There are bound to be uncomfortable moments listening to someone else’s therapy, but there are also passages of profound beauty and clarity amid the maelstrom.

Even tracks that circle around a hazily imagined apocalypse—“This summer might be your last!”—can’t summon more than half a head bob. There’s enough energy pumping through these songs to move the 32-minute album along, but it feels like you’re slouching through the moving walkway at an airport. “Hi Someday” is an exception.

Where Saba’s previous music dwelled at length on emotions and scenes, these songs whisk past like a montage. No ID’s liquid production drives that fluidity. Backed by Saba and Pivot Gang members like Daoud and daedaePIVOT, he layers in drums, keys, and vocal loops that interlock and split apart like twisting gears.

A victory lap, the most fun “I told you so” you’ll probably ever hear. The title is a red herring, because no one would confuse Sonny Moore for an artist like Andy Warhol. He’s just Skrillex, writing some of the most ridiculous dance music ever made and making even purists fall for the wubs. If that’s not Pop Art, I don’t know what is.

Her lyrics mostly return to subjects she has revisited so many times that, on Jellywish, she also reflects on her weariness of talking about them: grief, death, and mortality. Here, though, even these topics are part of the record’s life-affirming warmth.

Derivative as it is, it’s all performed with care and craft, a frictionless blend of styles that feels a bit uncanny, like music you could imagine in a faux Urban Outfitters at Starcourt Mall. But there’s a sense The Crux aspires to something greater.

Folky and pastoral, with recorder solos and mandolin excursions and proggy journeys-in-song, Forever Howlong is as ambitious as anything this band has done.

It’s ambitious, stadium-sized, and risky—the sound of Hollis wringing his newfound star power for all it’s worth. Hollis’ two brief stabs at building up star’s world through balladry feel extraneous by comparison.

Music Can Hear Us lays out DJ Koze’s panculturalist ethos clearer than any of his prior studio releases, island-hopping from wispy echoes of son Cubano (“A Dónde Vas?”) to Japanese-language doo-wop (“Umaoi”) to, uh, Damon Albarn-fronted Afrobeats? .... To show the next generation how it’s done, DJ Koze throws two absolute heaters into the back half of Music Can Hear Us.

Deep in its mesmerizing glut are some astonishing works of synthesis. Sound bristles, foams, bursts, and oozes, lashing its acid against aya’s newly ferocious vocals.

The hooks on “Alibi” and “Keep It Alive” hit with scream-along jollity, even if Cabral’s punk turn means we get less of the fairytale quality that made her earlier work bewitching—and even if the drums sound curiously flimsy at times, crushed underfoot

End Beginnings shows an understandable desire to crack open the Sandwell District aesthetic, but the album too often struggles to express these ideas with the tyrannical clarity heard on, say, the malignant deep freeze of Function’s Isolation, or Sleeparchive’s Elephant Island, by which O’Connor and Sumner were so influenced.

Plenty of songs on Lonesome Drifter tell multi-layered stories, but the longest one stretches barely beyond three-and-a-half minutes. The laudable economy of language resembles his fellow Texan Townes Van Zandt. So, for the most part, does the mood.

Dan’s Boogie is not a facsimile of its predecessors. It is funnier, wiser, though the stakes are perhaps a little lower. .... It all feels effortless, like he’s been doing this for his whole life, which he basically has.

It’s a collage of striking songs from a band that may have shied away from making some tough calls about what to cut and what to lean into during the long process of self-recording.

What’s remarkable is how wide a net Holley and Lee cast. Maybe it’s a sign of his broad appeal or the importance of the work he’s creating, but there’s something like fellowship in these songs, a sense of remembering together.

Where Hanoi drifted toward jazzy abstraction, Bogotá sees the band run wild over a much sturdier foundation of gritty grooves and DIY basement-club beats.

As often as the band has pushed in new directions, it’s never abandoned the core dynamics of its songwriting, a fact that Lonely People With Power underlines. Fifteen years into their career, having long transcended any given genre, set of influences, or fan expectations, Deafheaven sound, more than ever, like nothing other than themselves.

Forever Is a Feeling turns the most transcendent, hopeful, horny moments of a young lover’s life into maddeningly safe background music. It’s so frustrating, you could scream.

It’s as if O’Brien set out to make the paragon of a modern My Morning Jacket album and succeeded in both style and sound, only forgetting to leave room for the surprises that actually gave their early works ineffable power. It’s boring.

