by Alex Hanse, B. Snapp, Benji Heywood, Cam Harper, Caroline Nieto, Charlie Bailey, Chris Polley, Dan Goldin, Devin Birse, Emmanuel Castillo, Giliann Karon, Ivy Skarda, Jess Makler, John Brouk, Khagan Aslanov, Kris Handel, Kurt Orzeck, Louis Pelingen, Rohan Press, and Zak Mercado
Welcome to the eleventh annual Post-Trash "Year In Review," a look back at some of our favorite music of the year. It was a difficult year more often than not, but as always, there was plenty of amazing music released over the course of twelve months to keep us going. Let this be your guide (it's bookmark-able) to not only reconnect with your personal favorites but more importantly to discover something new. It's a great time to catch up on the releases that went under the radar, the hidden gems, and the essential records from the underground. "The Year in Review" is a comprehensive guide to our favorite releases of the year, we’ve hand-picked 100 records (it might be 101, but who’s counting) that we think you should listen to. Your next favorite band/artist could be out there, it's just a matter of listening to something new. Popular opinion isn’t the only opinion, sometimes you have to dig a bit deeper. Just because we’re told something is great over and over again doesn’t mean it is. It’s all subjective. Support the music you love. Thank you for reading Post-Trash.
Thank you to all the writers and contributors that keep Post-Trash going all year. We’re all in this together, writing about music simply because we’re passionate and excited about what we’re listening to, and that’s pretty wonderful. Stay tuned for the "Staff Picks: Top 50 Albums of the Year,” an eclectic list where anything goes. Thanks again. - DG
Sad Cactus Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple
The St. Louis-based, grungy dream-pop group Algae Dust are back with the follow-up to their 2023 album In Hindsight. This continues the band’s biennial album cycle that started with their debut album split with Hennen in 2021. Rearranging, out now via Sad Cactus, is a collection of insightful guitar-laden pop songs with somberly poetic lyricism. The title could easily refer to sorting through the intricacies of relationships and roles in both social and intimate settings. Different combinations within the tracklist’s sonic palette create an environment where the twee rhythmic acoustic guitars and a cute little organ exist alongside the distorted, gazy guitar riffs and corresponding feedback. Even within individual songs, there are variances that add to the album’s feelings of duality and uncertainty. - John Brouk
Helta Skelta Records
Bandcamp
Ashley Ack has cemented herself over the years among the all time great punk vocalists, from the acrobatic perfection of Cold Meat to the all too short lived Runt and the more experimental Krimi, her voice is at once threatening and sarcastic, tough as nails but full of character. Ack’s latest hardcore band, AMEROL, have released their Demo CS, and it’s everything we hoped it might be. The band play furious no-frills hardcore with bleeding riffs and skull cracking rhythms, digging into the ruthless nature and rawness of early 80’s USHC, but ignited in a way that feels unique to Australian punk these days. Ack and company go full throttle from the get go, kicking down doors and railing against a forever broken system with obliterating tempos that seem to contract at will. Ack’s elastic approach to vocals is the perfect match for the band’s raw and peeling attack, a transmission of dirt for these ever dirty times. - DG
DC hip-hop heavyweight ANKHLEJOHN releases albums at a rapid clip, with four records released in the first half of this year. While his records with Cookin Soul and August Fannon might carry a higher profile, the stand outs are undoubtedly GIVE GRACE and its companion album, GRACE GIVEN. Essentially the side A and B to a singular album (later released together via Amsterdam’s RRC Music Co.), the bars throughout feel laser focused, each word pointed with intention, as punchlines are paired with deep thought. Big Lordy is dropping knowledge, taking jabs, and creating raw yet brilliant grown ass rap tunes all in one fell swoop. Balancing a hard as nails delivery with thoughtful, often poignant lyrics, and soulful introspection, ANKHLEJOHN is at the top of his game, hitting the beat and letting his thoughts run wild. Where all too many of this generation’s MCs are content to simply talk shit album after album, Lordy gives it to you warts and all, his lyrics aggressively raw and undeniably harsh are rooted in life, free and unfiltered. - DG
Sophomore Lounge
Bandcamp
Just as the year was coming to a close, Atlanta's favorite cosmic wanderers Arbor Labor Union made their triumphant surprise return with the great new Out To Pasture EP. Blending a fine woven quilt of fuzzy Americana, heartland punk choogle, and stoned in the breeze rock 'n' roll, the record is built on big rambling tunes that feel as much indebted to Tom Petty and Warren Zevon as they do Meat Puppets and The Minutemen. From “Patch of Violet,” the rattling banjo assisted instrumental that opens the record and the front-porch stomp of the title track to the patiently locked in boogie of “Zodiac Man” and the barn burning ultra-fried Crazy Horse indebted “Repunzel,” Arbor Labor Union pay tribute to past while pushing forward, their lysergic distorted glory a beacon for inner-balance in these troubling times. - DG
Backwoodz Studioz
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Armand Hammer’s latest project, Mercy, sees the duo reuniting in peak synergistic fashion with venerable producer The Alchemist, their second album together since 2021’s legendary Haram. Stylistically the beats are all about making room for the dense lyrical poetry, a free flowing project which billy woods has described in an interview as an album that “moves through a lot of different moods and feels more expansive and open…” Packed with references (which fans meticulously unpack) and quality features from the likes of Earl Sweatshirt, Quelle Chris, and Pink Siifu to name a few, Mercy is an underground rap victory lap. billy woods and ELUCID are clearly having fun playing around with the back and forth flows of a classic hip-hop duo all while putting out bars showing the two rappers are in a class all their own. - Charlie Bailey
Feel It Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple
Less than a year after their debut album (a favorite of 2024), Cincinnati’s Artificial Go returned, and their sound has evolved. While Hopscotch Fever was primarily rooted in bouncy post-punk and minimalist no wave indebted pop, the band’s second album, Musical Chairs, continues to expand their vision, keeping the tightly coiled charm of their debut, but opting for something much brighter. At times the band weave perfectly resonant dream-pop into their charismatic art punk core while also opting to go in the opposite direction on songs that choose abrasive minimalism. With a blissful nature and massive hooks, Artificial Go sound utterly phenomenal as they blur genre lines with energetic joy. Musical Chairs is a leap forward, expanding upon their enigmatic circus-themed puzzle. Angie Willcutt’s vocals are the beating heart of the band, once again taking new shape, offering an array of deranged pop sensibilities and melodic radiance in equal measure. - DG
Joyful Noise Recordings
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Asher White’s progressive pop songs burst at the seams, meticulously harebrained and bent in all directions to their prolific auteur’s will. Her eclectic sixteenth album is titled as if it were some sort of volatile self-help article, with its scatterbrained narrator crushed under the weight of subservient home life – domestic tension builds as raucous breakbeats coalesce on “Beers with my name on them” crashing down into the escapist piano blues of “Why I Bought the House”. The central themes of suffocating monotony feel well-suited for a truly singular artist who’s always stood her ground firmly outside of any boxes, hard to sonically define and even harder to nail down. - Ivy Skarda
Stones Throw
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple
What isn’t automated in today’s AI-centered fetishes? Automatic—the LA trio of Izzy Glaudini, Halle Saxon, and Lola Dompé—answer this with slippery, rhythmic minimal dance music that blurs the lines of synth-pop and synth-punk with a very human touch. The band haven been drifting away from the cold-steel edges of their earlier work into a softer glaze of rounded corners and polished slides. That’s not to say their vibrant energy has changed, as there are moments that recall 2019’s Signal. The new album Is It Now? was recorded live to analog tape with help from producer Loren Humphrey, resulting in a more visceral, head-aware-of-heartbeat warmth. The result is a throwback to the sounds of Delta 5, ESG, Book of Love, and The B-52s of the early '80s. They deflect the confusion and pressure of society’s deterioration into tracks built for motion and reflection. Their music is an infectious, danceable future-forward critique of unethical consumerism and the influence of money-grubbing politics. They incorporate sound bites, fuzz, decay, and shimmer to elicit cuts directed at tolling systems that feel overwhelming to the human psyche, and somehow make you feel less alone in the dystopian universe, not to mention dancing, a lot of dancing to sweat the anxiety out. If the last track, “Terminal,” is any indication – there’s more vibrant synth-punk head-turners to come from this ecstatic trio. - B. Snapp
Western Vinyl
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Six years after their last release, Ava Luna are back, and their grooves are astounding. The self titled album is their first as a quartet, stripped back ever so slightly, but the crisp rhythms and silky grace of their sound remains amorphous, dipping in and out of their signature blend of soul, art rock, funk, and psych pop. Felicia Douglass and Carlos Hernandez’s voices are each radiant on their own, but really dazzle when weaving seamlessly together. No one gets down quite Ava Luna, so let us all be thankful the band has returned to create art pop with jaw-dropping vision. There’s something about this record that manages to feel both stripped back and akin to sensory overload, it’s twitchy but easily accessible, a beautifully fractured pop odyssey with a mutated structure. Felicia Douglass’ vocals play a big part in grounding the music as everything else seems to swirl majestically. - DG
Invada Records
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With the imminent departure of Geoff Barrow on the horizon, Beak> set out to the US for one final tour together in their current iteration, a celebration of their latest album, >>>>, and the music they've made over the past fifteen years. The shows were nothing less than astounding, the trio proving themselves to be at the height of their powers, dipping between experimental krautrock and droned out psych with sheer force and agility. Live at Zebulon captures one of the run’s final shows via a stunning multi-track recording of their second LA show of the tour. The band’s first live album is as essential a release as any in their immaculate catalog, a document of their unparalleled kinetic bond and the brilliance of their mesmerizing nature. Barrow and Billy Fuller (one of the greatest bassists of our time) are the perfect rhythm section, both taut and expansive, grounded but alien. - DG
Backwoodz Studioz
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple
billy woods is one of the all time greats, a true hip-hop visionary whose raw sense of style is met with an equally raw sense of substance. He's a rapper with no shortage of masterpieces and you can add GOLLIWOG to the last, a record that holds a thematic ground even as the production shifts between a selection of in-demand producers (The Alchemist, Kenny Segal, Conductor Williams, Preservation, Steel Tipped Dove, Messiah Muzik, etc). With a sense of terror at times and a dystopian glare, woods continues to bend time and space with thought provoking bars that unfold upon repeat listens. Everything about GOLLIWOG has an impeccable vibrance, top tier beats, top tier rhymes, and yet anxiety inducing vibes. woods spits about dread, racism, inequality, and inescapable horror with a deft swiftness, his words unraveling over jazzy drumbeats, surrealist horns, and haunting atmospheres as he delivers caustic tales and half dreamt realities. - DG
Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple
We were late to the party but it should be known, Marquette sibling duo Bimbo released one of our favorite records of last year with their debut EP, Bimbology. The art rock band have been on tour pretty much ever since, but at some point they found time to record their second EP, Bimbo à Deux, a triumphantly weird, vibrant, and imaginative take on the aforementioned art rock, minimalist punk, and noise rock. With riffs that are as disarming as they are immediate (think Melkbelly meets QOTSA) and drums that seem to simultaneously set and dismantle the structures, Gretchen and Dawson McKenzie manage to contort their songs while retaining vivid clarity. There’s a sharp sense of irreverence to Gretchen’s lyrics, but you’d hardly know it from the visceral delivery. Bimbo match feral intensity with playful arrangements, ripping apart an underlining pop simplicity in favor of charming discordance. Bimbo à Deux is undeniably an expansion of their sound, reaching further into throbbing and hypnotic territory but every bit as crushing and direct as their debut. Bimbo are a band you need to be listening to. - DG
Real Bad Man Records
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Ever the prolific MC, Detroit’s Boldy James released nine albums this year, the standout among them Conversational Pieces, a new full length collaboration with the LA based producer Real Bad Man (their third record together). This one feels cut from a different cloth though, evident in Boldy's inspired verses and the cohesive structure. His street tales are as gritty as ever, painting pictures of late night crime and drug dealer realities, a guide to doing dirt with less than luxurious results, but its the way that his flow is given a range of tremendously dynamic beats that feels tailored to his delivery and demeanor, giving his lyrics the chance to dissect and deconstruct (see "Cutthroats"). Haunting and hypnotic at times (“Say Less”) and subtly jazzy at others (“Fear of God”), Real Bad Man brings a dexterity to the record’s sound. With a massive and ever growing catalog, Conversation Pieces stands among Boldy’s finest work. - DG
Mexican Summer Records
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Avant-pop missionary Cate Le Bon’s newest record Michelangelo Dying is a study in all-consuming heartbreak. Released on indie label Mexican Summer, the album was recorded between Hydra, Cardiff, London, and L.A., finishing up in the Joshua Tree desert where Le Bon grappled with the fresh wound of a recent breakup. “The breakup was like an amputation that you don’t really want, but you know will save you," says the Welsh singer on the grief that inspired her album’s rich spread of new wave reflections, unfiltered no-nonsense vocals and twinkling instrumentation. She describes the album as “photographing a wound but picking at it at the same time”. Michelangelo Dying is a strong collection of memory and hurt. It’s a reminder to dance despite the sorrow. Cate Le Bon has a gift of cutting through the crap, delivering a record that is at once pure and tender, yet brutally honest and descriptive of the humiliation and joy of falling in (and out) of love. - Jess Makler
Profound Lore Records
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Caustic Wound have returned with their second album, Grinding Mechanism of Torment, a pulverizing and apocalyptic record that hits with relentless carnage. Arguably the finest grindcore influenced death metal band still spewing out records, their latest feels something like being trampled by a stampede of robotic soldiers for the rest of eternity. The songs are short and... well, caustic, imploding with diabolical riffs over rhythms that both incinerate and groove, played at blinding speeds. The avalanche of spiraling riffs cut like battery acid through the ungodly jackhammering of the drums, and sure enough, Caustic Wound have created a reckless masterpiece of grinding terror. If you’re looking for ugly music to match these ugly times we’re all living through, there’s few better suited than Caustic Wound, their latest album is impossibly heavy, brutal, and steeped in terror. Brash and to the point, it’s built for a bleak future, dread for the end times… and it absolutely rips. - DG
Poetic Movement Inc / Broadband Sound
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Che Noir and 7xvethegenuis - much like Raekwon and Ghostface or Pusha and Malice - find that sweet spot when paired together. They're both top tier MCs on their own, but Desired Crowns brings out the best in the both of them, a well crafted record of their hardest bars and production that feels tailor-made for the lyrical barrage. Together they make raw underground hip-hop that deserves the flowers of the mainstream, but Che and 7xve continue to carve their own uncompromising path by any means necessary. They’re not waiting for the industry to recognize their talent, they’re showing and proving, the queens of the underground, spitting with an unflinching realness. They say it’s not the end results but the journey, a reality that has shaped both Che Noir and 7xvethegenius’ “something to prove” bars. Here's hoping this collaboration isn't a one off as the two are levitating over the competition. - DG
Deathgod Records
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We are very onboard for CHIME OBLIVION, the latest project from John Dywer's (Osees) ever expanding repertoire of bands. Joined by David Barbarossa (Fine Young Cannibals), Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), Tom Dolas (Osees), and the show stealing vocal performance from H.L. Nelly (FKA Smiley), the band groove through warped and caustic art punk, convulsing through twitchy kaleidoscopic skronk and jubilant rhythms. It's a contorted record that's marvelous and sonically splattered, bending without snapping, a skittering celebration of punk weirdness and reshaped brilliance. CHIME OBLIVION is firmly rooted in “weirdo” punk, perfectly off-kilter and incessantly itchy. The songs seem to both gel and splinter in all the right places, a collection of elastic punk tunes that lands somewhere between the joyous energy of The B-52s and the corrosion of The Slits. - DG
Feel It Records
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Citric Dummies’ new album, Split With Turnstile, is thankfully not a split with the Baltimore band, it's something much better, a great punk record from a band that refuses to take any of this seriously (and yet they absolutely rip). The Dummies’ signature sense of humor is on display once again, a modern piss take of the highest variety, bringing to mind words like “knuckleheads” or the preferred “chucklehead” if we’re splitting hairs. The Minneapolis based trio love to toe the line between brilliance and sheer stupidity, thematically wobbling between the two with a surge of chaotic abandon. Split With Turnstile is brash and hilarious, overloaded with both punchlines and riffs, propulsive energy and beer guzzling joyfulness. Citric Dummies play hardcore without taking themselves too seriously, a welcome respite from tough guy posturing. - DG
Roc Nation Distribution
Spotify | Apple
Legendary rap duo Clipse are back with Let God Sort Em Out, their first album in sixteen years, and a defining moment that proves the brothers haven’t lost their touch. To be clear, Pusha T and (especially) Malice return with the gusto, their rhymes are focused and woven tight with vivid bars and creative metaphors, the type of eagle eyed lyrical wit and cartoonish abstraction that made them legends in the first place. To hear the brothers back together is great, both MCs are at their best when bouncing verses off each other. The record’s production and hooks fail to achieve the same greatness from time to time, but it’s a fading complaint, as repeat listens wrap you in the intricate nature of the verses, all credit due to the Clipse who live up to impossible expectations as the mainstream’s perpetual bar raising duo. - DG
Static Shock / Helta Skelta Records
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Cold Meat hit like a sledgehammer to the face or defibrillator to a stopped heart, a glorious burst of animated punk and hardcore that bleeds with feedback and chaotic bliss. Cake and Arse Party is a triumphant return, the energy trembling right off the richter scale as they burn and peel through corrosive tongue-in-cheek rippers. Ash Gash's vocals command with an elastic presence, bouncing between harsh yelps and incredible sarcastic inflections, the subtle shifts piercing and undeniably charismatic. The band embrace the destruction of modern life with a smirk, taking the piss out of everyone from yuppies with private wealth to scumbags at the bar, the band shredding all the while. There is but one Cold Meat, proving once again that their artistic take on punk explodes like an atomic balm (yep, balm). - DG
Winspear
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New Orleans post-punk duo The Convenience returned to the fold with their second full length album, Like Cartoon Vampires. With wiry structures and stark vocals that pop from the mix, the band build a framework that allows them room to explore, magically unraveling from the center as the songs hold firmly in place. Sharp corners and liquid grooves abound as the band balance precision and chaotic outbursts with an exceptional grace. Direct one moment and disorienting the next, The Convenience bring a welcome intelligence and off-kilter approach to modern post-punk taking every opportunity to explore the outer ranges. There’s an effortless cool to Like Cartoon Vampires, a record that shifts with the freedom of art rock and the determination of a band who are creating for themselves (the way it should be). - DG
20 Buck Spin
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Born from the ashes of the great Cerebral Rot, that corpse wasn’t left to decay for long before Ian Schwab (guitar/vocals) and Clyle Lindstrom (guitar) formed Corpus Offal, releasing a demo of festering death metal last year on an unsuspecting public. Their full length debut is colossal and menacing, a violent dirge of gut wrenching brutality and splintering riffs that hit with the nuance of an impending apocalypse. The thudding rhythms feel akin to being chased by a maniac with a machete and the riffs ain’t too much safer. Tangled in demonic decomposition and sci-fi scented terror, Corpus Offal is a lesson in structural death metal whiplash, an album that doesn’t simply rehash the genre’s sound, but genuinely reshapes it with the bile induced grotesqueries of a doomed future and the caveman aggressions of a primal past. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
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Indie rock’s continuous evolution by way of reshuffling the tones and touchstones of its forbearers going back at least four decades is well underway, and the Chicago-via-Rochester band Cusp take up a well-worn mantle to pleasing effect. What I Want Doesn’t Want Me Back has a little bit of everything: heavy riffs in line with those found all over the Philly shoegaze scene ground “I Like My Odds”; square wave synths follow the melody through its peaks and valleys across “Lie Down,” even a little bit of that freak folk distillate tour-mates Bruiser and Bicycle are on a quest to fractionate, blended with cuttings you could find on a Haley Henderickx album on “Give Up Your Garden”. As the drums count in on “Oh Man,” a nervous voice says, “I don’t like this”. Disregard them, you’ll be bopping along in no time. - Alex Hanse
Full Time Hobby
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Less than a year after the release of LATE SLAP (one of our favorite releases of last year), Dana Gavanski returned with Again Again, a new EP that trades in (to a degree) the art-pop sheen for an elegant intimacy, the EP rekindling her love for the piano. Built on gorgeous folk songs that still play with the art-pop formula that informs Gavanski’s most astounding music, the songs on Again Again wobble around on a woozy bed of piano that slinks up and down with subdued rhythmic pulses. Her vocals maneuver between registers in time with the progressions, another stunning encapsulation of her songwriting abilities and the nuanced touches that bounce around in our heads for days on end. The EP is gentle and undeniably beautiful, but it’s those touches of melodic character and the unexpected compositional hooks that are most enamoring. - DG
Mtn Laurel Recording Co.
