The Best Albums of 2026 So Far

This Quebec duo—shrouded in polka dots and playing rhythm-heavy microtonal math rock—became viral sensations in March, thanks to a video of bassist-guitarist Khn de Poitrine (he plays a double-necked axe strung with both setups) and drummer Klek de Poitrine demolishing a half-hour set. But their second full-length delivers on the hype with wit and verve, with cuts like the woozy yet propulsive “Mata Zyklek” and the speedy “Yor Zarad” showcasing the pair’s ability to combine the disparate weirdnesses of prog, punk, and guitar heroism into giddy mini-epics.–Maura Johnston

A$AP Rocky’s long-awaited return is slick and overstuffed, from the Tim Burton-designed artwork to cameos from Damon Albarn of Gorillaz and Oscar-winning composer Danny Elfman, as he conveys his evolution from scrapping on the streets of Harlem to luxuriating in wealthy, starstruck domestic bliss. He indulges his maximalist tastes, from chanting alongside Slay Squad on hardcore banger “STFU” or playing Bonnie and Clyde with Doechii over a jazzy arrangement of piano and drums on the zippy “Robbery.” Hate on Rocky for being the kind of overconfident talker who sparks beef with former friend Drake on “Stole Ya Flow.” But it sounds like he’s having fun and he convinces the listener to join the party, too.–Mosi Reeves

In the past, fans viewed Baby Keem as a familial protégé of Kendrick Lamar, someone whose youthful verve on hit singles like “Family Ties” felt like a refreshing antidote to his second cousin’s intensely thoughtful persona. But Keem has his demons, too, and he expunges them with Casino, an album centered on his troubled childhood in Las Vegas. “I was seven years old, waiting on you in pajamas/You said you would come home, should’ve never made that promise,” he harmonizes in a broken, sobbing cadence on “No Security.” Keem thinks like a producer, and he arranges his songs into a portrait of a young man troubled but not bowed by his past. He yelps, mutters in a rage/plugg flow and sings, but there’s a lightness that lingers in his voice.–M.R.

Two years in the making – an eternity for today’s Latin pop standards – Bad Gyal’s second album exudes a pervasive feeling of VIP luxury, from the sensuous panache of the neo-bachata “Da Me” to the sweet synth filigrees in the EDM-flavored “Fa$hion Killa.” The Catalan star follows her muse instinctively, shimmying from genre to genre, but it is the rich texture of her voice that steals the show – bathed in the golden glow of dancehall, veering into darkly hued reggaetón voltage on “Choque,” with Chencho Corleone. Dismissing Gyal as a commercial diva would be a mistake; her stylistic appetite is edgy and futuristic.–Ernesto Lechner

The K-pop queens of Blackjack make their comeback on Deadline, three years after their last album Born Pink. All four—Jennie, Rosé, Lisa, Jisoo—are in the mood to stunt, always what they’re best at, oozing glam charisma. It’s a fast 15-minute EP,  featuring their 2025 single “Jump,” plus the Eighties new wave tribute “Champion,” the vengeful guitar ballad “Fxxxboy,” and the party banger “Go,” with a writing credit from Coldplay’s Chris Martin. ”Me and My” warns you to watch out and hide your man when Blackpink roll up to the club. Jennie toasts “pretty privilege,” in her “hottie season,” and boasts, “Daisy Dukes make me speak my mind.”–Rob Sheffield

Back in the Nineties, few would have dared to dub Boards of Canada “trip-hop,” and maybe they shouldn’t have. But BoC’s lazy breakbeats and woozy air points straight in that direction — and period charm has always been their greatest strength. Nobody is better at making these kind of limpid lullabies. Tracks like “You Retreat in Time and Space” — hell, even the title is trip-hop — and “Into the Magic Land” define the environs of Inferno. Their first album since 2013 is lush, rich, and cinematic—and goes past genres as well as embodying them.–Michaelangelo Matos