Glory is rich with beauty, but the band—Hadreas; longtime partner Alan Wyfells; producer Blake Mills; and drummers Tim Carr and Jim Keltner, bassist Pat Kelly, and guitarists Meg Duffy and Greg Uhlmann—twists it just enough to let in flashes of the strange and idiosyncratic.

Tough, impressive, astonishingly good debut.

After album opener and slow-burn stunner “Canada,” “Sandcastle Molds” breaks the mood; the rollicking drumbeat, nervous blues licks, and dissonant climax feel muddled and a little overdone when compared to some of their more relaxed songs. But the next few tracks get the album back on solid footing.

I Said I Love You First is quite scattershot, an odd collection of songs that sound like other songs, incongruous spoken interludes, and one random reggaeton track (“I Can’t Get Enough”) first released in 2019.

It gives clarity to what’s so magnetic about their creative partnership: that, in the grand wilderness of America, these two unusual musicians found each other at all.

At just half an hour, this is a slight album, despite moments of heart-bursting ambition that at times leave you wishing for more to sink your teeth into.

No distinct group voice emerges from these 12 tracks, no clear sense of where they hope to head now. But there are enough revelatory moments, both solo and shared, that this lack only suggests itself once the album is done, when its pleasures have finished unspooling.

His first solo release in nearly 13 years, his most adventurous and surprising, and his best.

The MUSIC that does exist is somewhere in between, a flawed, contradictory, inflated, loud, exciting, mainstream-ified, uncomfortable, nostalgic event, but one that is still fixated on the music above all. It might go down as the purest distillation of Playboi Carti.

Twenty-plus years after its initial release—and commemorated here with a gargantuan 13-piece box set that exhaustively pieces together its rocky origins—it has never sounded so enduring.

She commits to pop music’s campiness to convey the way love and heartache magnify even the most fleeting memories into heart-wrenching melodrama. It’s an interesting pivot, but much of the music feels too aimless to effectively deliver these intense emotions.

The result is some of the most direct, spontaneous music in James’ catalog. Tracks feel less like songs or compositions than tone poems, mood pieces that flow naturally from one to the next, like clouds changing shape high overhead.

From a less confident artist, her writing might sound trite, but vocal experimentation is Fohr’s strength. The malleable and arresting delivery at the album’s core pushes the music forward, often reinventing itself mid-song.

The album’s improbable feat is that, even with its inherent tragedy, Cotton Crown is somehow an even breezier, more agreeable listen. It’s not often that sorrow goes down so easily.

Like many albums recorded over many years, at various studios with different producers, This Side of the Island can feel a bit scattershot and piecemeal. .... Still, his ragged charisma holds it all together.

The production is more ambitious, the songwriting more accomplished. If JENNIE has the most robust individual musical identity of the quartet, it’s because her songs have a crucial element the others’ lack: They sound good.

If Alter Ego presents LISA as the most generic embodiment of a pop star, then it is no surprise that its best songs rely on tried-and-true formulas.

Summer is a season of extremes—exhilaration and malaise, heat that can feel more oppressive than the cold—and All Worlds is best when it leans into them.

MAYHEM may have played better if its tracklist were whittled down from 14 to, say, 10. Still, it is among Gaga’s strongest ever full-length statements.

It’s more restrained [than 2022's GOLD] but just as urgent: a pen scratching out a manifesto rather than a rallying cry through a megaphone.

Thundering, itchy, pneumatic new record.

The arrangements on Tears of Injustice skew closer to that style than the rock’n’roll on Funeral for Justice, and it’s poignant to think of the sad circumstances of Tears’ creation leading the artist to seek out the sounds of his youth.

On Luminescent Creatures, Aoba’s exquisite and entrancing eighth album, she and Umebayashi further broaden their horizons.

Deep Sea Diver deftly modulates their energy over the course of Billboard Heart, whose front half zigzags through cinematic scene-setting and jittery accelerations, and whose back half mellows into a more pensive slow burn.

By stripping away the experimentation, Sinister Grift is a reminder of something that’s always set Lennox apart: He’s an exceptionally gifted songwriter. Nearly every track on Sinister Grift feels like it could’ve been written at any point in the last 50 years—or even longer ago.

Even at a lithe 31 minutes, it serves as Hecker’s most diverse work, an unfixed landscape that moves from shadowy to frigid to transcendent with ease. The song titles and album notes leave no real clues as to which films each track was actually intended for.