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The marvel of It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow is that, by questioning the meanings and possibilities of companionship, the album ends up offering that very gift of companionship. Singer-songwriter Geneviève Beaudoin’s inaugural question, and the title of the album’s opening song, is “How Can I?” — how can I be there for you? How can I respond to the love I feel for you? Beaudoin delivers each of the song’s lines haltingly, the pauses communicating as much as the words themselves. The album’s title suggests that love is caught within this contradiction, between summer and snow. It’s Summer… is an elemental album—gusting in full-throated guitar swells, loosening in pockets of desolate folk. It is a confrontation with helplessness and with burnout. - Rohan Press
Joyful Noise Recordings
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It would be fair that at some point in the process of releasing twenty albums that the magic might falter, but that ain't Deerhoof. Noble and Godlike in Ruin is a visionary escape, a semblance of spiritual rejuvenation as the world and society continues crumbling in non-stop tragedy. Deerhoof can't be shaken though, the band instead pull out all the stops of endless innovation, squirming between nuanced noise pop, knotted touches of free jazz, and a cataclysmic approach to rhythmic expanse that has yet to tire. Twenty records in and Deerhoof remain a gift to the forward-thinking world and Noble and Godlike in Ruin proves they still have so much to offer, a band that remains forever at their peak. Both complex and serene, the album feels fully realized, clamoring one moment and pulling back the next, teetering on the tightrope between unhinged exploration and comforting embrace. - DG
Reprise Records
Spotify | Apple
Private Music marks a very specific point in Deftones’ timeline. It arrived with the most hype the band have had surrounding a new album since the turn of the century’s White Pony. Against some very steep odds, you can hear kids in record shops talk excitedly about Deftones again. How they make the best love songs. How it sounds like a catchier, less progressive Deafheaven. How it’s the heaviest post-rock album this year. How they’re a great new discovery, and “where have they been all my life?” Obviously, to Deftones themselves, this is all standard fare. Unlike the rest of the holdovers from the past few decades, they aren’t cruising on inertia or nostalgia, or pushing forth for fear of being forgotten. They always knew this is what they were, what they made. They were always right here. Even to a casual listener or newcomer, moments like the hypnotic runout of “Souvenir,” the coiled ear-worming chorus of “Milk of Madonna” or the jittery heartrending quiet-loud progression of closer “Departing the Body” give everything there ever was to love about Deftones – a group of weathered Cali metal-heads, straining from skin to make something truly beautiful to score the end of the world. Truth is, they’ve made better albums than Private Music, but they have never made it all sound so effortless. - Khagan Aslanov
Dark Descent / Me Saco Un Ojo Records
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Seattle’s death-metal dealers Degraved took a helluva long windup before finally pitching their first full-length, concentrating for five years after their formation to ensure their opening salvo landed smack-dab in the middle of the strike zone. Spectral Realm of Ruin did just that, blowing back the listener with enough fury and force to knock them down for the count and the wind out of them. Spectral Realm of Ruin doesn’t exude swagger per se, but its focused pummeling and demonstrative self-assuredness that Degraved don’t need to resort to tech trappings or gimmicks of any sort make the case for why the band spent so much time in the bullpen before taking to the mound and hurling this nasty slider of a maiden release. - Kurt Orzeck
Heavenly Recordings
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Melbourne’s Delivery released their second full length album, Force Majeure, a feverishly great post-punk record that sharpens the hooks and their muscular guitar layered immediacy. Radiantly catchy yet dense and contorted, the record plays to the band’s eclectic line-up, pulling from the best each member has to offer with a three guitar onslaught of blistering energy. “Deadlines” is among the highlights, a tornado of charming post-punk with gluey vocals and an elastic sense of strength, but each of the record’s ultra vibrant songs feel built for endless repeat, the focus on inescapable choruses and boisterous gang vocal splendor. It all hits like a pop-centric tornado of fuzzy punk, the writing clever and acerbic, ringing with distortion, bursting with joyous riffs and an inherent (in unspoken) sense of community. - DG
Tan Cressida / Warner Records
Spotify | Apple
It’s hard to be passive about Earl Sweatshirt at this point in his career. Six albums in, you’ve more than likely grown up alongside him, watching him become an elder statesman for a younger generation of obtuse, heady rap phenoms. Live Laugh Love is less of a culmination of his efforts and more of a timely reminder that he’s still very much on his hero’s journey: he’s haunted by the ever-present ghosts of his past, he’s in love with the warm embrace of fatherhood, and he remains obsessed with the minute quirks that make him one of rap’s most compelling writers at work. Album closer “exhaust” sees him solemnly reflecting on giving his late father’s last name and likeness to his son, but a few lines later he’s “at Marathon, standing on the couches, singing loud.” The album’s title might play out like an overused joke – but under the weight of Earl’s pen, it ends up feeling like a grand reclamation over the demons that drove the narratives of his formative work. - Ivy Skarda
Joyful Noise Recordings
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A heavy album with a light touch, an exercise in the stylistic configurations “experimental” guitar music can embody by being a post-hardcore album at times, a proggy riff-churner evoking Sabbath and King Crimson at others, even borrowing elements of 90’s Chicago math rock ala 90 Day Men and a touch of ska punk on ‘What’s Wrong’. The NYC by way of Western Mass trio is helmed by generational guitar talent Wendy Eisenberg, Steve Cameron’s nimble bass chugging, and propulsive drumming from Josh Daniel, tearing through Eisenberg’s all-too relatable vision of the world, where their brain feels bent, they stop looking for lovers to look out for lovers, asking rhetorically what inspires them to say “no,” where something sweet like a melody threatens to consume them totally. In what feels like a long-forsaken trope of punk being political, “The Jackhammer” deals directly with the plight of the Palestinian people at the hands of a genocidal Israeli state on “some classic ubermensch shit” intent on wiping out “a world of mostly children”. The Big E is the record of our times. - Alex Hanse
Mechanized Apparatus Revolt
Bandcamp | Apple
Seven years ago Erosion released their incredible and impenetrable second album, Maximum Suffering, the final release from Hydra Head Records and one of our absolute favorites of 2018. They’ve been relatively quiet ever since (though Nick Yacyshyn has been busy with SUMAC), but this year brought us not one, but two new releases from the band in the form of a full length split with Altered Dead and a new full length, Invasive Species. The album proves that Erosion remain one of hardcore’s most violent, crusty, and ruthless bands. There’s a sense of palatable sensory overload as they grind and spit their way into d-beat fury amid a genuine avalanche of blistering riffs. It’s music to fry your circuits, blow out your speakers, to tear a hole in the fabric of society. No one does it quite like Erosion, their aural assault an absolute trampling of righteous indignation, never relenting as it rots away from the outside. - DG
Lex Records
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Coloring outside the lines on (The) Forever Dream, Richmond's Fly Anakin is ascending. While he's always been a nimble MC, his latest proves that his smoked out raps are able to shift time and space. Executive produced by Quelle Chris who leads Anakin into unknown territory with glorious results, it would seem the two share a kindred spirit as unique lyricists with a penchant for albums both thematic and adventurous. Over soulful production from The Alchemist, Chris Keys, August Fanon, Shungu, and Child Actor among others, Fly Anakin spits bars that leap between animated precision and hazy abstraction on a record built with vivid attention to detail. Perpetually stoned and chemically altered yet undeniably focused, there’s a world built into (The) Forever Dream, a place that glistens in spite of life’s rougher qualities. - DG
Sub Pop Records
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Frankie Cosmos’ sixth (and first entirely self-produced) album Different Talking offers a fresh take on memory, disappointment, and the trials and tribulations of growing up. The band’s latest is chock-full of Motorola Razr-worthy ringtone classics; nostalgia is a throughline as lead singer Greta Kline takes the listener through pages of her journal, noodles with her guitar and leaves the listener with fragments of memory to piece back together. Different Talking was tracked to tape in a house in upstate New York that the band lived in for a month and a half, and their strength as a unit is evident. The record is so sharp it’s almost formulaic, but that’s not a problem when the formula is successful—we’ve come to expect and possibly take for granted the layered production and ease at which the group picks up after 2022’s impressive Inner World Peace. Different Talking’s tracks fit nicely into the ether of anti-folk indie pop with an ode to 70’s chamber pop—think the Shangri-La’s or going for a ride in a VW bus. - Jess Makler
ESGN / ALC Records
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Five years after the original, the collaborative magic between Freddie Gibbs and The Alchemist remains mystifying on Alfredo 2. Gibbs is a fixture of mainstream hip-hop and yet the ever nimble MC is a diversive character, Gibbs has nothing to prove at this point in his career and yet he’s continuously cementing his ability to run wild over anything the food villain is cooking up. Alfredo 2 moves between locked-in bars and detached elastic beats with grace and grit. Gibbs might be the perfect partner for ALC's more adventurous production, a rapper able to capture the soul of the streets with a delivery more malleable than most, running in double time when the tempo demands it and moving with a casual slow burn when just kicking it. - DG
Backwoodz Studioz
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Preservation’s production is crafted like pristine architecture, his beats immaculately chiseled from stone with painstaking attention to detail. Aethiopes, his 2022 collaboration with billy woods, is a masterpiece, a record that matches boundary pushing sonics with equally profound lyricism. A Gabe ‘Nandez guest verse from that album lead to Preservation and ‘Nandez’s full length collaboration, Sortilège, a shapeshifting hip-hop juggernaut that manages to play it low key. This record is a mirage of worldly samples, supreme musicality, and ‘Nandez’s effervescent delivery, his flow gliding like liquid, as his lyrics are packed into complex bars with a steely coolness. This one is a true artistic rap gem (with traces of MF DOOM and GZA in its DNA), a modern record that lurks in the shadows but gleams like a bag of dirty diamonds. - DG
More often than not we don’t put much stock in an album’s title, but Supreme Clientele 2 is the “sequel” to what many (myself included) consider to be one of the greatest albums of all time (hip-hop or any genre), so the name carries some weight and a degree of expectations. So what (if anything) makes this record, 25 years later, the spiritual successor to Ghostface Killah’s immaculate second album? Hard to say (it’s definitely not the production), but there are more than a few show-stopping moments throughout that reignite the spark on what is easily the best Ghostface album in nearly two decades. Tracks like “Metaphysics” (apparently a lost gem from 2003), the stream-of-conscious narrative of “4th Disciple” and “Windows,” and the one two punch of old school glory on “Break Beats” and “Beat Box,” capture Ghost well in his pocket, a revitalization of his anything goes exuberance. For a sequel, the record doesn’t really have an overtly nostalgic feel, but the overall quality of the album brings us back to vintage GFK as he twists his darts with the artistic irreverence that made him one of the all time greats. - DG
Carpark Records
