There’s so much music out there that even a Pitchfork staffer needs time to catch up. So every few months, our writers and editors round up a list of generally overlooked recent releases that deserve some more attention. None of these albums were named Best New Music, and some weren’t reviewed on Pitchfork at all, but we think they’re all worth a listen. From dazzling Taiwanese math rock to Y2K-inspired R&B, here’s some albums you’ll want to listen to.
(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.)
Afrorack: The Afrorack
Much commercially available modular synth hardware is built to the specifications of a format known as Eurorack. Afrorack is the project of Brian Bamanya, the Kampala, Uganda-based inventor of Africa’s first DIY modular synthesizer—a homegrown alternative to pricey imports and a creative statement in its own right. On this self-titled debut, Bamanya puts his machine through its paces, calling up sticky basslines and thumping beats beneath sounds that evoke whirring machines, birdsong, or—on one especially playful track—cowbell. Combining sinewy modular synth with a percussive resonance that’s almost physical, Afrorack is a window into Bamanya’s vision for the future: “I am convinced that the next electronic music revolution will take place in Africa.” –Anna Gaca
Listen: Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Anne Malin: Summer Angel
“Destroyer,” the centerpiece of Nashville songwriter Anne Malin Ringwalt-Johnson’s latest record Summer Angel, might have been a rock anthem in another life. It’s a slow-burning, psychedelic sunrise with a chorus that both consoles and casts a spell: “I’ll suspend the doubt/That you will hurt again,” she sings. But as with all of the songs on Summer Angel, Ringwalt-Johnson and her band take pleasure in revealing the most tender threads. Her vocal delivery is formal but frayed, so rich with emotion that its power alone seems to subdue her accompanists as she pulls them closer and closer to the heart. –Sam Sodomsky
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Binker Golding: Dream Like a Dogwood Wild Boy
Many of the most striking jazz-adjacent records in recent years have carried a DIY-punk ethos or drifting, almost New Age ambiance. Binker Golding can do both—but the London-based tenor saxophonist and composer can also sound polished enough for your trophy mantle, plush enough for a boutique hotel lobby. On the luxuriant Dream Like a Dogwood Wild Boy, Golding’s lyrical solos ride off into the sunset and his expertly poised band follows him into blues, Americana, and soft rock. Golding’s gleaming tone is a beacon on a jazz album that improbably opens with backwoods twang and collapses in power-ballad smolder. –Marc Hogan
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
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Brainwaltzera: ITSAME
IDM loves a good whodunnit. The early years of the genre are full of anonymous artists, mystery labels, and cryptic releases—rabbit hole after rabbit hole that kept message-board users guessing. Brainwaltzera only appeared in 2016, but he stays true to that initial spirit of trickery. ITSAME, the artist’s first album in five years, proves that whoever he is, he can comfortably stand on his own. Echoes of IDM’s mid-’90s heyday abound in the album’s plangent keys, skittering drums, and gentle air of wide-eyed awe. But Brainwaltzera confidently pulls familiar tropes in new directions, teasing hints of fuzzy shoegaze, fried electro, and even freak folk, while keeping his sights firmly set on the music’s overall emotional impact. The sounds may be retro, but the feelings they inspire nail you to the here and now. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Brasileiro Garantido: Churros Recheado
Churros Recheado is the latest release from Brasileiro Garantido—or Gabriel Guerra, the leader behind Rio de Janeiro’s 40% Foda/Maneiríssimo label. It’s a slippery blend of house and techno filled with spliced vocal samples and floor-filling 808s. Guerra plays it fast and loose, pivoting between styles with impish spontaneity, whether looping glitched-out voices into a hectic chorus or shuffling disjointed drum patterns until they stick to a winding rhythm. Churros Recheado takes pleasure in dancing on the precipice of chaos, leaving you unprepared for whatever pops up next. –Eric Torres
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Closet Yi: Simmer EP
As a child, Seoul producer Closet Yi was first drawn to the electronic music she heard in the background of her older sister’s video games; as an adult, she cites influences including Avalon Emerson, DJ Koze, and Baltimore club. On Simmer, black hole bass hits and light-footed rhythms combine into pummeling techno with a bleary acid bath halo. Her tracks sparkle with new-telescope fidelity, and whether you’re venturing into space or just a foggy dancefloor, the wobbly basslines of “Red Comet” and laser-guided groove of standout “DRM” unfold with an irresistible sense of adventure. –Anna Gaca