Bryan swung for the fences with this 25-track opus, with songs about running with the bulls in spain, reckoning with his life on long plane flights, the burden of the past and the weight of the future. “Skin” is an almost troublingly visceral breakup song, while the Tom Petty-steeped “Slicked Back” pays tribute to the grounding influence of his new wife. He channels this whirr of emotions into his most ambitious music yet, going from subtle indie-folk to sweeping Americana rock. And with the controversial single “Bad News” he turned the bummer of doom scrolling into a daring political statement.–Jon Dolan

BTS make their long-awaited return on Arirang, their first new album in over five years. Now that they’ve fulfilled their mandatory military service, BTS are going hard, with production from Diplo, Flume, Ryan Tedder, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, Mike WiLL Made It, and JPEGMAFIA. They celebrate their roots, naming the album after a legendary Korean folk song while interpolating another in “Body to Body.” “Interlude” is a tribute that’s simply the toll of the sacred bell of King Seongdeck, one of Korea’s revered cultural treasures, cast over 1200 years ago. Yet they break free in “FYA,” with the party chant, Like Britney, baby / Hit me with it one more time!”–R.S.

The Argentine duo’s second album expands on their self-professed, ongoing “social experiment.” Ca7riel and Paco use FREE SPIRITS as a platform to express their dissatisfaction with celebrity and wealth. Fortunately, the same tenets that informed their lightning-in-a-bottle Tiny Desk session are still present: a remarkable degree of harmonic complexity, Ca7riel’s ultra-cool guitar licks, and an opulent production sheen that teeters between the silky and the synthetic. An eccentric duet with Sting, “Hasta Jesús Tuvo Un Mal Día” celebrates the goofy exuberance of Eighties rock radio, and the summery Brazilian groove of “Vida Loca” is genuinely affecting. The boys’ provocative antics can get annoying at times, but their love of sophisticated music is infectious – and redemptive.–E.L.

Staying true to form, Callahan’s latest contains self-analytical songs about maturing (“Pathol O.G.”), fatherhood from both his recently deceased dad’s and his own perspective (“Empathy”), and living up to his wife’s expectations of him (“The Man I’m Supposed to Be”). Where the music he recorded decades ago using the name Smog was sparse yet exacting, the folky arrangements of My Days of 58 sound loose and live, thanks to Jim White’s drumming and lively horn and string arrangements that enhance Callahan’s confessional and often hilarious lyrics. “We take life seriously, laugh in the face of death,” he sings on “The Man I’m Supposed to Be,” but he punctuates that thought at the end with a falsetto “hee-hee.” —Kory Grow

This Irish band has a highly original sound — knife-sharp indie guitars plus wheezing, sighing accordion — and a prize frontman in Euan Manning, whose shivering intensity can bring to mind a young Thom Yorke or Jeff Buckley with more of a feral edge. They’ve got some damn catchy songs, too. “Over at Last,” “She Makes Me Real,” and the title track are mini-epics full of raging, yearning emotion. On “Barbed Wire,” they sing about debauched nights out on the town; on “The Burning of Cork,” they reference their hometown’s history of colonial violence. It adds up to one of the year’s most replayable rock debuts, and a band with tons of potential.–Simon Vozick-Levinson

The Canadian art-punk trio Cola specialize in dystopian guitar grooves, exploring all the ways that the capitalist grind can corrode the soul. They made their name with 2022’s Deep In View and 2024’s The Gloss. But this time they go all the way, with their radically original third album, Cost of Living Adjustment. Cola jump right out at you in the irresistible “Hedgesplitting,” with shoegaze guitar/synth shimmer and a sampled hip-hop drum loop. “Conflagration Mindset” rages about the L.A. fires, while “Much of a Muchness” dissects the social-media blues, with Tim Darcy sneering, “It’s all eros and ones / All digits, no thumbs.”--R.S.

