We understand that the unending torrent of new releases can seem overwhelming. This is why, every few months, our editors and writers come up with a list of recent overlooked albums that deserve your attention. None of these records were named Best New Music, and some of them were not even reviewed by Pitchfork, but they are all worth a listen.
(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)
5AM: Pre Zz
As 5AM, Tokyo-based artists 5ive, Moko Goto (aka Powder), and Andry make loose, challenging pop abstractions. They recorded Pre Zz over the past year, and it’s pleasingly all over the place. There’s a downbeat cover of Donnie & Joe Emerson’s eternal “Baby,” the ambient house rattler “Sleep-mail,” and polyrhythmic pop songs like “Today” and “HOT !” “I agree, all of these useless bits and pieces just filling up the brain,” a voice says at the opening of late-album highlight “bit off.” “I mean, my brain is full and empty.” 5AM perfectly represent this feeling of negative overload. –Hubert Adjei-Kontoh
Listen: Bandcamp
anaiis: this is no longer a dream
French-Senegalese singer anaiis has described writing her debut album, this is no longer a dream, as like “spewing out the poison invading my body.” Throughout, her gossamer falsetto functions as a guiding light, cutting through a haze of piano and synth. The healing process is messy and nonlinear: In each song, she hopes for better times ahead while recalling the hurt caused by someone who kept her “hanging mid-air, always begging for help.” By the final song, she finds strength in her own resilience: “After falling apart, nothing can tear you up.” –Vrinda Jagota
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Ashley Shadow: Only the End
On the follow-up to her 2016 self-titled debut, the Vancouver musician Ashley Shadow is placid and world-wisened, gazing out from the front porch as she dwells on old memories and friends. Only the End is wistful folk-rock reminiscent of Angel Olsen and the Weather Station, containing guest vocals from Bonnie “Prince” Billy, pedal steel from Neko Case guitarist Paul Rigby Wise, and production assistance from Black Mountain’s Joshua Wells. Though songs hum along with little more than Shadow’s voice, guitar, and shakers, others dial up the distortion. But each one is tranquil and knowing, the perspective of someone who’s become seasoned at life. –Cat Zhang
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Astrid Sonne: outside of your lifetime
The title of Astrid Sonne’s outside of your lifetime seems to gesture at an unknown event in a distant future. And though the album is almost entirely instrumental, save for one lonely, lovely piece of a cappella choral music, the Copenhagen-based composer and violist fashions her fusions of synthesizers and strings on an accordingly monumental scale. In places, her pulsing pads recall vintage Oneohtrix Point Never; elsewhere, there are mournful Baroque overtones and ersatz folk textures. The cumulative effect is reinforced by a handful of 3D “playable rooms” created to accompany the album: a virtual world in which we are merely visitors—a narrative beyond our ken, fundamentally unknowable but still strangely moving. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Cleo Sol: Mother
Mother, the second solo album from London soul singer and SAULT vocalist Cleo Sol, was written not long after she gave birth to her first child. On the album, Sol revisits her own mother’s shortcomings with enviable grace and nuance, acknowledging her mother’s hardships without excusing her mistakes. In reflecting on her upbringing, Sol seeks to provide her newborn with the love and support she didn’t always get for herself. She finds hope and beauty in her child’s future, reminding them that, despite unforeseen moments of uncertainty and self-doubt, her love remains constant. –Vrinda Jagota
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Eastern Margins: Redline Legends
Embracing everything from Indonesian funkot to Singaporean Manyao and Vietnamese vinahouse, this compilation from the London-based party label and collective Eastern Margins features high-intensity rave music found across local scenes in East and Southeast Asia. Nutty and maximalist to the extreme, it guarantees you floor-shattering bass thuds, cute vocals, and neon screeches, plus over-the-top goofiness reminiscent of LMFAO or Tommy Cash. If you’re one of those people who spends late nights trawling YouTube for rainbow-vomit breakcore mixes and vocaloid music videos, this is for you. It’s silly and bright, a great hang with no signs of stopping. –Cat Zhang
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Goldenboy Countup: Chicken Man 2