Listen: Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
dälek: Precipice
New Jersey experimental rap group dälek walked so generations of left-field rappers and producers could run. Their dedication to delivering a muddy mix of industrial, shoegaze, and ambient in a hip-hop package has kept them at the vanguard of the genre for almost 25 years. Their latest album Precipice is no exception: Between the gnarled trudge of “The Harbingers” and the humid swing of “Good,” the songs are bound by a sense of catharsis in an increasingly dangerous world. It’s their warmest and most hopeful album yet. –Dylan Green
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Defcee / Boathouse: For All Debts Private and Public
Chicago rapper Defcee is an evocative storyteller. The details in his writing—the hastily applied Sean John cologne before a date, the baby bottle he’s brushing in the sink—bring a sense of place to his otherwise rock-solid rapping. For All Debts Private and Public pairs his writerly eye with the supreme rhythms of Chicago producer Boathouse, whose beats flip early-2000s underground grit into expansive and rich sounds. The duo move through romance (“Summer 06”), autobiography (“Dunk Contest”), and straight shit-talk (“Shuriken”) with frightening ease. –Dylan Green
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Elephant Gym: Dreams
Elephant Gym’s math rock has the same spellbinding qualities as fractals or quantum mechanics. No matter how knotty the time signature, their dazzling interplay of guitar, bass, and drums conveys a sense of wonder. Dreams, the Taiwanese trio’s third album, is their most impressive and varied yet, with synths and wind instruments, a chill neo-soul collab and a prog-funk rendition of a Macbeth soliloquy. Like the music of L’Rain or Ryley Walker, it’s as close to jazz as rock: virtuosity not as a means of showing off, but approaching the sublime. –Marc Hogan
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Ella Mai: Heart on My Sleeve
Ella Mai understands courtship and heartache as the backbone of R&B. On her sophomore album Heart On My Sleeve, a slow-and-steady follow-up to her self-titled 2018 debut, Mai is either doting or quietly admiring, always welcoming a fresh crush or a familiar, complicated love with open arms. “I don’t want none of that toxic shit,” she prefaces on the Lucky Daye duet “A Mess,” an irreverent ode to chaotic romance. The songs here are pulsing yet subtle, and Mai is simply good at conveying sincerity via sensitive confessions in lieu of toxicity. –Clover Hope
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
FLO: The Lead EP
FLO puts a fresh touch on the ‘90s R&B girl group sound while evoking bedazzled flip phones, AOL, and crimped hair with their Y2K aesthetic. From the initial confrontation with an unfaithful boyfriend on "Cardboard Box,” to the assertion of self respect on the Aaliyah-like “Immature,” the break-up anthems on debut EP The Lead are empowering, not corny. It’s not all misery though: the tropical "Summertime" is a carefree girls-night-out track reminiscent of Destiny’s Child. And the effortless way that the trio’s voices weave together on "Another Guy" makes me think that some divine intervention took place with the formation of this group. –Heven Haile
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Goon: Hour of Green Evening
Goon’s Hour of Green Evening wants you to lay on the grass and watch the sun slowly rise. Dewy, wistful, and intimate, the Los Angeles indie rock band’s latest album seems unbothered by the urgency of daily life. The warm breeze that passes through the record does carry an occasional chill, though, in the gritty feedback of “Angelnumber 1210” and the eerie winding melodies on “Buffalo.” But ultimately, the record’s childlike idyll maintains a sense of nostalgia that is both comforting and melancholic. –Jane Bua
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Gwenno: Tresor
The Welsh singer Gwenno writes and performs her lyrics in Cornish, an endangered language spoken at most by a few hundred others. Since so vanishingly few people have access to her direct meaning, we are left to ponder the meaning of her choice—its devotion, its touching defiance. And we are left with the sound of Gwenno’s voice, which settles like thick mist over the music. The music changes shapes depending on the angle: at one point it is a pastoral psych-folk exercise; at another it recalls the hair-raising ambient chants of Julianna Barwick; and at another it has the icy thump of Detroit techno, left on a rainy hillside until it began to sprout vines. –Jayson Greene
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Horsegirl: Versions of Modern Performance