On his latest, the country megastar takes his various sides—sensitive balladeer “Giving Her Away”), beer-chugging bar band leader (“Alcohol of Fame”), gruff country-rock outlaw (“Back in the Saddle”)—and somehow makes them all fit into a neat whole. On “Ever Mine,” a song with Alison Krauss, he shows he can even dip into bluegrass and traditional American music and make it seem natural and unforced. After keeping quiet since his crossover “Fast Car” success, the 36 year old has re-emerged with a convincing case for his place as the foremost family friendly star in country music star in 2026.–Jonathan Bernstein

Puerto Rican rapper Álvaro Díaz is considered one of Latin music’s most unpredictable, omnidirectional artists, but his masterful, mind-bending album Omakase is a step up, even for a guy who’s always been ahead of the musical curve. He mashes up heartbreak, dembow, and cumbia, and morphs traditional plena into weird chord progressions from avant producer El Guincho. There’s stories of break-ups and heartache; some of the best are “Perdiste el Emmy,” featuring Tainy’s signature sentimental synths, and “No Podemos Ser Amigos,” which blends hints of drum ‘n’ bass and electronic flourishes. Plus, he gets even more of his galaxy-brained friends and rising acts to join in: Mexican trio Latin Mafia, R&B singer Jesse Baez, Chilean upstarter Akriila, and hidden vocals from Rauw Alejandro.— Julyssa Lopez

There hasn’t been a more exciting burst of Southern-inflected guitar rock this year than this full-length from the New Orleans-based songwriter Thomas Dollbaum. Like so many exciting Southern indie records as of late, MJ Lenderman makes a cameo, but it’s Dollbaum’s songwriting and sense of melody that makes this a genuine keeper: See the haunted, howling refrain that concludes “Waterbird,” or the stormy stomp-rock of “Pulverize,” or the immediate anthem “Dozen Roses.” If you like any combination of guitars, Southern gothic storytelling, or just big bursting choruses you might want to sing in a bar late at night, this is the album for you. “In this great land of dying,” as he sings, “I’m happy to be alive.”–Jon Blistein

The crown jewel of Drake’s three-album barrage, Maid of Honour is where the sprawl sharpens into feeling: fluid, club-lit, and cross-genre, with Drake turning house, dancehall, queer nightlife, and regional Black sounds into a persuasive argument for his cultural fluency. It’s his strongest work in years because the bangers carry the thesis — making the body move before the discourse can catch up. The album draws from Black musical traditions that are often maligned in the mainstream for existing outside the rigid, often hyper-conservative, hyper-masculine boundaries of commercial music. Queer nightlife, dancehall, and house music, all undeniably Black cultural innovations, braid seamlessly across the album’s nimble 45-minute runtime.–Jeff Ihaza

The third album from the U.K. post-punk band Dry Cleaning hits a peak balance of deadpan lyrics and equally deadpan guitars. Vocalist Florence Shaw cooly speaks her lyrics with the emotional connection of someone reading a coroner’s report as she unpacks topics like foodie neurosis or the boredom and rage of our doomscrolling reality. With the help of producer Cate Le Bon, the band delivers her postcards from the edge with music that’s appropriately ironic and mordant, but also varied and at points even kind of rousing, from the Eighties college-pop strum of “Blood” to the street-rock strut of “The Cute Things.”–J.D.

A former child star releasing a comeback album isn’t that revelatory, but a former child star releasing a great comeback album is exceedingly rare. Luck….Or Something, Duff’s first new album in over a decade, is the sparkly synth-pop surprise we didn’t know we needed so badly. The record, made with her husband Matthew Koma, offers a realistic and vulnerable glimpse at where her life is now — many years after Lizzie McGuire, “Come Clean,” and that “With Love” dance that became viral in the TikTok era — as she sings about motherhood, marriage, and just needing that damn glass of orange wine. “I’m a mom and I pick up my kids at school and pack lunches every day and it’s so hard,’” Duff told us. “What I was interested in talking about is the shift in how it makes me feel, as a person.” Mission accomplished.–Angie Martoccio