On Chicken Man 2, Goldenboy Countup sounds like he’s in a rocking chair on the porch telling you about some shit he got into last week. Straight out of DeLand, a Florida city just north of Orlando, Goldenboy whispers vivid dope-dealing tales and spicy punchlines over piano-driven beats that equally pull from Midwest funk and Deep South moodiness. His distinct style made the first Chicken Man one of the best rap mixtapes out of Florida this year, and this sequel deserves that designation as well. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Hayden Pedigo: Letting Go
Based in Lubbock, Texas, guitarist Hayden Pedigo is among the crop of millennial fingerstyle guitarists finding their own approaches to the form. He released Letting Go, his first album for Mexican Summer, in September, following the spacious collaborative record Big Tex, Here We Come with multi-instrumentalist Andrew Weathers in March. While Big Tex directly invoked the open expanses of his home state, Pedigo goes for a tighter focus on detailed acoustic tumbles in pieces like “Something Absolute” and “Some Kind of Shepherd.” Making up over half an hour, the album’s seven tracks unfurl like incense smoke, lingering with the same lasting gratification. –Allison Hussey
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Jarv Dee / Bad Colours: Blakhouse
Jarv Dee is a veteran Seattle rapper who’s part of a local super-collective with Nacho Picasso and Gifted Gab. London-born, Brooklyn-based DJ Bad Colours decided to flip an old Jarv Dee sample while stuck at home during the pandemic and sent the unfinished track to Jarv, who fleshed out its rubbery house-funk with a fresh proclamation of perseverance. The result of this collab, the celebratory “Feelin’ Like,” arrived early this year. On the BLAKHOUSE EP, the two stretch out their bicoastal hip-house collaboration across six songs of defiant jubilance. On “Black Skin,” Stas Thee Boss turns a protest against systemic racism into a block party, and Shabazz Palaces provide the distorted banger “Clouds.” On the most combustible provocation, “Nothing Changed,” Jarv Dee calls out the National Rifle Association’s whites-only approach toward gun rights with equal parts glee and gravitas. –Marc Hogan
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Kip C: Meraki
It’s strange to think that MIKE has been around long enough to have influenced a generation, but he has. On Meraki, Bristol’s Kip C puts his own spin on the New York rapper’s subdued style. The soul samples are slowed, the raps are downbeat, and the muttered sighs are abundant. But Kip C’s depressive thoughts and romantic troubles are his own, and he’s adept at finding the attendant backing tracks for heavy emotions—think ’70s soul and Japanese city pop. It’s a new update of a contemporary style. –Hubert Adjei-Kontoh
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
KrispyLife Kidd: The Art of Spice Talk
Michigan’s street rap scene overflows with big personalities and ridiculous comics, but few are as over-the-top as Krispylife Kidd. The Flint rapper’s singular booming voice and his endless supply of wild ad libs make him stand out. He’s a force on the mic, and his latest project, The Art of Spice Talk, is one of his strongest showcases yet. Whether he’s talking about having a gun so big, it makes “the Titanic stop moving” on “Karate Buddy” or calling out creepy men on “Sunday Fun Day,” Krispylife Kidd never takes his foot off the gas. –Dylan Green
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
L’Orange: The World Is Still Chaos, But I Feel Better
North Carolina producer L’Orange uses psychedelic and sepia-toned beats to navigate an increasingly erratic world. The boom-bap production across his latest project The World Is Still Chaos, But I Feel Better oscillate between the anxiety of living through a global pandemic (“What Am I Gonna Do?”) and the lingering hope that things will hopefully make sense later (“The Sun It Hurts”). It feels tethered to the moment and timeless all at once, an audible guidebook to navigating humor and despair. –Dylan Green
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Lowertown: The Gaping Mouth
As Lowertown, Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg record moody bedroom pop tracks that deftly capture the ennui of young adulthood. The Atlanta-based pair are intimately familiar with the subject: They graduated from high school last year. On Lowertown’s latest EP, The Gaping Mouth, Osby’s closely-miked soliloquies about existential anxiety float atop Weinberg’s drifting lo-fi instrumentation. Together, they wistfully gaze back at childhood as their increasingly confident sound pushes them forward to a bright future. –Quinn Moreland
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Mannequin Pussy: Perfect EP
In the second half of Mannequin Pussy’s Perfect, the EP breaks into a raging punk shredder about police brutality. Bassist Colins “Bear” Regisford takes the mic for the first time and screams into it for two minutes, stopping only to take a breath. One track later, the band dives into a new direction: A hypnagogic ballad twinkling with cascading synths filled with the tender words of devotion one whispers to a lover seconds before falling asleep. It’s difficult to find a record that comes closer to the vicissitudes of experience than Perfect, as it fights and gives in, as it holds on and lets go. –Kelly Liu