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Indianapolis indie rockers Good Flying Birds deliver yet again with the release—or rather re-release—of their collected debut Taluhah’s Tape, which showcases some of the year’s finest DIY apple-crunching twee that will surely worm its way into the ears of many listeners. First formed as a trio in 2023 under the moniker “Talulah God,” Good Flying Birds released Taluhah’s Tape early in the new year through DIY label Rotten Apple. After seemingly falling from the sky, the album quickly gained traction among listeners with a penchant for jangle pop excellence, selling three-hundred tapes in under a month. Now the band has refined this release to match the enthusiasm of eager listeners that have been quick to discover this group's talent for remarkable songwriting. The robust tracklist of Taluhah’s Tape features home recordings from as early as 2020 full of tender guitar pop, lo-fi explosions, and heavily employed tambourines paired with the fuzz of Peavey amplifiers. - Cam Harper
Sophomore Lounge
Bandcamp | Apple
Mad Dogs is the stunning full length debut from the Louisville, KY based singer/songwriter Grace Rogers, an album of wistful country, folk, and Americana, honoring the genre's traditional roots while expanding upon them with an electric radiance. Dynamic and heartfelt, the songs are living and breathing glimpses into a variety of characters, each flush with their own unique color. From the elongated grooves of "Downstream" to gentle intimacy and vivid story-telling of "Peachie," Rogers has crafted a gorgeous debut that deserves all the attention, a set of impossibly great songs that have been on repeat all year long. Listening to the record in full (as one should) proves that Rogers is an incredibly dynamic songwriter, each song adding to the whole. From the captivating tangle of the up-beat “Tranquility” to the brisk and pulsating title-track, Rogers moves from one highlight to the next. Then there’s “Smoke ‘Em,” a monstrously catchy and twangy country pop gem that feels ripped from the John Prine songbook in its timeless quality and it’s campfire sing-a-long hook. - DG
Transgressive Records
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I recognize Greg Freeman by the state of his heart. It’s something like the “burned over district” he describes on the title track - gaping, razed, uniquely eloquent. His writerly voice astounds; these are some of the most biting, tenacious, and trembling words ever set to indie rock. Freeman’s might well be a “Vesuvian world” as he claims, but there is poise to its ache, patterns to its ash and charcoal. The burning comes from within; it is another, much less domestic, name for intimacy, encountered most viscerally on the title track, the album’s narrative center point, a song forever haunting. “Burnover” is a fictionalized retelling of a Chicago firemen’s strike - following a crew of firemen who sit drinking in a bar as they watch, with stoic resignation, a neighborhood go up in flames. “From what I’ve tasted of bitterness / 3 dollars is rarely better spent,” Freeman pines, taking up their voice, framed by the rising and falling lament of the song’s unshakeable piano motif. I guess the crew won their union deal: but fire, like love, always feels like a losing game. - Rohan Press
Three One G
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Uncoiling and recoiling around an ever-shifting rhythmic core, listening to Guck feels like attending a show where you’re the sole audience member. The band's exquisite chemistry is matched only by their sonic density. Through synths, drums, bass, guitars, and vocals, the band seems to chart the entire history of noise rock. From the junkyard space punk of Pere Ubu, MX80 Sound, and Chrome to the squealing intensity of sasscore, and crushing grooves of post-hardcore. Yet tracing the forebearers only hints at glints of what Guck are doing. Glimpses of recognisable sights are swallowed into the ever-engulfing mass of the band’s whirring hurricane. Their synth-heavy post-whatever brilliance is so intense and unique that you often feel like you and you alone have stumbled upon it. But it’s also so chaotic, frenetic, and relentless that even as you wonder if the doors locked, if there’s no way out, you know that you will never be able to get past them. Guck feels like a one-man show in a garage with a broken door, a garage being sucked up into the eye of a hurricane. - Devin Birse
Congrats Records / Bella Union
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Earthstar Mountain is the product of its environment, Hannah Cohen’s ode to the Catskill mountains and the presence of the natural world that comes with it. There’s an ease inherent in the songs but more importantly there’s a glow, a radiant shimmer that weaves romantically between elements of psych folk, art pop, indie soul, and galactic funk. The resulting record takes many shapes, keep us guessing as it saunters between one organic groove to the next with a dimly lit sense of wonder and bliss. There’s so much vibrancy to Earthstar Mountain, a maze of impeccable composition that recalls the eclectic subtleties of an Aldous Harding record. Cohen keeps a gentle edge, swirling in and out of cosmic Americana and sultry bass lines, highlighted on songs like “Draggin’” with its space-age disco folk magic and the Laurel Canyon balladry of “Mountain”. Like the soft light of the sun rising over the cascading hills, Hannah Cohen’s new album is created in splendor, a magnificent record built on grace and majesty. - DG
Fire Talk
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While the elements that defined 2024’s acclaimed Keeper of the Shepard remain, Nested in Tangles is no simple continuation of the deft, finger-style guitar that underpins Hannah Frances’ keen lyricism dealing with the never-ending questions surrounding complex familial relationships and the depths of grief. The titular opening track sets the stage for a pastoral epic, combining soaring vocalized harmonies, conversational interplay between saxophone and trombone, ringing bells and that same familiar guitar before Frances, voice garbled behind a vocoder, delivers a poetic thesis statement that underpins the rest of the album, a declaration in recognition of the contradictions of the self, as the sum of all experiences and yet wholly unique. Frances’ confident songwriting and seemingly effortless arrangements draw immediate parallels with the giants of the late aughts indie folk scene, certainly aided by the contributions from Daniel Rossen on cello, clarinet, percussion, and even tender vocal harmonies on “The Space Between”. I find myself humming the chorus of “Life’s Work” like a mantra, and it is nearly impossible to resist falling for the spell the tempo changes on “Falling From and Further” create, where a bit of staccato percussion conjures the bluegrass magic of a high energy all-night hoedown before retreating behind the next refrain. - Alex Hanse
Southern Lord
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Bolt Thrower are name-checked so frequently by the new wave whatchamacallit of young old-school death-metal aspirants that you’d swear the pioneering British squad were still around. That said, Hedonist carry the now 10-years-defunct band’s torch more confidently than most of their peers with their Scapulimancy debut, terrorizing the innocent with a sound resembling a construction crew of demons using pile drivers to burrow deep, and then deeper, and then even deeper, into the earth. Neither fountains of oil nor those creatures from The Descent can stop this crew from drilling so deep into the ground that anyone who isn’t mindful of the bottomless pits they’ve dug will stumble into, and ultimately be consumed by, a gaping maw resulting in their eternal descent. In other words, don’t you dare look down. - Kurt Orzeck
Bonsound
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Hélène Barbier has an incredible knack for contorting the lines between complex and simple. With a visionary approach to art-pop, her arrangements often take the path less explored, warping her minimalist pop designs to bring new ideas to familiar territory. The effect is instantly refreshing as melodies pop and stick in vivid colors while progressions peel away with subtle nuance. Four years after the release of Barbier’s great second album, Regulus, the Montreal based musician returns with new album Panorama, a record bursting with cosmic beauty and tangled clarity. Throughout the record, Barbier and her collaborators (which include members of Retail Simps, Corridor, Ada Léa and Meg Duffy of Hand Habits among others) deftly move been hypnotic repetition, off-kilter rhythms, reshaped lounge jazz, distorted space-age funk, and woozy melodies that pull it all together in the most astounding of ways. - DG
Matador Records
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When Horsegirl released their debut album they occupied a niche space in indie rock pioneered by bands like Sonic Youth—and yes, they’ve heard that comparison before. Over distorted riffs and half-bored melodies, Horsegirl put their own spin on the nineties rock revival, their DIY feel a result of their days as a garage band in Chicago. Though the band recently relocated to New York, they returned to Chicago to record their newest record with producer/musician Cate Le Bon. Phonetics On and On is a departure from the Horsegirl of 2022—the band has reduced its scale, forming a sound that’s intentionally stripped down. Experimenting with a “less is more” mindset, there’s so much they can accomplish with so much less. The band plays around with a purposeful emptiness, reminiscent of their favorite minimalist groups like Young Marble Giants, and with the kind of whimsical quality of a Belle and Sebastian or Camera Obscura. But Horsegirl’s musical references are more homage than conscious emulation—with this record, they create something entirely new, shedding their endless comparisons and solidifying a name for themselves. - Caroline Nieto
Static Shock / Neon Taste Records
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Imploders sound as agitated and as unhinged as these times demand on their second album, Targeted For Termination. The Toronto based hardcore band play with a raw and splattered intensity, and this time around it would seem the tempos have gotten faster and the disdain all the more palpable. From the detached stampede that opens “Brute Force” to the dizzying thud that permeates “Life of Crime,” Imploders are triumphantly unglued, irritated, and left to fester. For all its well placed aggression, you get the sense that Imploders are having fun, rippling out of dank beer-soaked basements to tear a hole in society’s polite fabric via caustic riffs head-cracking drums, and vocals that split the difference between harsh and humorous. - DG
Sad Cactus Records / Beeside Cassettes
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Jinzo are not your average art-punk trio. The Queens based band dart around the padded walls of post-punk and math rock with an effervescence, their music both twitchy and tangled, impossibly tight but also charmingly irreverent (the album opens with the ecstatic repetition of “Shark Tank is on TV”) . Songs like “Great Zest” are able to buzz and hum with a cavalcade of ideas in less than a minute, a compact but explosive jazzy odyssey unlike anything you’re likely to hear this year. While the more frantic moments are destined to dazzle, Jinzo really shine when they pull back ever so slightly, twisting structures at more languid tempos. Contorted and complex but also wildly melodic, listening to Here's The Meat is a scourge of untethered musical joy, a record bent into deranged knots of alien pop. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
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Jobber to the Stars is the debut full length from the quartet known as Jobber, hailing from New York, a band who are anything but lightweights when it comes to muscular power-pop nuggets. Jobber is fronted by Kate Meizner (guitar/vocals), who has a cool, laidback, chirpy vocal style and slashing guitar technique that is both cunning and powerful. The band aren’t novices when it comes to their resumes, as each member has a long list of credits with a handful of underground notables. This works in their favor as they have learned to utilize many tricks to keep their brand of noise-making sneakily complex and fluid. To the Stars mixes early grunge and some heavy rock with quirky keyboard-focused melodies that will have you recalling The Rentals and Fountains of Wayne, or early New Pornographers bursts of sweetness to lead you into a trap before a massive musical RKO. - Kris Handel
Sonamos
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Juana Molina's DOGA, a record six years in the making, is astounding, a masterpiece of contrary ideas - beauty and dissonance, haunting landscapes and lively rhythms, minimalistic but bursting with texture - all coming together to create something otherworldly yet familiar. It's an utterly mesmerizing album from an artist that mastered her craft long ago but continues to push experimental pop forward with complete sonic immersion and devout attention to detail. Built on textured loops and plodding electronics, Molina’s vision is warped and stunning, an ever progressing landscape of throbbing pop mutation and hypnotic songwriting. Each track bounces with its own itchy sense of grooves, flickering in liminal spaces with a futuristic boogie and a defiant ease, but this isn’t experimental for the sake of being experimental, DOGA is a collection of exceptional songs at its core. Cheap hype and expensive press cycles be damned, Juana Molina is working on her own terms and she’s made one of the year's best albums in the process. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