Love is everywhere on Avalon Emerson’s ethereal sophomore album, Written Into Changes, whether it’s embodied by an ice cold brewski, sunny drive down the freeway, or the kind eyes of her closest friends on her birthday. Though Emerson cut her teeth as a DJ across the globe, morphing Knife-esque techno musings into mixes with Erykah Badu drops, the music she pens with her band the Charm is breezy and indebted to the Eighties; think New Wave, soft rock, and dream-pop. Even when love tears her apart, she finds a way to sew herself back together, and make it all sound like the humid summer evening under the stars. –Jaeden Pinder

One of Music Row’s most reliable and inventive songwriters levels up as a solo artist on this smooth-country collection that redefines what it means to be laid back. But Ernest (full name: Ernest K. Smith) isn’t sailing seas already charted by Kenny Chesney and Zac Brown Band on Deep Blue. He’s adding some much-needed gravitas to country’s penchant for beachy escapism. The title track is a fiddle-forward heartbreaker — “Yeah, you always wanted mе to drown anyways,” he sings — while “Lorelai” finds Ern’ still flying a flag for the woman who “wrecked my world.” Not every sunset in life is a pretty one.--Joseph Hudak

“Don’t forget, we’re lucky if we get out alive,” Dave Grohl reminds us on “Spit Shine,” a seething blur from Foo Fighters’ 12th album. Few rockers understand that sentiment as poignantly as he does, and Your Favorite Toy he channels that feeling into high-energy garage-rock. With three guitarists and new drummer Ilan Rubin replacing the late Taylor Hawkins, the band knocks through ten, fast, loud, very catchy songs that can be haunted (in “Of All People” he runs into a drug dealer he can’t believe is still around), but always feel like their thrashing towards a resilient epiphany.–J.D.

Kim Gordon has been a punk legend for over four decades now, ever since Sonic Youth, but she’s riding higher than ever. Play Me continues her bizarre-yet-perfect collaboration with L.A. producer Justin Raisen, best known for working with artists like Kid Cudi, Lil Yachty, and Charli XCX. She sneers over the industrial trap beats, with savagely funny satires of modern American culture. In the title tune, she recites the names of Spotify mood-themed playlists, from “rich popular girl” to “jazz in the background” to “chilling after work,” while “Bye Bye” has Dave Grohl pounding the drums. Play Me makes it seem like Gordon is just getting started.–R.S.

Damon Albarn has been making magically multifarious pop songs with a rotating cast of all-stars for 25 years in the cartoon side project that turned into his main creative outlet. But he’s never made a Gorillaz album as moving as The Mountain, which began with a revelatory trip to India with co-founder Jamie Hewlett and turned into a profound exploration of grief featuring guest appearances from former collaborators like Dennis Hopper, Tony Allen, Dave Jolicoeur, and Proof. Those ghostly presences, calling in from the great studio in the sky to mingle with newer friends like Trueno and Black Thought, make this an emotionally resonant landmark in Gorillaz’ catalog.–S.V.L.

The least surrealistic lyric on “I Ate the Most,” the lead track on Aldous Harding’s fifth album, goes, “I feel that I feel the most,” and somehow that confession makes the already quiet and contemplative song somehow more chilling and intimate. A master of musical sleight of hand, Harding has a way of elevating the songs on Train on the Island into little masterpieces of vulnerability, such as the way she bends her voice on “One Stop,” singing “Why wouldn’t I want to meet you/Why wouldn’t I want to hold you?” like she’s having a nervous breakdown. John Parish’s production adds texture to Harding’s songs, which at times recall PJ Harvey and early 2000s Radiohead, but it’s Harding’s left-of-center perspective that makes this a stunner. —K.G.