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Mo Troper: Dilettante
Featuring 28 tracks in under 50 minutes, the fourth album from Portland, Oregon power-pop artist Mo Troper is a creative explosion filled with catchy melodies, well-written songs embellished with jokes, internet lingo (“We stan!”), and, um, horse sounds. It’s the kind of referential, attention-grabbing songwriting you imagine from somebody with a lot of thoughts on music—and indeed, in his off-time this year, Troper has covered the entirety of Revolver and written a thoughtful essay on his chosen genre of power-pop. “I am consistently moved by it,” he writes, “and also horribly embarrassed to have anything to do with it.” Listening to the inviting, head-spinning songs on Dilettante, this juxtaposition seems as good as any definition for devotion. –Sam Sodomsky
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
P.E.: The Reason for My Love EP
Brooklyn-based P.E. don’t merely play the notes on The Reason for My Love as much as they barrel right through them. The quintet refines their post-punk impulses on their 2020 debut Person and transforms them into a body-moving EP. The jittery electronics are still there, but the drum cuts feel sharper and lighter, bringing a sense of structure to what could easily be shapeless. Vocalist Veronica Torres abandons spoken-word and leans fully into singing about poetry, beauty, and the contours of the body. Her lovely vocal stretches fill up the space once occupied by industrial bass drops. Sensuality suits them well. –Kelly Liu
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
QRTR: infina ad nausea
QRTR (NYC-based producer Meagan Rodriguez) merges field recordings with glitched-out techno and drum’n’bass to create instantly gratifying electronic music. On her second album, infina ad nausea, Rodriguez alternates between dancefloor-primed bangers and textural ambient experiments to evoke the intense feeling of “spiraling internally.” The process involves delirious highs like standout club tracks “Running From It” and “Fractals,” before eventually orbiting into layered, introspective loops. Rodriguez’s propulsive production, ornamented with samples, murmured vocals, and various percussive elements, makes for a brisk, euphoric trip through the mind. –Eric Torres
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Rachika Nayar: fragments
Rachika Nayar’s latest EP, fragments, is a companion piece to her 2021 debut, Our Hands Against the Dusk. On that album, she warped her electric guitar work into hefty ambient compositions that echo and expand, grinding and sputtering like wrestling robots. fragments works backwards, peeling away layers of distortion to highlight lighter, iridescent songs built from unprocessed guitar loops. As smooth as cold water and as restorative as late-afternoon sunlight, it’s less arresting than the music on her debut, but more adaptable and forgiving, bending to the contours of your daydreams. –Vrinda Jagota
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Scott Hirsch: Windless Day
Scott Hirsch digs further into mellow, cosmically inclined jams with his third album Windless Day. Hirsch’s rich, warm production draws from AM gold, classic soul, and crispy fried country funk, and his arrangements are easygoing and inviting. “Big Passenger” is a rubbery, low-key delight; instrumental foils “Redstone” and “The Price of Gold” offer fizzling tension and a subsequent twangy unwind. There’s even a little gospel shine, too, on “Wolves.” Equally comfortable emoting moody grooves (“Much Too Late”) and heartfelt devotion (“Love Is Long”), Hirsch leads the way as a relaxed and affable guide. –Allison Hussey
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Sofie Birch / Johan Carøe: Repair Techniques
In 2019, Danish musicians Sofie Birch and Johan Carøe recorded a pair of sessions together in Copenhagen, improvising on a slim collection of analog synthesizers. The next summer, during a residency at the Swedish experimental-music hub Andersabo, they fleshed out their recordings with acoustic elements like pump organ, cello, and clarinet. Repair Techniques collects the beguiling results of that twofold process. Birch’s recordings often place sparkling synth patterns in the service of pristine, hypnotic minimalism, but these short, sketch-like pieces are more freeform. Melodies morph, branch, and meander; electronic and acoustic textures flicker back and forth. It is an understated and meditative listen, and while it’s hard to fix upon its details, it’s easy to get lost in its gentle swirl. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Spirit Was: Heaven’s Just a Cloud