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Lawn is back with their third LP, the first since their Bigger Sprout EP in 2022 and their best thought-out self-expression since 2020's Johnny. Throughout God Made the Highway, the band eclectically flip-flops between nostalgic jangle-pop and mordant post-punk inspired indie rock, the juxtaposition of which is set up nicely on the first two tracks, “Water” (a slow rising tide that would fit an alt-country aesthetic) and “Lonely River Blues” (a driving rhythmic new wave groove with noise pop experimentation). The overall effect starts to blend as songwriters Mac Folger and Rui De Magalhaes twist through their own lanes, offering a dynamic shifting of gears for the discerning ear. The centerpiece of the album is a wandering “History Lesson” that summons up as much of The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” as it taps Minutemen’s lyric approach & Parquet Courts’ delivery. There’s a bevy of personal truth and rumination revealed behind a veil of zero-fucks-given attitude. With jangle pop delights like “Davie” and “Shade in the Pasture” and bangers like “Pressure” and “Sports Gun”, the dynamic duo of Lawn let each song have its own sound, which feels organic to their identity, jarring the listener to pay attention and equally sit back and enjoy the ride. - B. Snapp
Duophonic Super 45s
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Charlotte Marionneau may be your favorite musician’s favorite musician, whether or not you know it. She has made three full length records, each in decade intervals, starting in 2005. Each in turn has been a righteous artistic expression, unapologetic, apportioning equal time between deep dives into the pain and darkness of the psyche and dipping the big toe into the shallows of heart on the sleeve romance. All that is to say, each of Marionneau’s records as Le Volume Courbe elicits those ranges of emotions. No two songs are alike, but the thematic elements—in their array and range of musical modes—feels consistent, apposite. On Planet Ping Pong, Marionneau exhibits similar tricks but at the most effective they’ve ever been. With highs in deceptive minimalism and genre experiments, the production quality of is superb, all done by Marionneau, herself. It certainly feels like another decade’s worth of work, of meditating on musical themes and lyrical ideas. The sound quality is direct and forceful, even in the most guileless moments. It’s the project’s pinnacle thus far. - Zak Mercado
Matador Records
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Lifeguard are the sort of indie band you can believe in. There is no generic here, no forgettable listening, aesthetic ambiguity, or overwrought attempts at false complexity. The band carries the sort of perfected aesthetic unity and precision that it takes most three albums to figure out. On their debut they’ve nailed it out of the gate; the image and the sound of a new whirring Chicago youth beat, and none of it feels forced. Ripped and Torn never appears as an album made through rigorous contortion, or some grand statement on indie rock here and now. Rather, it’s the clear product of three music-obsessive young adults. Ripped and Torn is the result of those kids you knew back in high school, the ones who had everything together musically getting noticed by the right people. It's more than that actually, because Lifeguard has something those kids probably didn’t: vision, focus, and clarity. - Devin Birse
Lame-O Records
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A near-constant touring schedule and devastating losses shaped Lily Seabird’s breakthrough album, Alas,. Now firmly anchored by a strong community of local Burlington musicians and a tight circle of friends, her third album, Trash Mountain is a testament to her growth and self-assurance. Her sentimental folk sensibilities take on new forms. Sparse, jangly vocals replace wailing instrumental breaks. “Trash Mountain” is what Seabird calls her house, which sits atop a decommissioned landfill. The pink complex hosts shows and her friends have passed it down for nearly the last decade. Here, Seabird has found stability and belonging, allowing herself to evolve without sacrificing her integrity. Across nine intimate tracks, she reflects on personal and professional transitions while remaining resilient and optimistic. - Giliann Karon
Strange Mono
Bandcamp
Where have all the power chords gone? It’s a question that can – or could – legitimately be asked when the now-petering-out psych-rock revival absconded with, and claimed custody of, distorted guitars in the style of a disgruntled deadbeat dad on the lam. If saying that sentence aloud leaves you out of breath, you’re already feeling the sensation exuded on Liquid Cross’ 10-minute whiplash, Don’t Think. The titular instruction is worthy of a smirk, as the three-piece punk band – just formed this year – doesn’t even provide the listener with such an opportunity over the course of these five fiery yet fleeting tracks. Don’t Blink woulda been a more apt title, but nary another adjustment should be made to this lightning in a bottle EP. - Kurt Orzeck
Self Released
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There’s something magical about coming across a new band who only has one release to their name and, more specifically, that release feels like an anachronism in the world of an already past-obsessed artform such as indie rock. The term, which has been referred to as a genre but has in actuality become more of an economic misnomer, traffics so often in manufactured nostalgia and aesthetic mimicry by musical artists of all social strata that it has essentially become meaningless. In the case of Low Healer (the nom de rock for Nicola Leel, formerly of London-based trio Doe), it’s neither reductive nor empty. Instead, the six tracks that comprise hold music are uniformly immaculate grunge-pop that far surpass the typically replicative tendencies of their peers on all levels. It’s familiar and refreshing—true indie rock, through and through. - Chris Polley
RVNG Intl.
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Following a productive 2022 that saw Lucrecia Dalt release both a new record and the official score to HBO’s horror/comedy series The Baby, the Columbian born and Berlin based musician comes out dazzling on new album A Danger To Ourselves, an album built on a mix of haunting electronics and natural layers, feeling both intricately composed but also on the verge of collapse. At the center resides Dalt’s magnetic voice and the warbling sense of backlit glow. There’s an art pop quality to it but trying to pin any particular genre onto the record seems unfair, it’s music best experienced with an open mind and a love for the majestic unknown. A Danger To Ourselves is forward thinking, experimental, and elegant, creating a world unto itself, a surrealist blend of avant-garde pop, electronic jazz, and dreamy detachment that sounds ambitious, cohesive, and daring. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
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Magic Fig sprouted from San Francisco last year with a self-titled record so kaleidoscopic, it was hard to fathom how the quintet could channel ‘60s flower-power psychedelic music more completely. Well, with their follow-up record, Valerian Tea, they didn’t try to do so. Incorporating mellotron, glockenspiel and more percussion this time around, this is indeed another trippy affair, albeit one mitigated by Magic Fig leaning and scratching deeper into the surfaces of soft rock and prog that they mostly traipsed over the last time around. The results are irrefutably agreeable; here, the band has woven impossibly pleasant music that would only be off-putting were it condescending – and it ain’t. Rather, Valerian Tea is warm, soft fun, so much so that such a description is far more objective than subjective. Have at it, devil’s advocates; within thirty seconds, Magic Fig will lull you into their splendor. - Kurt Orzeck
Topshelf Records
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After releasing her 2016 debut album, Kiid, Mal Devisa identified herself as an artist to watch. She needed no introduction—Kiid is steeped in the self-assuredness of a writer far beyond her years. Her songs house the tenacious beats of 90s hip-hop; languid, blues-like melodies, and the indelible touch of Deja Carr herself. Mal Devisa’s latest acts as an archive of her musical life since its birth. Palimpsesa is a collection of songs written between 2015 and 2025 that chronicles Carr at all ages and stages of expression. The album came to be after Topshelf’s Kevin Duquette suggested she dig into her vault and properly record her demos. Creating a compilation with such a fresh career is a rare opportunity, so even after her initial intimidation at the project’s scope, Carr took it in stride. The main task of creating Palimpsesa was the recording process. Deja Carr and recording have always had a symbiotic relationship—while she brings some songs to the studio fully formed, she often depends on the studio environment to fill in the gaps in her writing. The coagulation of thoughts between herself and her producers tends to nurture a song to its full potential, where each track is flavored with their blend of influences. - Caroline Nieto
Topshelf Records
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Progress isn’t linear. It leaps and stumbles, erodes and stalls, creating a gap between the actual and the aspirational. It’s within this gap that art can be impactful. Devin McKnight, the artist who performs as Maneka, is no stranger to liminal spaces. The singer and songwriter, who is black, cut his teeth playing guitar in indie rock bands, a traditionally white space. On 2022’s critically-lauded Dark Matters, McKnight excavated his experience while asking larger questions about race in America. The goal, McKnight said was to help create a “space for black people in rock music.” Maneka’s new album bathes and listens finds McKnight turning inward, riding the tension between the personal and the universal. The results are affecting. From album opener “shallowing,” Maneka has never sounded better, nor has the music been as immediate. Engineered by Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Snail Mail), bathes and listens soars with layered guitars and McKnight’s searching vocals. - Benji Heywood
City Slang
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With every project that McKinley Dixon puts out, his wisdom always follow through. As his experiences and emotions shape who he is as a musician and as a person, he becomes a profound individual, influenced by the environment and people around him. Such connections matter to him most of all, as he has always emphasized their loving spirits since his debut album, carrying the grief that is left behind when friends and family pass on. It’s a thematic undercurrent that Dixon has penned through his discography thus far. Magic, Alive! is a refreshing shift in the way McKinley Dixon expresses himself and his emotions, involving the wonderful magic of stories and the poignant lessons that slip within them. Such familiarity in his sound and writing has gotten more captivating where vibrant spells are cast onto every melody, feature, and instrumentation. The act of storytelling is the best kind of magic that exists out there. Not only does it confront harsh realities, it also keeps memories alive, and turns them into lessons that enrich our very existence. - Louis Pelingen
Ipecac Records
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The World Is Still Here and So Are We delivers on the strengths of mclusky’s core identity — noisy guitars, raucous bass, time signatures that expand and contract with little warning, a damn good time — while pairing it with their sharpest songwriting and a renewed chemistry. Thematically, the record tackles similar subject matter to the band’s previous records – hypocrisy and human foibles amidst a hostile and frankly stupid world – split between distant observations and performances of those observations that shatter all illusions of cool remove. This is from “Unpopular Parts of a Pig,” the first song on their double A-side single and the record’s opener. It’s a ripper with severe Pixies-esque and quiet-loud shifts, an unaccompanied voice giving way to the crash of the instruments and serrated screaming. It would be disorienting if the songs didn’t make such a virtue of simplicity; the parts are few but they collide into differing configurations with mounting effect. The simplicity and minimalism used through their catalog is bolstered by increased musicianship across the board. They haven’t come back as a prog band but there are a number of slower, heavier songs that do a lot to flex the more varied approach to rhythm while cutting down on some of the more obvious ways of maintaining energy. The World Is Still Here and So Are We is a monument to constant process, outdoing others because you’re trying to out do yourself, but also a document of a fully locked in mclusky – no second guessing, eager to jump the gun, and too good to miss. - Emmanuel Castillo
Domino Recording Co.