Omerta marks the first-ever collaborative album from two of the biggest voices in Colombia, J Balvin and Ryan Castro. It also feels like a natural progression of the pair’s close friendship, which developed over the past five years as Balvin mentored rising star Castro. As a result, the LP moves through the genres that identify each artist: rock, dancehall, and, of course, reggaeton, tracing the trust that collaborators have been able to find in each other. Named after the Italian phrase for a code of silence, Omerta emphasizes these close ties and the importance of family.–Maya Georgi  

If The Fall-Off really is J. Cole’s final album, he leaves with something fittingly weighty: a two-disc opus that moves like a novel, full of soulful warmth, anxious nostalgia, and the contradictions that have always made him compelling. The first, Disc 29, chronicles his return to his native Fayetteville at the age of 29, flush from industry success; the second, Disc 39, documents a similar trip home, but this time as a married father of two children. Dense, frustrating, and beautifully human, it’s less a victory lap than a self-interrogation — animated by Jermaine Cole himself, in all his wit, flaws, and stubborn moral restlessness.–J.I.

Where do you go after the season of the sticks? It’s a question Noah Kahan asks himself time and time again on The Great Divide, the 17-track odyssey that arrives four years after he broke through with that addictive ditty about Vermont. He’s a fully-fledged rock star now, Ray Bans on his face, navigating stardom while still trying to keep his loved ones close. “Every cliché about music has proven so true for me,” he told us in his Rolling Stone cover story. “Like, ‘You can get everything you want, and it’s still not going to do it!’” Highlights include “Doors,” “American Cars,” “Dashboard,” and “We Go Way Back,” but it’s a cohesive no-skips record, best played on long drives through the woods — as Kahan intended.–A.M.

“Choosin Texas” was already country’s 2026 song of the summer when it dropped back in fall of 2025. Turns out Langley, a 27-year-old Alabaman, had an album’s worth of songcraft nearly as good to back it up, including another sweet Miranda Lambert co-write (“Butterfly Season”), an ear-wormy girl-crushy confession in the spirit of “Jolene” and Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush” (“Be Her”), and, in case you doubted her roots, a note-perfect reading of Kitty Wells’ classic “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” As we wrote, Langley’s slump-less sophomore LP could do for classic country style what Laufey and Billie Eilish have done for post-WWII jazz-pop, just in time for WWIII.–Will Hermes

From the very beginning of Melanie Martinez’s ultra-ambitious concept album Hades, crisis is at every corner, and existential dread starts creeping in from the first baroque seconds of the opener, “Garbage.” A haunting string orchestra promises to pacify the listener, all while gunshots in the background tug at the anxieties of constant war and violence detonating around us. This is Martinez setting up a complex, technocratic dystopia, starring a new character she’s invented named Circle. From there, she kicks off the layered story of a pop star consumed in a barren, wealth-obsessed AI wasteland, complete with cults and religious lunacy. he thrill here is seeing Martinez find a new way into every song without repeating herself and constantly coming up with damn good pop tracks.–J.L.

The second album from Verity Susman (of cult heroes Electrelane) and Matthew Sims (of post-punk titans Wire) is a psychedelic trip, with the pair pinning their massive musical know-how into intricate, yet hulking rock songs. Tracks like the Krautrock-grooved “Cut Glass Hammer” and the fuzz-shrouded “In the Weeds” smash the limits of how much noise two people can make at once; the elegiac “Lemon Trees” is ghostly at first, with the music turning into a maelstrom as Susman wails, “Elevate me down,” stretching out each syllable until she and the music fully descend into distortion-pedal-assisted chaos.–M.J. 

Pompeii// Utility is a product of a fertile Brooklyn rap scene that has nurtured local voices like New Jersey’s Mike Bonema as well as transplants such as L.A.-raised rapper Earl Sweatshirt. The two each get a side, with MIKE using Pompeii for abstract meditations on life as a musician, rendered in his wavery, deep-hued rumble, and Earl taking on Utility while delivering revelations like “As a child, I learned life wasn’t fair/So I learned how to balance the scale.” Production crew Surf Gang add frizzy plugg-style beats to MIKE and Earl’s muddy flows, and the dissonance is appealing, resulting in music that sounds like deep thoughts and electric–MR possibilities.–M.R.