Horsegirl’s full-length debut, Versions of Modern Performance, is a celebration of music that has shaped the young Chicago trio. The fuzzy “World of Pots and Pans” nods to the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Pastels, and Television’s Tom Verlaine. Meanwhile, the sludgy sprawl of “Bog Bog 1” and quiet annihilation of “The Fall of Horsegirl” are pure Sonic Youth. (The album also features contributions from Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley). Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson once said that rock’n’roll is a “teenage sport,” defined not by age but by “spirit”; Versions of Modern Performance is testament that Horsegirl, barely out of their teenage years, possess that magic in spades. –Quinn Moreland
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
JER: Bothered / Unbothered
Skatune Network mastermind JER thrives in creativity overdrive, and on their long-awaited solo debut, Bothered/Unbothered, they throw an unforgettable party. From the joyous cascade of horns on “You Got Yr ---- Card Revoked!” to the reprisal of the album’s unshakable hook on “Unbothered,” Bothered/Unbothered is a modern classic in the ska-punk canon. It also elevates the genre’s progressive beliefs—from anti-racism to labor rights and intersectional unity—through lyrics born from lived experiences. –Nina Corcoran
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Judy and the Jerks: Music to Go Nuts
The second album from the Hattiesburg, Mississippi punks Judy and the Jerks is riveting and wild. A climbing breakneck guitar riff backs up shouts about the Big Buford, a menu staple at the fast food joint Checkers. The literal sound of barking dogs adds to the cacophony on their song “Dog.” There’s an exploration of what it would be like to move to California, smoke legal weed, and “make it big just like Black Flag.” Across 10 songs in 17 minutes, it’s exciting and funny punk music, though the patient closer “Control” proves that there’s more to this band than velocity and punchlines. –Evan Minsker
Listen: Bandcamp
Kalia Vandever: Regrowth
On her second album, Regrowth, Kalia Vandever sculpts her trombone’s golden tones into dazzling compositions. Starting with the gentle liftoff of opener “Soft,” the record unfurls like petals in early spring. Vandever illuminates a relaxed and sumptuous corner of her own world with her brassy billows, while touches of piano and percussion bring earthiness to her ebullient rays. Even the spare snarls of “An Unwelcome Visit” and its reprise ripple out into a dizzying wash of horns and drums. Vandever’s journey on Regrowth is a pleasure to follow, and her open-hearted melodies make her a trustworthy guide. –Allison Hussey
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Katarina Gryvul: Tysha
On her second full-length, Ukrainian-Austrian singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Katarina Gryvul positions herself at the vanguard of both classical and electronic dance music. The eight tracks on Tysha are both tender and violent, beautiful and frightening. On the standout “Bezodnya,” string harmonics, woodwinds, and Gryvul’s layered voice flutter like bare trees in winter wind, intercut with stuttering digital drums that never quite cohere into a beat. Gryvul’s sound design is massive and tactile in the manner of a sci-fi blockbuster, rendering the tension at the heart of her music almost overwhelmingly vivid. –Andy Cush
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Lynn Avery / Cole Pulice: To Live & Die in Space & Time
It’s tempting to classify To Live & Die in Space & Time as ambient or new age; the music that keyboardist Lynn Avery and saxophonist Cole Pulice make together is certainly soothing and panoramic enough for your morning sun salutation. But the debut from this Minneapolis duo is too melodically-focused to ever truly fade to the background. The album’s four tracks are sequenced with evident deliberateness, from shortest (3:11) to longest (12:48), and the melodic possibilities expand with the durations. Opener “Belt of Venus” is built on a breezy and succinct theme with little variation, while closer “The Sunken Cabin (Night)” is practically all variation, Pulice’s burbling arpeggios seemingly never tracing the same route twice. –Andy Cush
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Maria Chiara Argirò: Forest City
Although Maria Chiara Argirò got her start in the UK’s jazz and classical scenes, the London-based pianist opts for a different environment on her third solo album, Forest City, going instead for sprawling ambient arrangements. Hazy, downtrodden vocal harmonies blend with aquatic synth arpeggios that mirror the tide, like Azure Ray singing over Thom Yorke compositions. True to its title, Forest City sounds like nature spreading its roots over a once-prosperous metropolis, a peaceful reclamation process. There’s no escaping the gorgeous spell Argirò casts. –Nina Corcoran
