25. Sega Bodega – Dennis
Fashion darling Salvador Navarrete took a few detours from his clubby avant-electronica into deviant, lysergic indie, finding a troubled, golden, gothic light — particularly on the sublime “Deer Teeth.”
24. Thee Alcoholics – Feedback
If Loop and the Jesus and Mary Chain had a rock baby it still might not rock as hard as Thee Alcoholics. Feedback was classic bikers, acid and chainsaws fun and it pummeled us right into 2025.
23. Brijean – Macro
Their Feelings album from 2021 felt so perfectly formed and definitive that I doubted there was anywhere for them to go, but they managed to expand their warm, buzzed Ipanema beach dance vibes into thrilling new shapes across bottomless Caipirinhas.
22. Peel Dream Magazine – Rose Main Reading Room
Joe Stevens and pals went thrifting and delighted in finding bits and bobs of the finest 90s alt-rock, then repurposed it all for a dream-pop quilt to dream under. Careful though, there are shards of darkness in there.
21. Mk.Gee – Two Star & The Dream Police
Michael Todd Gordon ripped a big rock-shaped hole into 2024, guesting on Saturday Night Live and hoovering up followers, whether leaning into alt-soul or heading downhome for some impressive fingerpicking.
20. Tierra Whack – World Wide Whack
Silly as Dr. Seuss with her inspired, cartoony, blocks-of-color presentation, she served sassy, arty edge, traveling first-class between pop, R&B and hip hop to achieve world domination.
19. The Bug – Machines
This one came in two different sizes, depending on how much of Kevin Martin‘s delicious, dubby, dancey pounding you wanted to submit to. Favorite tracks: “Brutalized,” “Floored,” “Hypnotised,” “Buried,” “Gutted.”
18. Asher White – Home Constellation Study
White reimagined 60 years of guitar pop-rock with the style and imagination of pre-MAGA Ariel Pink and a Brill Building feel for melody. Trippy weirdo brilliance you could hum in the shower.
17. Storefront Church – Ink and Oil
An Important Album, awash in orchestral arrangements, cathedral-sized emotion, Scott Walker-esque gravitas and tunes up the ass.
16. Melt Banana – 3+5
Yasuko and Ichiro showed the kids how it’s done, forging art, noise and punk into a terrifying, stylized alloy that crushed skulls and bones and left piles of bodies lifeless and so so satisfied.
15. Two Shell – Two Shell
The London tricksters kept their identities secret (ish) as they rode the momentum of the delirious hyperpop perfection of “home” and “love him” into a surprising and imaginative debut album that kept things fresh and hyper and still reasonably pop.
14. Tashi Wada – What Is Not Strange
Mr. Julia Holter is a rather spectacular composer, inventing new sounds and silences and expanding the possibilities of what a song can be; forging a sensual, pleasured avant-garde with a taste for drone (and bringing in the missus on vocals).
13. Morwell – Into the Light
This one flew well under the radar, only getting reviewed in The Quietus, but it’s a unique, brilliant concoction: snippets of cheesy new-age spoken word set to shimmering, deconstructed grooves, drily humorous and oddly profound.
12. Nonpareils – Rhetoric & Terror
He made his mark as one half of Liars in the first part of the century; on this one Aaron Hemphill slowed up the tempo, crooning in sinister siren hues, tempting us to join him in unimaginable murky pleasures.
11. Chanel Beads – Your Day Will Come
Apparently Shane Lavers and Maya McGrory are quite the 2024 sensation in lower Manhattan, and rightly so. They deconstructed indie rock, bringing to mind Dean Blunt, or an acoustic My Bloody Valentine, but pushed miles beyond their influences into a dreamy, displaced groove — subtle, powerful and richly unclassifiable.
10. Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee
Cindy is Patrick Flegel‘s drag persona; her sound is a dusty, hard to define imagining of something like 60s rock and tragic girl group pop. Diamond Jubilee was the event of the indie year — 32 songs, all of them good to great, on an album you couldn’t stream. Adding to the mystique, Cindy quickly tired of all the hype and cancelled her tour less than a month in.
9. Gee Tee – Prehistoric Chrome
More dirty feet and jawbreakers pleasure from the brattiest band from down under. They delivered boy joy again and again — grungy, hooky, dumb (but not really), and always under two minutes.
8. DJ Lycox – Guetto Star
A true original, Lycox spun the dancefloor attack of Afro-Portuguese Batida into ornate, soulful concoctions with diffracted beats — alien, intoxicating, irresistible.
7. urika’s bedroom – Big Smile, Black Mire
Tchad Cousins invited us over for a floaty, tranced out sleepover. We got high on acoustic rhythms, dipped our feet in the brine pool, shared gentle nightmares. Holes in the head poured water…
6. Being Dead – Eels
16 more helpings of baroque pop rock from Austin’s best. They sound like Texas, but in a good way. I saw them live at Gold Diggers and they were adorable, so funny and unassuming, with like a million great songs.
5. Homeshake – Horsie
Montréal’s Peter Sagar conveyed the foggy consciousness of emotional convalescence — slightly numb, in and out of alpha state, with self-hugs and fragmented attempts to process it all. A pretty/ugly self-portrait in globby green and ochre oils.
4. Mdou Moctar – Funeral for Justice
An earth-scorching scream of righteousness that’s also a collection of sign-of-the-horns rager anthems. Mdou turbo-charged desert blues with his fiery guitar god skills for one of 2024’s most ecstatic thrill rides.
3. The Smile – Wall of Eyes
I’ve spent half my life muttering about Radiohead being overrated, but Wall of Eyes was just undeniable — swoony and croony, bleak and amelodic/melodic, languorous, freeform and poetic, every song a classic. A fine wine.
2. Bolis Pupul – Letter to Yu
The crown jewel of the 2020s synth-pop renaissance was the debut solo album by a Chinese-Belgian bloke from Ghent who’s pushing 40. He bowed down to totems like Vince Clark, Art of Noise and Vitalic and sounded like the future, if the future was Chinese, which it may well be. Fresh and fun and crazy experimental and danceable and never too far from the orbit of pop.
1. Seefeel – Everything Squared
30 years ago they were the first guitar band to be signed to Warp, and they’re still peaking, still like no one else — sculpting in clouds of sound, creating bejeweled, hypnotic universes and deep, layered expressions of emotion.
Honorable Mentions:
A. G. Cook — Britpop
Beak — >>>>
BIG|BRAVE — A Chaos of Flowers
Chelsea Wolfe — She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
Chris Cohen — Paint a Room
Dar Disku — Dar Disku
David Lynch and Chrystabell — Cellophane Memories
Doechii — Alligator Bites Never Heal
Fine — Rocky Top Ballads
Flo Milli — Fine Ho, Stay
Goat Girl — Below the Waste
Google Earth — Street View
h. pruz — No Glory
Kee Avil — Spine
Lee “Scratch” Perrry — King Perry
Loma — How Will I Live Without a Body?
Merce Lemon — Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild
Molina — When You Wake Up
Mount Kimbie — Sunset Violent
Mustafa — Dunya
Naum Gabo — F. Lux
Omar Souleyman — Erbil
Or:la — Trusting Theta
Osees — SORCS 80
PACKS — Melt the Honey
r3ll1k — Удали мой номер
Saramaccan Sound — Where the River Bends Is Only the Beginning
Solpara — Melancholy Sabotage
Sour Widows — Revival of a Friend
Theis Thaws — Theis Thaws
Tony Vaz — The Pretty Side of the Ugly Life
Verraco — Breathe… Godspeed
Voice Actor — Fake Sleep
Yeat — 2093
Zsela — Big for You