The breakout Gen Z country star kept her rolling going, deepening her musical craft and her songwriting depth on the excellent Cloud 9. “Liars & Tigers & Bears” is a pop star complaint that never feels like entitled griping; “Bells & Whistles,” with Kacey Musgraves, offers a complex new spin on the classic Nashville cheating song; “Stupid” is a clever riff on romantic cluelessness. From the revved up pop tunes to the ballads, Moroney’s latest proves she’s one of the best artists around at making modern heartache feel as deep as the Nashville classics.--J.D.

Kacey Musgraves’ seventh album is not only a hard-won homecoming, it also marks her best full-length release since 2018’s Grammy-winning Golden Hour. On Middle of Nowhere, this once-and-future country queen leans back into the twangier sounds of her earliest releases, tapping Texas heroes like Willie Nelson and Miranda Lambert along the way. In order to truly bring the total spirit of the border state into focus, though, Musgraves weaves in more música mexicana touches — from norteño acordion to ranchera cowbells.–M.G.

From start to finish, Neurosis’ surprise-released 12th record, which features the arrival of former Isis guitarist-singer Aaron Turner, is a heavy reaffirmation of their core values. On every song, they warn listeners of modern society’s debasement and degradation and offer a life preserver in the form of their unique, foundation-rumbling thunder. Their music, constructed from guttural growls, lunging rhythms, and stretched-out, minimalistic heavy guitar, has always served as a crucible for their discontent. Listeners who give themselves over to Neurosis’ cacophony come through the other side feeling recharged, like a sweaty workout. This time, though, the cauldron burns hotter. —K.G.

For years, Trent Reznor has remixed his own songs and invited dance music luminaries to perform cosmetic surgery on them. But there’s something special about the way Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails bandmate Atticus Ross clicked with Boys Noize, a.k.a. Alex Ridha, in recent years that reverberates through their collaborative, Nine Inch Noize. The album features new versions of songs from Nine Inch Nails’ catalog, but, other than “Closer,” the group didn’t pick obvious ones. Instead, they chose songs that could benefit from head-imploding electronic bass drums and a little TB-303 squelch. Whoever would have thought that The Downward Spiral’s “Heresy” and its Nietzschean “God is dead” chorus would still sound good after a squeaky acid-house makeover? —K.G.

Puth often gets dinged for being overly coy and self-conscious but his latest is a great reboot. The pop wiz kid delivers his most musically rich, personally revealing album, going from Eighties synth-pop to yacht-rock, from a tribute to his dad featuring Kenny G to a sensitive Seventies folk song about his brother to a song about how lame it can be to meet your musical heroes. He ends the album with a song that’s at once the most meta thing here and the most genuine: the critique-assuming “I Used to Be Cringe.” Even if he’s a little cringe, he’s on a roll too.–J.D.

Chicago’s Ratboys have been touring and recording for more than a decade, refining their take on twangy, emo-streaked indie rock in a way that makes Singin’ to an Empty Chair feel like a culmination. It boasts hooky gems (“Anywhere,” “Penny in the Lake”), bursts of chaos (“Light Night Mountains All That”), and even heady expansiveness (“Just Want You to Know the Truth”). Much of the emotional heft comes from singer/guitarist Julia Steiner’s efforts to use her music to communicate with an estranged loved one (the empty chair she’s singing to). But hope is still easy to come by: “And all the while I’m enjoying every momеnt,” Steiner sings on the closer, “As we’re walking toward the world we’ll find.”--.J.Blistein

A glorious party marathon, Rawayana’s sixth album blends politics and hedonism with the silky voice of Beto Montenegro acting as its irresistible connective tissue. The Venezuelan band espouses freedom in all its possible forms – sexual, musical, political – and the guest features glow with an expansive, summer-of-love generosity: Manuel Turizo adds erotic tenderness to “Inglés en Miami,” while Elena Rose infuses the crisp Afrobeats of “Naguará” with ice cool elegance. Even música mexicana stars Carín León and Grupo Frontera show up to the party. To Rawayana’s credit, the 23-track list flows seamlessly, alternating between fleshy delights and quiet introspection.–E.L.