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
mediopicky: mediopicky
Mediopicky is straight-to-the-point on his biography: “I was borned, i learned to pruduce, and now you are dancing,” his Bandcamp reads. How he gets you to dance, though, is always subject to change. On his self-titled album, the Dominican electronic producer tours through crushed-up pop punk (“el dinero”) and LCD Soundsystem-type party fodder (“1”), ruminative house (“la geopolitica”) and ferocious reggaeton and metal (“quien te llamo”). It’s a work of remarkable adventurousness that’s also a really nice hang. –Cat Zhang
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Men Seni Süyemin: Hope
Men Seni Süyemin is the nom de plume of Minona Volandova, a classically trained guitarist and producer from Kazakhstan who relocated to St. Petersburg to work on her craft as a songwriter. Her new six-song EP HOPE combines ambient, tempered house beats, and Japanese city pop into a sleek, glowing vehicle. The record suggests cruising through a neon tunnel, and yet Volandova’s pieces give off warmth rather than dystopian chill. Opener “NOZH” is the EP’s best offering, its propulsive, rubbery arpeggios at times like a candy-coated take on industrial techno. Think the Prodigy, if they wore pastels. –Madison Bloom
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Moten/López/Cleaver: Moten/López/Cleaver
The esteemed cultural polymath Fred Moten is a poet, critic, professor, and theorist of the aesthetics of the Black radical tradition. Now, he adds recording artist to the list. Alongside drummer Gerald Cleaver and upright bassist Brandon Lopez, Moten synthesizes poetry and jazz in the build of the New York Art Quartet or contemporaries Irreversible Entanglements. Tracked in the immediate aftermath of 2020’s Black Lives Matter uprising, this is fire music at a simmer, describing a world ablaze. –Jenn Pelly
Listen: Bandcamp
Naima Bock: Giant Palm
In the years since her departure from Goat Girl, Naima Bock has been unraveling her own heritage and weaving it into something new. Bock spent her early childhood in Brazil before relocating to South-East London, and on her solo debut Giant Palm, she braids together bucolic English folk, fluttering Tropicalia, and elements of ’60s psych rock. With the help of producer and arranger Joel Burton, she enlisted over 30 musicians to record on Giant Palm. The cohort’s contributions add a delightful strangeness to the album: Bent saxophone, jazz flute, and strings wrap around Bock’s hazy voice, suggesting some mystical, askew idyll. –Madison Bloom
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Ogi: Monologues EP
On Ogi Ifediora’s debut EP, the up-and-coming singer sounds smooth as silk over jazzy arrangements and percussive R&B. Monologues, produced by hip-hop heavyweight No I.D., is a brisk demonstration of Ogi’s skill for homespun lyrics and breezy melodies. The slow-burning “Envy” and breakout single “I Got It” both showcase her subtle harmonies as Ogi delicately describes emotions that drift from bitterness to bravado, sometimes in the very same verse. –Eric Torres
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Papo2oo4: Ballerific
If you’ve ever missed the feeling of listening to New York rap radio in 2003, then Ballerific is the mixtape for you. Throughout the project, Elizabeth, New Jersey’s Papo2oo4 cruises over cosmic beats from producer Subjxct 5 with fly lifestyle raps and woozy melodic flourishes. Papo is a gifted scene setter: You know what he’s eating (“pork fried rice with a side of broccoli”), wearing (“Ain’t dressin’ up unless I’m getting a bag otherwise I’m in sweats”), and listening to (“Memphis Bleek, Dreamchasers Meek”) at all times. All it’s missing is some late night DJ Clue radio drops to really capture the feeling. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Snufmumriko: Radio Mnemosyne
Snufmumriko urges you to succumb to slowness. The Gothenburg, Sweden-based ambient producer uses field recordings and organic undulations to initiate a retreat into emptiness, like passing time in an uninhabited cabin. On “Långt under noll,” from Radio Mnemosyne, reverberating pops and cracks lay beneath filtered synths and muted percussion. It’s an experience of eternal solitude: the sound of dust bunnies rolling under sofas, the feeling of soft light dancing on your face as you nap. –Arjun Srivatsa
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
S.G. Goodman: Teeth Marks
S.G. Goodman’s songs make urgent, messy shapes in air. On “Work Until I Die,” the Kentucky-bred singer-songwriter yelps about gutted unions and wage slavery while her band pushes the downbeat like a golden retriever straining its leash. On “When You Say It,” she mutters "don't call me honey, it don’t mean nothing when you say it" as if she were trying to bite through the song itself. Goodman may come from roots rock, but her music's live-wire unpredictability means she's at home nowhere: in her best and most vivid moments, she leaps across the yearning distance separating Waxahatchee from Lucinda Williams. –Jayson Greene