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Unclouded presents Melody’s Echo Chamber in luminescent clarity, sweeping yet deeply in the pocket. The fourth album from Melody Prochet’s amorphous psych pop project is built on uptown soul rhythms (shout out to the incredible Malcolm Catto of The Heliocentrics on the drums) and fine-tuned layering, constructed with great detail, everything in its place. At its core, the album blossoms with hints of jazz and soft out of focus warmth that lifts Prochet’s dreamy demeanor to nuanced heights. The fuzz has been pulled back to reveal a glistening sonic purity where the rhythms hit harder and the strings transport us further out into the abstract. Moving beyond the immediate nature of hooks and pop structures, Prochet and her band feel comfortable in expanse, letting the songs take circuitous routes with clear vision and an adventurous sense of freedom. - DG
Radish Head Records
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Over the past ten years Milked has become the artistic catch-all for Kelly Johnson’s (Geronimo!, Liquid Cross) music, a source of creative freedom. Over the course of three albums and the project’s debut EP, the band have explored surging power-pop, fuzzy punk, lo-fi bedroom pop, radiant post-punk, and even a touch of hardcore with spectacular results. Johnson’s songwriting is the glue holding it all together, built on muscular hooks, punchy melodies, and towering guitar leads with production that’s both crystal clear but never over-polished. It’s been seven long years since Milked released their last album, the highly underrated Crawling Passed, but Johnson and his frequent collaborators are back with a new album, Forgotten Pleasures. The record is a welcome resurgence, a big blistering record of FM gold alternative rock that’s more than happy to wander down rabbit holes with warped vision and kaleidoscopic dexterity. Forgotten Pleasures keeps you guessing from song to song, presenting a dynamic record that compliments the whole, a smattering of ideas that pours from a singular source. - DG
Mass Appeal Records
Spotify | Apple
How you feel about a Mobb Deep album in 2025 (seven years after Prodigy passed away) probably depends on your personal expectations. Crafted by Havoc and The Alchemist, Infinite is the duo's first posthumous album, pairing together unreleased verses from Prodigy with new verses from Havoc, and while it's not a return to The Infamous, it's still a great reminder that the Queens based legends embody the essence of NYC hip-hop's grit and glory, a blunt album of street anthems and tough bars. While the record opens with the boast “stronger than ever” (which might be a stretch all things considered), Infinite is definitely a welcome addition to the Mobb Deep catalog, a tough as nails set that highlights the chemistry inherent in Havoc and Prodigy’s verses over Havoc and ALC’s unwavering boom-bap-centric beats. - DG
Fire Records
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The Los Angeles-based Monde UFO follow-up to their justifiably revered 7171 album, once again appearing out of the blue with another captivating assemblage of psychedelic avant-garde jazz compositions and exercises on Flamingo Tower. In 1977, the Voyager space probe was sent into outer space with a golden record compilation of speeches, sounds, songs, and other culturally significant recordings. The music of Monde UFO could easily be the mystic interstellar answer to that record from another galaxy or dimension. With plenty of guitar squawks and sax squeaks, haunting organ tones, lackadaisically uttered whispered-sung vocals, hoards of eerie and industrial sounding noises and effects, and consummate jazz drumming tying all the variety of sounds and songs together, Flamingo Tower is a fantastic collection of otherworldly music. Listening to the album feels like being in on a wonderful secret, like picking up the frequency of a late-night radio program hosted from an unknown location, beaming down obscure free jazz and the deepest of garage psych deep cuts, interspersed with conspiracy theory conversations. - John Brouk
Orindal Records
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Four years after their debut, the great Moontype have returned. I Let The Wind Push Down On Me is indie rock at its most astounding, led by Margaret McCarthy’s immaculate songwriting - a mix of glistening beauty and compositional grit. This is no solo project though, and it’s the incredibly locked in nature of the quartet (Andrew Clinkman, Joe Suihkonen, Emerson Hunton) that pulls their music out of this stratosphere and into the next. Moontype have always been adept at lulling you in only to subtly let the ground give way, and they do just that throughout a record of sweetly nuanced art folk songs. This is an indie rock record with art pop dexterity and more than anything else, a true sense of vision. The quartet give themselves a chance to sprawl out, embrace open structures, and dig into their fuzzier inclinations with warbling bliss. McCarthy’s voice is mesmerizing throughout, reflecting and refracting, her words dreamy but her delivery is always captivating. - DG
Dot Dash Sounds / Red Wig Records / OCCII
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Leeds based trio Nape Neck play with the kind of tension that makes your head feel as though it might explode. One of the tighter and more caustic post-punk bands of this decade, they work in knots that opt to tangle further rather than come undone. It’s really something to behold, a band that has evolved punk into a sponge of brainy rhythmic experimentation. Earlier this year the band released a self-titled collection, pairing together both their first LP and EP, and thankfully, they returned for more with new album The Shallowest End in September. There’s a magical chaos to the trio’s music, as evident throughout the album, moving with locked in grooves and tidal waves of crashing no wave guitars. It really doesn’t take long for the songs to spiral out of control, but the thing is, they just keep spiraling deeper. For all the ramshackle art punk abandon, the band are very much in impeccable control, hyper focused as they convulse and reshape the deranged pulse of their songs. It’s a work of art that’s as confounding as it is engaging, a truly delightful carnage that twitches in the face of stagnation. - DG
Transgressive
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The New Eve Is Rising forges a unique chorale punk/pop sound stemming from mystic folk and avant-garde art rock. Defined by their self-proclaimed "Big Hag Energy," The New Eves rally around sounds of ritualistic improv and poem chanting, summoning mythological imagery that spans biblical archetypes and feminist history. Their musical core is based on chanting, bowed violin and cello (Violet Farrer and Nina Winder-Lind), backed by tribal-style drumming and bass (Ella Oona Russell and Kate Mager), resulting in a soundscape of alchemic eruption that resists categorization. While the tracks delve into themes of catharsis and upheaval, the band softens the drama with anachronistic playfulness and a theatrical wink. From the opening manifesto “The New Eve” to the declaration within the bubbling “Volcano,” the album is a singular experience, tempting the listener to embrace the double toil and trouble and shake along with this fiercely delivered debut album. - B. Snapp
Julia’s War Recordings
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Oh, Nyxy Nyx, how we love you so. We let the music do the talking on the band's Cult Classics Vol. I – you know, the way music criticism is actually supposed to work. It was only a few decades ago that bands, demonstrably embracing postmodernism, began entertaining the idea of leaving in — instead of erasing — the “mistakes” that inevitably occur during every rehearsal, recording session or concert performance by every band. We’ve now arrived at a point where the missteps in performances of songs actually define the personality and even meaning of the compositions. Nyxy Nyx deserve to be named among the ambassadors of this parade — and the metaphor is doubly apt because Cult Classics Vol. I can be a fun listen, like on the spirited “Backwards Flying Bird,” when it doesn’t go too far down the rabbit hole with “Vacuum” (which actually reminds us of the word’s reference) and the semi-amusing “Advertisement 1.” More essential than all the other tracks combined is the album closer “Endless Hex,” 15-plus minutes’ worth of soundscapes that one can’t help but wonder if it’s Nyxy Nyx's response to Sonic Youth’s “Diamond Sea.” Whatever the case, here’s a well-wishing to the Philadelphia team: Shine on, you crazy diamonds. - Kurt Orzeck
Little Lunch Records
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Four years after the great Tuff 2B Tender EP first caught our ears, Olivia’s World returned with their full length debut, Greedy & Gorgeous. The Sydney based band led by Alice Rezendecome out ripping with fuzz pop electricity, balancing swarming hooks with syrupy melodies, the tough and the tender. Any description singular description though will only scratch the surface, as Olivia’s World are eager to flip the script from song to song, adeptly changing focus from swarming power-pop hooks and noise pop dirges to rattled twee and animated punk leaning alternative rock. The record is raw and explosive, loaded with personality as it whips into an anthemic frenzy of razor sharp earworms, bright harmonies, and gluey distortion. Standouts like “Empresário” and “Porcupine girl” both set and contort the tone to great effect - DG
Wharf Cat Records
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There are only so many albums that can keep you awake. The sophomore effort What Is Success by Kingston, NY-based quartet Open Head is one such album. It’s got everything a disgruntled driver might need from a record blasting on a car stereo in pitch black darkness punctuated only by freeway lights: angular post-punk rhythms, mangled noise-rock guitars, and guttural bass tones. Even better? It’s also got the metaphorical amphetamines in spades too: insomnia-addled overthinking, soul-piercing rage, and cold hard dread. It’s not exactly a feel-good record, but staying awake for fear of winding up in a ditch isn’t exactly meant to feel good, now is it? In the grand tradition of Liars, Pere Ubu, among many other messed-up geniuses, What Is Success is a relentless slog of a record (complimentary) that drills into the listener with an unrepentant, slippery cacophony (still complimentary) and just the right amount of melody and groove as counterbalance underneath. - Chris Polley
Me Saco Un Ojo / Darkness Shall Rise Productions
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Death metal at its most putrid and septic, the long awaited full length from Wisconsin’s Ossuary has crawled out from the primordial ooze. Abhorrent Worship brings a wretched fusion of doom and death metal that feels as violently cinematic as it does disgusting. The songs lurch their way forward from the bowls of despair and depravity, grinding in slow motion as the band lay waste with riffs that feel pulled through hell’s most rotten swamps. The bile inducing vocals cut beneath the lumbering heaviness, croaking with disgust as the walls seem to close in all around us. In a genre that generally avoids repetition, Ossuary embrace it, their carnage set to a slow burn that’s immersive and hypnotic, a demonic metamorphosis from one of this era’s most consistently intriguing death metal bands. - DG
Dark Descent Records / Me Saco Un Ojo
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Copenhagen’s Phrenelith released their third full length album, Ashen Womb, an all encompassing record that feels like a singular beast of cohesive destruction. A malevolent dirge of murky tremolo and abhorrent stampeding rhythms cave in an existence often best forgotten into a juggernaut of corrosive resolve, the demonic cleansing to rearrange our senses. The album is depraved and destitute, but also primal, catastrophic, and maybe a touch subtle and psychedelic (in a very death metal sort of way). Where most of their peers bludgeon with massive shifts in dynamics, the production on Ashen Womb gives it a seamless quality, embracing brute force while seemingly locked into a disarming hypnosis, and it’s somehow all the more evil for that. - DG
Sooper Records
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Pile continue to age like a fine wine, the band forever progressing their sound and reshaping the formula. Their ninth album, Sunshine and Balance Beams, is brilliantly unpredictable, shifting in real time like some sort of beautifully crafted body horror. Equal parts heavy and serene, often in quick succession, it's an anxious record for our anxious times, a state of momentary catharsis if only we could stop hyperventilating. While structurally chaotic, the songwriting is gorgeous, pushing against the path of most resistance to create something as challenging as it is undeniably wonderful. Sunshine and Balance Beams is also Pile’s best sounding recording, produced by Miranda Serra at Machines With Magnets, it captures all the dynamic nuances in a way that feels pristine but never glossy, moving in unison with the serpentine structures as they contract and expand. - DG