The London drama queen Raye has a story to tell on This Music May Contain Hope. It’s a wildly ambitious epic of romantic despair, full of jazzy torch ballads, in the mode of her breakthrough hit “Where Is My Husband?” This Music is a glitzy 73-minute narrative, spread out over four season-themed acts. “Goodbye Henry” is a duet with soul legend Al Green, while “The WhatsApp Shakespeare” casts her as a Juliet who tangles with a Romeo using “weapons of mass seduction.”  “I AM a sob story,” she confesses in “Winter Woman”—but Raye makes no apologies for that at all.–R.S.

Robyn gets back to the dance floor, where she always belongs. Sexistential is the Swedish disco diva’s first album in eight years, and as you can guess from the title, she’s not exactly playing coy. She’s got sex on the brain—the adult kind, with her mid-life hormones raging away. As she boasts, “My body’s a spaceship with the ovaries on hyperdrive.” She goes for vintage Eurodisco electro-throb in bangers like “Dopamine,” even when she’s singing about fertility treatments and break-ups. She revisits her 2002 single “Blow My Mind,” but revamps it into a poignant vaporwave love song to her three-year-old son.–R.S.

Rodirgo’s third album is a complex emotional ride, one that’ll turn platitudes and presumptions about love on their head. There were sonic Easter eggs dotting “drop dead,” which was also the first single, like a reference to the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” and the hazy fuzz of guitars that she and longtime producer Dan Nigro went for, conjuring New Wave gods and the image of a lonely-hearted Robert Smith. All of it sets up something closer to real life as Rodrigo moves through the full arc of a relationship — the dreamy honeymoon phase, the first hints of conflict, the crushing goodbye — to achieve her most complete, musically adventurous album yet.–J.L.

On To Whom It May Concern, Jill Scott pushes her adventurous streak to the fore. It swerves between New Orleans funk, go-go, ragtime blues, deep house, the type of filtered drums and haunted piano popular in Nineties trip-hop and acid jazz, and house music. Her performances feel artful and technically impressive, girded by a hard-won graininess and a nearly 30-year career, and she’s hardly lost her sense of play. The proof lies in songs like “Ode to Nikki,” where she trades rap bars with Ab-Soul on “Ode to Nikki” like a Nineties super-scientifical MC; and “Right Here, Right Now,” where Om’mas Keith (best known for his work with Frank Ocean) helms a riveting deep house jam.–M.R.

“I’m blessed with a keen eye,” the DMV-via-Tigray MC Sideshow muses on “Signs+Symbols,” the clamorous opening track of his four-disc opus, and what unfurls in its wake bear out that claim. Braiding his brief, yet potent songs with a parable about the origins of predators and prey, Sideshow illustrates the struggles and triumphs he’s experienced and witnessed with blunt honesty and lyrical dexterity, his rubbery flow melting into the trap snares of “I Am Da Captain” and draping itself over the woozy guitars of “International Soda Club.”–M.J.