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Shoko Igarashi: Simple Sentences
Japanese city pop was more than a decade old by 1991, when Shoko Igarashi was born, but the 31-year-old Berklee graduate’s music is so faithful to the recently revived genre that it’d be easy to mistake it for the real thing. Her solo debut, Simple Sentences, is a cheerful tour of vintage sounds that sparkle as if they just came out of shrink wrap: glassy FM synths, rubbery slap bass, cryogenic faux woodwinds. Dreamy downbeat jams like “Comfy Place” find a halfway spot between Flat Earth-era Thomas Dolby and Detroit techno, and while the album’s release on Tigersushi places it in dialogue with a broad swath of contemporary electronic dance music, her jazz training shines through in her dazzlingly unpredictable chord changes, which are less Berghain than Burt Bacharach. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Spotify | Tidal
Silvia Tarozzi / Deborah Walker: Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d’amore
On her 2020 album Mi specchio e rifletto, Italian violinist and composer Silvia Tarozzi explored motherhood and uncertainty through the poetry of Alda Merini. For June’s Canti di Guerra, di lavoro e d‘amore, she linked with cellist Deborah Walker to reinterpret the traditional work songs of women rice planters in rural Italy. They sing in joyful, dense layers and dive into open spaces; it often sounds like they’re on an infinite feedback loop, each finding thrill and inspiration from the other. Walker and Tarozzi highlight the under-acknowledged creativity and virtuosity of women working together. –Allison Hussey
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Skullshitter: Goat Claw
Skullshitter, a New York-based trio that plays vicious, full-speed grindcore, are here to challenge your assumptions about hallucinogenic drugs. Forget blissful jamming, swirling colors,and the interconnectedness of the universe: their debut album, Goat Claw, represents the darker side of the experience. A 16-song, 35-minute blast that samples liberally from the 1987 supernatural horror film The Gate, the music bursts with broken-motor riffs, Satanic imagery, and gory, surrealist visions of death. And while song titles like “Doing Drugs With the Devil” seem to embody the whole story, Goat Claw is the type of bad trip you need to experience yourself, all the way through, to fully understand. –Sam Sodomsky
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
They Hate Change: Finally, New
“Bitch, I’m Poly Styrene,” raps They Hate Change’s Vonne Parks on “Some Days I Hate My Voice.” It’s the final mic-dropping flex on the raw track from Finally, New, the latest full-length from the adventurous Tampa duo. The pair lean into the outsider status of the Floridian underground while working at a thrilling cross-section of many club idioms, but this four-word nod to the brash X-Ray Spex frontwoman illuminates They Hate Change’s vision of a fearlessly out-of-step sound, one like nobody else. –Jenn Pelly
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify
Vintage Crop: Kibitzer
Across their fourth album, the Australian indie rock band Vintage Crop boast, joke, muse, and yes, kibitz while showcasing their excellent hook-writing and guitar melodies. On highlight “Hold the Line,” a simmering bassline mirrors the wry patience of the band’s frontman as he gladly accepts phony offers from scam callers blowing up his phone. With their dry sense of humor, the band rewards careful listening, and they pull off some satisfying moments on the album: the horn section outro, the garish keyboard lines, and the sudden gang vocals shouting “the duke! the duke! the duke!” in unison. –Evan Minsker
Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Young Slo-Be: Southeast
Stockton, California’s Young Slo-Be raps like his teeth are clenched, which is why the tracks on his latest album Southeast seem intense even when the beats are graceful. A slinky, pitched-up sample initially makes highlight “Track Stars” feel sweet—until you hear thrashing percussion and Slo-Be growling like a demon. On “Say Yes,” he murmurs warning shots over a soulful instrumental that soon becomes punishing. As good as the beat selection is—all laser beams and twisted sample flips that make Stockton’s scene so exciting—Slo-Be’s menacing voice is the true driver of the tape. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this feature, Radio Mnemosyne was incorrectly billed as the artist name of Snufmumriko. Radio Mnemosyne is the title of an album by Snufmumriko.
