures and electronics fit for Pixar’s sound-effects department. Close your eyes and those million tiny pieces rearrange into a single artwork, one radiant enough to illuminate the darkness. –Nina Corcoran
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Nick León: “Xtasis” [ft. DJ Babatr]
For the many genres he’s worked in, Nick León has an impressively distinct sound. From guarachero, perreo, and reggaetón to the abundance of excellent ambient music he’s released on his Bandcamp page, the Miami producer has moved effortlessly across styles and categories, refining an approach that’s precise and exacting as it brushes up against the reds. “Xtasis,” his collaboration with Venezuela’s DJ Babatr, is a thundering pan-Latin club anthem to make even the stuffiest techno purists smile. Elements of Babatr’s raptor house are smoothed together with warm, full-bodied production, as León makes the case that Miami club music—long relegated to party-starting duties—is as complex and considered as the output of any other regional scene. –Rob Arcand
Listen: Nick León, “Xtasis” [ft. DJ Babatr]
Nikki Nair: Renormalization Support Group EP
No scene gets to claim Nikki Nair for its own; his catalog runs from playful West Coast house labels to steely UK grime outlets. On the four-track Renormalization Support Group EP, the Tennessee-born, Atlanta-based producer gives a taste of his impressive range. “Plug” sounds like Miami bass with a heavy helium habit; “It’s NP-Complicated” puts a hi-def spin on Drexciyan electro; “Donut Time” is a polyrhythmic funk workout. The twists and turns on “Where Are U,” meanwhile, confirm that Nair’s drum programming is running laps around his peers’. Normalize beats this freaky. –Philip Sherburne
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Panda Bear / Sonic Boom: “Edge of the Edge”
Panda Bear and Sonic Boom began their joint album Reset with a simple premise: take the opening moments from great songs of the 1950s and ’60s, loop them, and shape their compositions out from there. “Edge of the Edge” uses Randy & the Rainbows’ “Denise” as its melodic germ, augmenting the 1963 doo-wop hit’s sweet and simple melody with sleigh bells, hand claps, and Panda Bear’s bittersweet croon before beaming in transmissions of dial tones and modem sounds from a less distant past. It’s an infectiously catchy tune that transcends time as it embodies these trusted collaborators’ experimental spirit. –Shy Thompson
Listen: Panda Bear / Sonic Boom, “Edge of the Edge”
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Rachika Nayar: Heaven Come Crashing
A first spin of Heaven Come Crashing feels like plugging a high-voltage power line into the base of your spine: You can’t help but sit up straight and pay attention, absorbing every jolt. Brooklyn-based composer-guitarist Rachika Nayar built her second album from shimmering drones, glitches, synth arpeggios, and occasional beats. The record is beautiful, dramatic, and occasionally frightening as it drifts through that emotionally nourishing space where gentle ambient and harsh noise collide. It’s an energy field as much as a piece of music, the kind of record where you can feel your entire body listening. –Mark Richardson
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Sam Prekop / John McEntire: Sons Of
The synthesizer music on Sam Prekop and John McEntire’s Sons Of often has the feeling of a jam session; the two longtime Sea and Cake bandmates come off more like instrumentalists in improvisatory conversation than producers architecting a top-down vision. The album’s four long tracks balance pulsating minimalism with lively expressivity: One voice might repeat with little to no variation for minutes at a time, while another squirms and flickers, mutating anew with every passing beat. Though it sometimes sounds like rudimentary dance music, it is closer in spirit to 1970s German artists like Manuel Göttsching and Kraftwerk, who came to electronic music through avant-garde rock, at a time when playing synthesizers necessarily meant putting fingers to buttons and knobs. –Andy Cush
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Shygirl: “Coochie (a bedtime story)”
“Coochie (a bedtime story)” is the sweetest X-rated lullaby imaginable. Shygirl starts things off on a direct line with, well, pussy, sounding like she’s cooing into an old Nokia phone: “Hello? Is anyone there? It’s the coochie calling.” What follows is a soft, funny testament to the UK artist’s unapologetic sexuality, its liquid beat gliding, stuttering, and zipping under her airy vocals. That Shygirl can proclaim her own horniness with such cuteness and levity is a coochie-attracting combination in and of itself. –Margeaux Labat
Listen: Shygirl, “Coochie (a bedtime story)”
Sofie Birch: Holotropica
The term “holotropic” means “moving toward wholeness”; it’s often used to describe a type of therapeutic breathwork meant to induce altered states of consciousness with fast, deep, circular breathing. Danish musician Sofie Birch channels the spirit of that practice in ambient music that feels tranquil on the surface but teems with activity underneath. Dulcet saxophone frays into silvery ribbons; forest field recordings swell into turbulent ecosystems, dissonant and untamed. Where some meditative music paints on a veneer of calm and calls it a day, Holotropica dares to dig into the subconscious and press confidently ahead, no matter where the rabbit hole may lead. –Philip Sherburne
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
The Soft Pink Truth: Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?
On his longest and most sumptuous album as the Soft Pink Truth, Matmos’ Drew Daniel tunnels towards the center of the music dear to his heart, making a double-LP disco-house epic for no better reason than because he loves the stuff—and has the talent and resources to put together a great one. As a remotely assembled cast of collaborators summons an oceanic swell of strings and horns, Daniel uses marathon track lengths and his mastery of tonal control to transport the listener through a velvet-lined vortex that seems limitless—until a cover of Willie Hutch’s “Now That It’s All Over” guides the listener gently back to the real world. –Daniel Bromfield
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Theo Parrish: DJ-Kicks
Leave it to Theo Parrish to turn his entry in the DJ-Kicks mix series into an explosive manifesto in defense of Detroit. The preposterously talented DJ and producer has always felt slightly out of step with his Motor City peers—sampling funk, soul, and disco just as Detroit techno was hardening into an exportable product, and turning to strident free jazz in mixes when his imitators finally overtook deep house. Across 19 tracks, just about all of which come from artists actively working in and around his Michigan stomping grounds, Parrish pushes back against recent efforts to memorialize the local sounds of the ’90s. Genres and generational politics blur, as the DJ makes the case for the timelessness of local scenes while giving context to the incredible music happening in Detroit today. –Rob Arcand
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Two Shell: Icons EP
There was a brief moment before the name Two Shell took on any significance, but that feels like ancient history. The enigmatic UK bass duo broke through with a series of white-label 12"s that were hard, heavy, and above all, playful, breathing new life into the last decade’s post-dubstep austerity with blinding synths, garish breakbeats, and massive, head-turning samples. While their unpredictable live shows are quickly becoming a central draw at festivals, the equally gonzo Icons proved that the pair is just as effective in the studio: In five irresistible tracks that mashed up techno, hyperpop, and even big beat, Two Shell cemented their place as one of dance music’s most inventive—and irreverent—new voices. –Rob Arcand
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
yeule: “Bites on My Neck”
Part hyperpop cyborg, part suffering bedroom songwriter, yeule deals in emo-tinged laments that conceal deep, impossible desires: to be numb and euphoric at once; to be touched without a body. The Singaporean musician floats between dissociative sing-speak and lullaby coos on “Bites on My Neck,” corralling meteor-shower synths and pugilistic kick drums to offer a fresh perspective on pleasure-centric dance pop. Co-written and produced with Danny L Harle and Mura Masa, the track owes as much to M83’s starbound symphonies and Laurie Anderson’s deadpan alienation as to post-PC Music clubland. Yeule hijacks that garish pop paradigm in service of more vaporous emotions, funneling a post-breakup identity crisis into an immaterial rush. –Jazz Monroe
Listen: yeule, “Bites on My Neck”
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