Shygirl’s ability to cook cutesy, juvenile references into grown and sexy club candy shines on “Wifey Riddim.” Its vintage lunchroom table production, evoking Lil Mama’s “Lip Gloss” or Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl,” gets a refreshing update with the addition of hip-rocking Jersey club breakdowns.

This isn’t an album about clearing one’s mind. It’s raw and frenetic, a blistering and desperately beautiful soundtrack to the mounting chaos.

On choke enough, that highly skilled performer comes into her own as an artist. The title track is easily Oklou’s best to date.

Her supple singing and the lively production keep Jupiter from being a slog, but the hazy symbolism sours the experience.

Locks lets the past speak by keeping the grit and the grain in his samples, conjuring the dust of the archives. Like Madlib, another jazz-influenced samplerist, he leaves the seams in his loops and builds meta-rhythms from the clicks of his edit points.

There’s no harm in taking inspiration from others. But here, it sounds like McRae and her writing team hopped on the left-of-center-pop bandwagon without building out something new and wholly Tate—and it’s hard to make leftovers taste as enticing as when they were first served hot and fresh.

Saya is more of a restoration: filling in the cracks of Gray’s music, redrawing her in bolder shades and more vivid hues—indigo, flesh tone, spring green.

Horror lacks some of the DIY immediacy of Strange’s first two records. A new degree of studio polish is palpable. .... But with Antonoff’s blockbuster-coded fingerprints on the record, the hooks also go bigger than before, and Strange’s heart and fierce desire for connection bleed through.

Powers narrates these vignettes from a distant storyteller’s perspective, and a gap emerges between his authorial point of view and the intimacy of the home video material. This dissonance is certainly haunting, but when the album’s final track arrives in a montage of the VHS clips strung together over heartfelt piano, its affecting ambience feels somewhat abrupt. But the record’s final moments remind us that these songs still spring from a singular voice.

In an effort to make everything sound as massive as possible, the team obscures some of Fender’s more pointed moments.

The lucidity and beauty of this music feels hard-won, something to revere and cherish.

Like a Ribbon is lush and engrossing, the rare Big Indie debut that outstrips its own hype.

“Mayfield” barrels out of the gate like a runaway Arctic train—the 2025 mix adds propulsion by removing a flanged drop-out section. As vocalist Paula Kelley winds black ribbons around Ackell’s melancholy topline, sheets of guitar clip overhead: proto-blackgaze. The two other EP tracks included here are dreamier, but no less impressive.

Here, Horsegirl learn how dazzling it is to instead pull back and feel the invisible touch of what was once there, a fizzy tingling on the palms and cushion of silence around the ears. That growth is the most memorable part of Horsegirl’s new album.

His singing voice isn’t nearly as tender and smooth as once it was. .... Sometimes the effect is monotonous and emotionless, which might suit his headspace, but ultimately it’s just boring. When he adds a little spice to his voice he can still sound expressive, like on the album standout “Small Town Fame,” which, if you ignore the shamelessness of the Brat summer bar, features him at his most earnest.

Drawing out stories across generations, Dawson captures the way memories loom large in the present.

Squid’s most wide-ranging album yet, and somehow still the one that hits closest to home.

More than his previous records, Lay Low focuses on the clarity that arrives with age and time. You can hear the proof in Chacon’s songwriting, which has sharpened to an impressively minimalist degree.

Even with this shared billing, Van Etten remains the album’s undeniable highlight, though she explores a range of vocal approaches outside her trademark wail.

Your tolerance for freeform and frequently harsh-sounding guitar music determines whether A Shaw Deal will make it into your regular rotation or slot into the lesser-played ranks of the band’s catalog. But its funky, egoless spirit is infectious.

It all amalgamates into a fine late-career achievement for the master bandleader.

Not every intuition bears fruit, but more and more it is becoming clear that the iconoclastic rapper’s impulses are to be trusted.

The group effort renders Humanhood’s songs lush and circuitous, seemingly propelled by an internal logic that’s being pieced together as you hear it.

A record with infernally catchy dance-pop hooks and the nutritional value of cotton candy.

Hiatt’s candid emotions feel earned; her open-hearted melodies and punchy hooks play out like a series of unguarded moments.

The result is an opulent, elegant, and occasionally exasperating farewell. This is the Weeknd’s most expansive-sounding album that’s also narrowly focused.

Showbiz! is the young artist’s greatest accomplishment thus far, the product of a passionate, creative journeyman fully making his home in music.

If this is an album about growth and greatness, then it’s the kind you see depicted in charts on an end-of-year earnings report. It is precision engineered to stream big, and all the duller for it.