Sad Cactus
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Pond 1000 are the new project from Katie Mcshane (vocals, guitar, synths) and Jesse Heasly (bass, synth), formerly of Spirits Having Fun, this time teaming with Iris Marion and Dylan Kumnick on guitar and drums after having relocated to parts of Maine. Pond 1000 show off some impressive musical skills on debut daffodiL with knotty tunes that squirm around various styles and rhythms as McShane’s vocals can dazzle through chiming high register exaltations adding another instrumental aspect to a somewhat disengaged emotional tremor. The complexity the group has achieved with each other truly stands out and recalls the experimentation of bands like Polvo and Unwound with a touch of musical cool of a band like Sea and Cake, which manages to be ultra-compelling in execution. McShane and Heasly continue to explore their musical connection and show an openness to add new flourishes and approaches as they continue to strive towards musical transcendence. - Kris Handel
Exploding In Sound Records
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What’s she building in there? Izzy Hagerup seems to approach songwriting like a visual installation artist, harnessing her creativity and abilities to play multiple instruments and shape words, all to serve the song's composition. Recorded over many years, System is the next generation of the DIY solo project known as Prewn, and it has a potent, electrifying cohesiveness—a patchwork of sounds pieced together like a puzzle made of clay, a broken vase wet-cemented back together. The album surges with a slow burn, built on a buzzing amp and a cello string growl, all while Hagerup’s undulating vocal range chisels its way through the noise with a deft hand at lyrics, which explore personal relationships both with others and with the self, all playing a part – or refusing to be a part – of the system. Listen if you like the way Tom Waits, Brainiac, Fiona Apple, and Sparklehorse approach their songs. - B. Snapp
Total Punk Records
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While Pyrex have already followed Body up with the great Slugman EP, the fact remains, Body is one of the year’s most exciting (and interesting) hardcore records, a vicious blast of noise punk, crusty production, and feral riffs played with steely precision. It’s the kind of hardcore album you want to listen to on repeat, burrowing deeper, embracing the disgust. The Brooklyn based trio mangle hardcore into a uniquely catastrophic form, part caustic distortion and paint peeling riffs, part d-beat brutality. Throughout the blunt force of it all, Pyrex are no strangers to hooks (seriously, “Digits” and “Protein” are as catchy as anything you’ll hear this year), an impressive feat considering its all delivered with a sheer and unyielding sense of aggression. The band achieve a lot in a short amount of time, their acidic brand of decimation spitting and clamoring from one combustible moment to the next. - DG
Mass Appeal Records
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While Raekwon'sOnly Built 4 Cuban Linx... (one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time) celebrates it's 30th anniversary this year, the Chef isn't just looking back, he's also looking toward the future. The Emperor's New Clothes, Raekwon's first new album in eight years, is more than a nostalgia trip and a victory lap, its a sincere reminder that Rae's voice and delivery stand in a lane all their own. His bars are sharp, his slang immaculately creative, and his flows forever raw. Additionally, the features (highlighted by Wu-Tang’s Inspectah Deck and Ghostface Killah as well as an inspired verse from Conway The Machine) are focused and the production is well suited to an album that places Raekwon and his cohort's artful darts front and center. He’s a legend for a reason and the Chef continues to deliver mafioso bars with a tendency for the cinematic. - DG
WavGodMusic
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Following a productive 2024 that saw Raz Fresco release four albums (including a record with DJ Muggs), the Canadian MC teamed up with producer Futurewave (Rome Streetz, Boldy James, Daniel Son) for Stadium Lo Champions, their first collaborative LP since 2021's Gorgeous Polo Sportsmen. Fresco wraps tight stream of conscious bars over Futurewave's hazy psychedelic beats, a deluge of both lyrical abstraction and conscious sentiment, golden age hip-hop (see “Cyanide”), and elastic rhymes that land somewhere between Quelle Chris and Mobb Deep. Stadium Lo Champions is rap at it’s purest essence and Raz Fresco continues to prove he’s a supremely capable MC, with intricate rhymes and a highly adaptable delivery, his verses cut and slash like a samurai sword. - DG
Iron Lung Records
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Attention Economy, the latest from Portland hardcore maniacs Retirement, is a decidedly crushing look at these modern times. There’s a feeling that everything won’t be okay, but a shared catharsis is available. With a blown out density and a mid-fi production aesthetic, their new album sounds great, a feral dose of violent hardcore with plenty of detail and metallic rust peeling buzzsaw riffs. Retirement bludgeon all senses as they dig and thrash into the corrosive disdain, rolling over everything like a dumpster fire growing to blanket the city and everything you hold dear. There’s a harshness to Attention Economy, with distortion buzzing, a possessive sense of evil, and a general coat of suffocating grease at the core of the sound. - DG
A year after the Daringer produced Hatton Garden Holdup, Rome Streetz is back at it, this time teaming up with the great Conductor Williams for a new full length, Trainspotting. It's a perfect pairing, the intricacies of both the rhymes and the production feel tailor made to one another. Operating at the height of their respective games, Conductor flips dusty samples into spooky boom-bap gems that feel entirely timeless while Rome Streetz runs rampant, his elastic delivery and raw lyricism cutting like diamonds on tracks like the west coast burner “10 Toes” and the hard as nails coke rap bounce of “Blood In Boogers”. Rome Streetz feels cut from the same cloth as hip-hop’s most legendary, adopting a real “student of the game” quality to his effervescent lyrical brilliance, captured in dizzying bars on songs like “Runny Nose” and the futuristic assault of “Died 1000 Times”. - DG
Pretzle Records
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While Sam Woodring (Two Inch Astronaut) recently decided to retire the Mister Goblin moniker he’d been using since 2018, he’s returned with his first acoustic solo record billed under his own name, an intimate set of songs that really shine from the stripped back approach. With vocals and guitar (and some gorgeous vocal harmonies), these songs sound perfectly fleshed out, loaded with Woodring's specific lyrical charms (singing about Nick Cannon's Wild'n Out and Faces of Death in the same sentence, spiders laying eggs in your eyes, self-deprecating references to Houston rapper Mike Jones, the list goes on). It's an engaging set of music from a masterful songwriter who blurs lines between sincerity and the sharpest sense of humor. - DG
Swimming Faith Records
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Monarch Joy is truly a chemistry experiment gone so wrong it's right. A liberating piece beyond conventions, beyond logical thought, and a pointed direction for a larger, conceptual picture that creates something enigmatically powerful and insanely fun to listen to all at once. Science Man have evolved into an unpredictable pulsating beast, expanding and contracting at instantaneous moments of combustion filled with blends of classic rock-esque solos, jazz-like improvisation, climbing and descending scales. Monarch Joy finds them carving out their own niche in hardcore, sticking to the roots of the genre while propelling it forward at a rapidly distorted rate. It’s hard to fathom that a project this aggressive and bleakly dystopian is such a cathartic, convivial listen. - Charlie Bailey
Vicious Circle Records
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Multi-instrumentalist Shannon Wright centers this collection of her studio recordings on themes of isolation and newfound freedom. There’s an outpouring of grief, recovery, and resolution. It’s awakening from one surreal state and succumbing to another, a dream of reality, or as she puts it, “Looking inward and outward simultaneously.” Reservoir of Love thrives in dynamic contrasts. Volcanic, guitar-and-beat-driven songs, including the title track, “Weight of the Sun” and “Ballad of a Heist,” are nestled alternately between tracks that quietly float and vaporize. Pain and hopelessness are sutured up with healing lyrics whittled down to their essence. From the chamber-like subtlety of “The Hits” and “Countless Days” to the Steve Albini-dedicated “Something Borrowed,” Wright finds light skimming over darkness. Each song has a designated role, jostling and balancing out the intoxicating listening experience. A solo recording and engineering project with the assistance of Kevin Ratterman adding drums and fingers on the mix, the album amalgamates to an invigorating, intrinsically personal testament for anyone accepting change or seeking solace. On Reservoir of Love, what’s obscured is what’s clear, ringing resonantly to attentive ears and minds. - B. Snapp
Perennial / K Records
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Balloon Balloon Ballon is not a lost relic of a late 50’s A.M. radio doo-wop studio songwriter or forgotten mid-60’s British Invasion hangers-on, but rather the warmed tube warbling of Sharp Pins, helmed by Chicago-based 20-year-old Kai Slater. In a banner year that saw the Hallogallo scene gain national attention with the re-release of 2024’s Radio DDR and the angular guitar assemblages of his other band Lifeguard’s Matador debut, Balloon Balloon Balloon serves as a vehicle for Slater’s own synthesis of mid-century pop in the vein of Guided By Voices, the great Philly band Mazarin, and Paisley Underground standard bearers. Three ‘Balloon’s of oscilloscopic noise, tittering overwritten tape, and a final anticlimactic drum scroll respectively serve to split the album into visions of a world where the airwaves are dominated by a songwriter whose skills are well beyond their years. Warm guitar tones and delightfully imperfect 8-track tape overdubs serve as a vehicle for singalong choruses, two-step slow dance shuffles, and softly psychedelic ballads. - Alex Hanse
Third Man Records
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Taut, zany, ripping, jittering with energy... Snooper's music is like fireworks going off in a small enclosed space. It’s hard not to love the ultra caffeinated glow of Worldwide, the band's second full length, a record that comes crashing in with hyper speeds, swarming hooks, and some new tricks, as the band embrace electronic touches while remaining firmly in their realm of berserk art punk (at it's finest). It's music for a distant future, a better future, a future we don’t necessarily deserve but Snooper give us all hope. The feverish ping-pong effect of the rhythmic compression, the blistered pinball spiral of the guitars, and the magic of Blair Tramel’s enthusiastic vocals (which bend like an aerobics teacher with a head full of acid) all come together in perfect harmony to create a luminance that’s all too rare in punk. - DG
Duophonic / Warp Records
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Having inspired an entire generation in the years since their last record, the legendary Stereolab have made their triumphant return. Fifteen years after the release of Not Music, the band are back with Instant Holograms On Metal Film, a record that play's to the quartet's many strengths, from expansive lounge-pop tinged psych to jazzy post-punk and retro futuristic jangle. There's much cosmic space to explore and the band sound laser focused, bending between shapes new and old. Laetitia Sadier’s lyrics take on a much needed sociopolitical focus, the record opening with the line “the numbing is not working anymore” but there’s an optimism at the heart of the album, the hope that things can and will get better. The record is energetic, pulsating with the live energy of the band’s ongoing reunion, ia sparkling addition to their already classic catalog - DG
Three One G