Leave it to Sturgill Simpson to follow-up an album suffused with heartache with one preoccupied with righteous political fury and unabashed horn-doggery. Mutiny After Midnight is riotous and ribald, a hip-shaking, sweat-sticky album performed by a band, the Dark Clouds, at the top of their game. “Make America Fuk Again” lays out Simpson’s thesis that sex is the cure for all that ails us; he then proves it with freaky humor (“Stay On That”), sincere intimacy (“Viridescent”), and metaphysical passion (“Venus”). Simpson pairs these songs with salvos against our violent politics and inane pop culture (“Excited Delirium,” “Ain’t That a Bitch”), hammering home the point that coming together may really stem from, well, coming together.–J.Blistein

The electro-sleaze party of the year, from a true pop queen who’s finally making the big breakthrough she’s always deserved. Slayyyter makes Worst Girl in America her brilliant musical autobiography, a rebel heart running wild on orange wine and trash-disco flash, over the distorted beats. It’s the story of of a Midwest girl growing up obsessed with MySpace-era rock and dirty pop—as she calls it, “iPod music.” She mourns the Y2K dream in “Brittany Murphy,” chases the fame monster in “I’m Actually Kinda Famous,” struts her stuff in “Beat Up Chanels,” and hungers for human flesh in her bang-the-DJ anthem “Cannibalism.”–R.S.

There’s no album quite like Companion, the second LP from New York/North Carolina’s Sluice: The record starts with two hook-heavy, indie-pop gems, descends into a handful of beautifully dissonant folk musings that border at times on tone poems, before ending with two more rushes of tightly-crafted should-be hits. Sluice is the brainchild of Justin Morris, a songwriter who has a penchant for finding the sublime in the mundane (real estate, Asheville traffic, getting reviewed in Pitchfork). He also has an arranger’s touch for using production choices as storytelling: The moment when the drums come in on “Beadie” (“I used to move every Spring/And now I don’t!”) just might be the most emotional moment on an indie record in 2026.–J. Blistein

Hemlocke Springs’ debut album The Apple Under the Sea marks the long-awaited, full-length arrival of an eccentric pop act with an expert grasp on vivid, action-packed storytelling. Springs plays various erratic and unusual characters across the 10-track record, using these distinct personalities to dismantle her prior perceptions around religion, intimacy, and her constantly evolving sense of self. “I’m not so lonely when I dance in my room,” she sings on “Be the Girl,” the record’s cathartic closing track. “Still, little thoughts seep in when I think of you.” Her life may not be a fairytale, but it’s definitely an adventure — and The Apple Under the Sea brings you along for the thrilling ride.–L.P.

Harry Styles spends so much of KissCo on the dance floor, inspired by late nights in the sweaty techno clubs of the Berlin underground. The Number One smash “Aperture” celebrates that feeling of communal release, with the chant, “We belong together.” Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally is full of exuberant pop, with club bangers like “Ready Steady Go” and “Dance No More” (“respect your mother!”) but also introspective peaks like “Karla’s Song.”  “Coming Up Roses” is one of his most gorgeously intimate ballads, about two scared people letting down their guard together, as he croons, “I fumble my words and fall flat on my face through the truth.”–R.S.

The point of drone-metal duo Sunn O)))’s deafening borborygmi is delivering the rare transcendence you feel when amplifiers move the air around you and almost push you over. Usually this is best experienced live, but there’s something unique about the six songs on this, their 10th album, that translate better to headphones and home stereos this time. Your ears rattle with the bass at the start of “Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?” and you start to feel the slow movement of Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley’s glacially shifting, avant-garde guitar growls on “Everett Moses” as their amplifiers buzz on the same vibration as the crimson in the Mark Rothko painting on the cover. Get lost in the feedback. —K.G.

On Do That Again, Todd finds a mix between earnestly romantic and achingly self-aware, fitting in with artists like Omar Apollo (who he’s toured with), Mk.Gee, and Steve Lacy, musicians who blissfully elide genres and excel at boiling big emotions down to the most human scale. “Jean Skirt” sets sweaty, clothes-on-the-floor imagery to watery guitars, while “Difficult Love” luxuriates in the only kind of love he seems to know over a plush hip-hop-tinged bounce. The album teems with moments like this, bits where the music might evoke a modern homespun permutation of Eighties hits or Nineties R&B, and the lyrics add new wrinkles to classic pop heartbreak.–J.D.