There’s a freewheeling spirit to the music they created together, a punchy camaraderie that connects these disparate songs from the agitpolka of “Guns Are for Cowards” to the Celtic dreamfolk of “Downstream,” and from the rambunctious ramble of “Turned to Dust (Rolling On)” to the despairing chorus of “Boise, Idaho” (which contains one of Oldham’s loveliest and most forlorn melodies).

An album that pushes Minus’ musical vision outward while burrowing deeper inward lyrically.

Listeners who come for the record’s novelty will stay for the class. Seldom do musical fusions sound both so perfectly weighted and utterly irresistible, a cartoon hit of delirious joy.

The contrasts within the songs are more interesting than those between style and source.

Segal comes from underground hip-hop and Booker from retro-leaning rock’n’roll, but LOWER doesn’t sound like any of those genres’ past collisions. Instead, it takes the basic textures of rap rock—boom-bap beats, Deftones’ icy ambiance, the corroded shredding of “She Watch Channel Zero?!”—and fashions them into a new strain of beat-centric grunge.

On a fundamental level, the bangers on EUSEXUA bang like once and future bangers.

For the most part, Congleton doesn’t push Mogwai anywhere they weren’t already heading, but in its home stretch, The Bad Fire proves this band of steely veterans can still disarm you by opening up surprising new dimensions to their sound.

Miller was a natural melodicist, a captivating vocalist, and an evocative songwriter, all of which are here on display. It’s a mood piece, and the mood is sweet and sedate.

Despite radiating a gentle, unassuming tranquility, Weft rarely bores.

Recorded with Gilla Band bassist Daniel Fox, Who Let the Dogs Out wisely leans on nosier elements when the subject matter gets earnest.

Bad Bunny’s sixth studio album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (I Should Have Taken More Photos), is a bold declaration—a groundbreaking testament to his evolved artistry and vision for the future of música urbana.

Across these 10 uncommonly beautiful songs, she finds the spiritual in the everyday.

The sidelining of his talents on the kit is a disappointment, but it’s not a deal breaker. On the whole, Look Up succeeds for the same reasons that Beaucoups of Blues did: songs that play to Starr’s vocal strengths, a sympathetic supporting cast, and a natural, Nashville feel.

Perverts is an awful lot to take in one sitting, and it often feels split between two distinct aesthetic modes: the wistful chill of slow but structured songs, and the brutal unmooring of eerie ambient collages. Both styles converge thematically on the same tortured core, but the switch between them can cause whiplash.

There’s a great lightness to each of Olsen’s covers, an attempt to abandon the feet she has planted on the ground. But the songs are rendered so fluffily that it’s hard to hear any of their structural elements; instead, the collection sounds more like a series of beautiful ooh-ing.

The Human Fear isn’t provocative enough to revitalize their reputation, but it certainly won’t do it any harm.

Consider Midwinter Swimmers, then, an invitation to reclaim the assured and commonplace language of awe. This is what “beautiful” was meant to describe.

It’s a brief rush, at a hair over 27 minutes, but covers a remarkable amount of ground. And as a blueprint for a new, pan-African pop music, it is thoroughly convincing.

Fennesz may not care much if he surprises us, but he never runs out of ways to get us.

The Night is frequently cold and lonely, but Saint Etienne make for invaluable company.

In trying to live up to the “personal album” trope, rosie opts to explore rather than define, and the emotional grooves are polished smooth. Whether you’re a new fan or a devoted Blink (as BLACKPINK fans are known), you’re likely to feel left cold.

Each piece on V​ė​jula offers a chance at transcendence, even if only for a small moment. Even the quickest glimpses into the beyond are revelatory. It’s heavy work, but always welcome and necessary.

Rome shows how precise the National’s alchemy is: If Devendorf is replaced with a drum machine, if Dessner confines himself to the piano or quiet noodling, if Berninger rambles too far afield, the whole thing falls apart. It’s Alligator deep cut “The Geese of Beverly Road” where Rome best demonstrates the band’s collective power. On record, it’s patient but stiff, held back by a lo-fi drum recording; live, it’s the massive, sweeping anthem early believers always hoped it would become.

Her frank storytelling makes “Coast” the most vivid song on Nobody Loves You More, like the account of a beachside outlaw whose levity is its own triumph. The best moments are when Deal slows her pace and stretches out like a daydream, recalling, more than any of her other bands, her sublime cover of Chris Bell’s “You And Your Sister” with This Mortal Coil in 1991.