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Chicago’s Stress Positions returned with Human Zoo and their corrosive brand of hardcore is as combustible as ever, erupting with seismic force and never slowing to watch the decimation as it unfolds. Their onslaught it brutally direct, built on stampeding drums and earthquaking guitars. Then there's Stephanie Brooks’ vocals, howling at breakneck speeds, her throat absolutely shredded as she shouts against injustice and needless war with righteous fury. The EP explodes with atomic force, violently played peace punk for the end times. Human Zoo is a wake up call, but not a friendly one, it’s pure sensory overload that kicks down the door, explodes with a heap of justice (and aural menace) and leaves you reeling in the best of ways. - DG
Dark Descent Records
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Shit’s getting so fucked up in the U.S. at this point, one can’t help but wonder if citizens will start lining up outside medical clinics. Not to get a medical diagnosis, mind you – it’s obvious even to a turkey with a massive brain injury what’s causing and exacerbating rampant mental illness across the country – but lobotomies. If that becomes a trend, count on Houston heathens Terror Corpse to start administering the operations. We’re guessing these guys aren’t licensed medical doctors, but Ash Eclipses Flesh might as well be the audiobook on how to rip open an unsuspecting patriot’s head. As if that specter isn’t terrifying enough, it’s taken less than a year for Terror Corpse to create an EP and this full-length. Hide your children, lock the doors – and wear a helmet – because no is safe from these sadistic scoundrels. - Kurt Orzeck
Julia’s War / Smoking Room / ATO Records
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Emerging from the rubble, the doom and gloom of crumbling society, AI takeover, and the technological peak pushing out passive serotonin-searching zombies comes LOTTO. Philadelphia’s underground savants they are gutting a body of water tackle our current dystopia in an unencumbered analog masterpiece with some of the band’s most compelling conceptual work, writing, and intensely memorable riffs. Starting as the solo project of vocalist/guitarist Doug Dulgarian before blossoming into a full four piece, TAGABOW have been the defining force in the modern shoegaze resurgence with their signature DIY genre-blending that scratches into electronic, jungle, and whatever other alien samples they can get their hands on. LOTTO is a clear evolution for the band; a departure into the personal, the hard to talk about, the human. Without leaning on computers or distilled digital perfection, TAGABOW plunge into the aural atmosphere of recording collectively and live on tape, letting the grit and grime of lived experience shine through. - Charlie Bailey
Unheard of Hope
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Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta, the dynamic Mexico City-based duo known as Titanic are responsible for the worlds built within the ten tracks of Hagen, their second collaborative album. Starting with space, they quickly but not hurriedly take the listener to places unexpected—the echoing handclaps backing Fratti’s sanguine voice scorching someone not even deserving of the shadow she casts when the sun rises to on album opener “Lágrima del sol” give way to a huge wave of synth before it all fades out in under three minutes. An industrial staccato of mutated drums like a machine gun whose magazine has been emptied serves as the foundation for “Gotera” before Tosta’s mangled strumming doubles the effect prior to giving way to Fratti’s cello and layered harmonies. Each of these tracks is operatic in scope, their lyrics tackling romantic fallout, the disconnect between jilted lovers, even a twist on the early 20th century horror story ‘The Slaughtered Chicken’ by Uruguayan writer Horacia Quiroga, a common grisly act becoming a metaphor for self doubt. Self-reflection and reflections on contemporary society are all underpinned by two musicians in an intricate musical dialogue, juxtaposing dark subject matter with boisterous melody to sometimes hip shaking other times heart stirring effect. - Alex Hanse
Fire Records
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It's been a challenging four years since Tropical Fuck Storm's last full length, for the band and our rapidly burning world at large. Fairytale Codex, the band's fourth album seems to reflect tough times, there's a different energy to it, its more reliant on restraint and reflection. Have no fear though, the Melbourne based quartet remain one of the world's most forward thinking rock bands, their bent and visionary music a blend of glowing pop, dissonant punk, noise rock, and folk that feels nearly impossible yet entirely natural. They've peeled back on their more abrasive tendencies and some of the volume for an all encompassing record of psychedelic wonder and dynamic grace that gets better with every repeat listen. There’s no telling exactly what Tropical Fuck Storm are capable of or where they’re going next, but it’s usually best to just give into their combustion. The quartet have found balance, pairing the somber with the deranged, the album serving as the middle ground between chaotic grooves, warped and bubbling psych pop, and mutant pop-centric rippers. - DG
Shrimptech Enterprises
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Even among the world of cocaine fueled punk rock, Viagra Boys always felt like a long shot for mainstream popularity and yet they are inching ever closer, with arena level touring an ever increasing possibility, and we're all for it. A great band with a heaping dose of hilarious personality, their fourth album, viagr aboys, continues to expand their tongue in cheek post-punk nihilism in new directions. Locking into absurdist dance punk and dub-influenced art rock, Viagra Boys load up on sleaze and excess with a raw sense of style, taking the piss out of everything from shriveled up dudes who look like raisins and dogs suspicious of doctor’s harvesting their teeth to the unpleasantries of “flappy giblets” viewed on OnlyFans. There’s a major sense of irreverence, but there’s a underlying brilliance to it all. Viagra Boys understand the decay of our modern times, and they’re playing right into it. - DG
Dark Descent / Me Saco Un Ojo Records
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Vile Apparition’s Malignity is so terrifying that you’ll immediately run through your home to make sure your kids are safe before you realize you don’t actually have any. The Australian extreme metal maniacs will remind you right away of the little history you learned about their homeland: That Britain sent its criminals to populate the land. You’ll wonder during the relentlessly brutal 34-minute aural experience whether spending as much time in free fall on a passenger jet is more pacifying. Know all this going into the experience of consuming Malignity — a rarely used word, but one of the only sufficient descriptors of this half-hour re-creation of the Inquisition — metalheads who are acquainted with the genre’s most gruesome and unforgiving manifestations will be able to appreciate its time changes, measured tech trickery and breathtakingly controlled execution. This is only the second record by Vile Apparition, but it’s unimpeachable proof that these guys already know damn well what they’re doing. - Kurt Orzeck
20 Buck Spin
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If you like your death metal on the deeply progressive end of the spectrum, there are few that do it quite like Ramona, CA's Voidceremony. Abditum, the band's latest, strikes like a serpent with a million heads, both brutally vicious and technically stunning as the band weave a labyrinth of riffs and rhythms in constant motion. The musicianship is profoundly tight, twisting and turning on a dime toward an endless void that's always around yet another corner, the path to obliteration marked by structural shifts that come at whim. Subtlety be damned, let Voidceremony rip, this album knows no bounds. There’s nothing patient about Abditum, as one idea spawns into the next and the terror manifests itself like a million demon spiders crawling out of a million different eggs, each moving in different directions, each more horrific than the last. - DG
Matador Records
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As Water From Your Eyes' profile continues to grow with leaps and bounds so does the scope of their music as highlighted on It's A Beautiful Place, a record where nothing seems off limit. The duo of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown dial into fragmented pop of their own vision, blending together post-punk, distorted disco, dream pop, art rock, and uniquely progressive elements with illuminating results. Pure sonic radiance at its genre blurring best. They can’t be stopped, nor should they be. After nearly a decade of creating music without easily classifiable genre borders, the duo are still raising the bar. It’s A Beautiful Place hits harder in every way, from the hooks to the enormous riffs (and there are some enormous riffs) to the experimental pop sprawl, Water From Your Eyes are tapping into a fuzzy eruption of solid gold hits. - DG
Dead Oceans
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That’s the way love goes: it bleeds. “It’s just like swimming through a cold spot in a lake,” frontwoman and songwriter Karly Hartzman reflects: “the sweetest parts of life keep getting bitter every day.” Our ears expect the word “better,” but she gives us the harder and maybe truer word. That tacit slippage between sweetness and bitterness is the heartwood of Wednesday’s newest and most mature record, Bleeds. Every image in Hartzman’s writing comes back to this taproot: how things that are supposed to heal you can also hurt you. Like chipping your tooth on a cough drop (the opening image of “Pick Up That Knife”), or like how elderberry wine (the title of the absolutely perfect pop song at the record’s center), usually a medicinal, can induce severe nausea if consumed carelessly. Musically, too, Hartzman’s most heartbreaking, country-gold melodies coexist with, and bleed into, some of the noisiest, fuzziest, most abrasive moments in the Wednesday catalog. - Rohan Press
Unlawful Assembly / Drunken Sailor Records
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It's hard to believe it's been eight years since Sailing A Crazy Ship but a new WICCANS albums is always worth the wait. The Austin hardcore band return with PHASE IV, once again proving themselves to be one of hardcore's most adventurous and dexterous bands as they decimate a wide range of influences. PHASE IV is forward thinking hardcore, hammering with menace and velocity, but built on touches of psych punk and southern fried rock 'n' roll riffs (check out the acid-melted bridge of “Barbarian Queen”). WICCANS are never afraid to get weird, and they do it without losing an ounce of their core aggression. Perhaps most importantly though is the fact that PHASE IV also sounds tremendous, the production providing a clarity the band has never known much to the band’s advantage. - DG
Fire Talk
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Danger in Fives is the third full length from the adventurous and imaginative Kentucky art pop trio Wombo. The band have once again delivered an album that is worth all the time their audience is willing to give to it. Wombo’s past few records have had a simmering chaotic flow to them that would leave the listener unable to anticipate whatever was coming next. Danger in Fives shares the same type of energy but there’s a pared back feel to the songs this time around, as the guitars have a harder edge and intriguing chunk-a-funk to them. There’s a persistent rumble beneath Sydney Chadwick’s poetic-yet-ambiguous lyrics, the bassist’s vocals continuing to float through the crooked rhythms and instrumental blurts. Wombo’s latest demands full attention and will take you to foreign spaces, opening up a thrilling dream world in the process. - Kris Handel
Temporary Residence
Bandcamp | Apple
After an eleven year absence, Young Widows have returned, and not a moment too soon. The Louisville post-hardcore luminaries released their triumphant and muscular new album, Power Sucker, in March via Temporary Residence (Mogwai, Beak>, Party Dozen), a record that finds the trio sounding hungrier than ever. With a mixture of brute force and brainy structures, Young Widows are able to capture stadium sized hooks while retaining an unnerving grit and a slurred charm. The band continue to take a minimalist approach to their unique blend of noise rock and raw swaggering post-hardcore, every thud and nuanced shift in dynamics delivered with maximum impact. They’re still seething and abrasive, but Power Sucker blends a hard as nails demeanor with mountainous grooves, embracing the grease amid the sonic dirt. - DG