The cover of Heaven’s Just a Cloud, Nick Corbo’s full-length debut under the name Spirit Was, features an illustration of laundry drying on a line. But Corbo, a former member of the New York-based bands LVL UP and Crying, uses a crosshatching technique to contrast the bucolic scene with dense, textured shadows. Heaven’s Just a Cloud achieves a similar effect: Softness coexists with dark swatches of droning noise that channels Mount Eerie at its most black metal. It’s oblivion at its most intricate. –Quinn Moreland
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
TisaKorean: mr.siLLyfLow
mr.siLLyfLow was almost certainly made after TisaKorean ate a full bowl of the sugar found at the bottom of a Sour Patch Kids bag. Just about every song on the Houston triple threat’s (rapper, producer, and dancer) mixtape is a minute and a half of chaos. The intro lays thunder effects, DJ scratches, and handclaps over “Pure Imagination” from the Willy Wonka soundtrack, he drunkenly sings along with hotel lobby music on “Belabrega,” and “How I Walk in the Club” is basically slowed down snap music, with Tisa growling and turning up every vocal effect knob. It’s a trip. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Tristan Arp: Sculpturegardening
Active since 2014, Wisdom Teeth spent its first couple of years putting out terse bass/techno fusions in the mold of predecessors like Livity Sound. But over the past couple of years, the label’s sound has become more distinctive. Co-founders Facta and K-LONE each released captivating solo albums that explored billowing synths and enveloping grooves; this fall, Mexico City producer Tristan Arp built upon their vision of Balearic braindance with Sculpturegardening, an elegant and compact mini-LP of verdant synthesizers and rippling electronic pulses that plays out like a lenticular image pairing ambient with club rhythms. Heard one way, it’s a soundtrack for weightless drifting; heard another way, it’s a slow-motion dance party, like an after-hours in a greenhouse on a distant planet. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
UNIIQU3: Heartbeats
The production on Heartbeats is hyperactive; the pulsating Jersey club bounce of the beats could make the most joyless person tap their feet. But Newark’s UNIIQU3’s moody coos and raps rustle under the grooves, bringing a gloominess to the endeavor. “Touch” contains a lively, throbbing rhythm but also features UNIIQU3 gently singing about heartbreak and being so in love that it hurts. Yet, it’s the type of record that makes you want to use the pain to turn up. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Worm: Foreverglade
Worm makes funeral doom metal with gothy synths, creepy echoing vocals, and riffs that could, if transcribed for organ, reverberate through the walls of a dilapidated, candle-lit castle at night. If you read through the liner notes for the Florida group’s third album Foreverglade, you will learn that the members refer to themselves by names like Phantom Slaughter and Nihilistic Manifesto—but you will gather as much from one listen to a song like “Cloaked in Nightwinds.” This is music for people who want to tune out their everyday horrors and submit to a more magical, even beautiful, kind. –Sam Sodomsky
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Yeule: The Things They Did for Me Out of Love
After last year’s cybernetic reintroduction “My Name is Nat Çmiel” and this year’s atmospheric Big Thief cover, the London-based, Singapore-born artist Yeule unveiled “The Things They Did for Me Out of Love,” a nearly five-hour collaboration with PC Music alum Danny L Harle that strips Yeule’s prismatic soundscapes to their ambient essence. Pick any brief snippet at random and it sounds like an ornately detailed electronic hum, maybe a whisper. At full length, it becomes a disorienting daydream that blurs the line between attentive listening and conceptual art, similar to reclining in the gentle drone of La Monte Young’s Dream House. Somewhat surprisingly, “The Things They Did for Me Out of Love” has since been announced as the closing track on Yeule’s February 2022 album Glitch Princess, but the standalone experience is a daring expanse—and a bold coup. –Marc Hogan
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
YULLOLA: Priestess
Drawing on cosmology and myth, the ethereal debut from YULLOLA (fka Jasper Lotti) tells a tale wherein the New York singer-songwriter and producer transforms into a wide-eyed alien priestess experiencing humanity for the first time. As such, Priestess darts from glassine synth landscapes to stomping alt-pop to sinister darkwave, with amusingly vivid titles like “Is It Love or a Pyramid Scheme” and “Spit in Yo Mouth.” YULLOLA’s ultra-light voice weaves hypnotic melodies into a singular vision of dystopian pop, especially on the blissed-out, breakbeats-filled highlight “Bb Plz Don’t Go.” Priestess is electronic-pop music at its most delightfully off-kilter. –Eric Torres
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
