Fifty Albums Through Mid-June Redefine 2026’s Sound

50 best – In the middle of June, our Culture desk looks back at the best albums released from January through the second week of June—fifty records that prove narrowing the year’s music so far is anything but simple.

In the middle of June, the year’s music doesn’t feel half-finished—it feels crowded with voices. Fifty albums have landed across the first six months, and even after our monthly column tallied the releases it couldn’t ignore, there were still plenty of records that felt impossible to leave out.

The list covers albums released from January up until the second week of June. It’s long by design, because the hardest part isn’t finding the good—it’s deciding which good gets to stand closer to the front.

Here, in alphabetical order, are the 50 best albums of 2026 so far.

Aldous Harding — Train on the Island
Aldous Harding builds an island you don’t have to stay on. even if you want to. There are no palm trees here—just the one tree she climbed. “presumably as a child.” Forget the sensation of floating on ocean blue. The album is about questions that refuse to settle. including lines like “When I hit the ocean I was only a spark / Who brought me up the stem with no love in their heart?” She makes a kind of game out of it: you’ll “have to get by eating rocks and plants. ” but you can still “dance just to dance.” The feeling trails into “Warm Chris. ” where she sings near the end. “I have met my sleeping self / Things she knows keep me around / I hope I’m more than I think about.”.

American Football — LP4
Mike Kinsella’s American Football returns after reunion years with an album that leans into vulnerability. He’s been processing divorce in his other project Owen. and on American Football’s first album in seven years he points fingers while taking responsibility for the mess. “I can’t bathe in your malaise anymore / I’d rather be profane than chaste and bored. ” he sings deep into the record’s storm. The album is dramatic and ambitious, but likely less divisive than early listeners assumed. It’s exploratory, unmoored, and self-aware—yet never breaks the mythos of American Football.

Ana Roxanne — poem 1
Press play on “poem 1,” and it can reward you by revealing a new favorite each time. For one listener. it was “Keepsake. ” but on a cloudy summer morning. the attention sticks to “Because in A-flat Minor. Op. 45. ” where Ana Roxanne sings about “the fog hanging over the sea” and “a song playing over the air. ” ending with a simple plea: “Don’t go. don’t go.” Memory. she implies. is the thing that lets ephemera stick around a little longer. Any song from “poem 1” doesn’t play “over the air”—it feels like it suffuses it. whether murkying the waters with loose synth or narrowing to the bare essentials of piano and voice. The album is epically small, lush in devastation.

Angelo De Augustine — Angel in Plainclothes
The backstory for “Angel in Plainclothes” starts in early 2022: Angelo De Augustine was hospitalized with an undiagnosed illness and had to relearn how to walk. talk. see. hear. play music. and sing again. Even when the experience turns emotionally devastating, the album refuses to become only a document of suffering. It’s unguarded and mystical, shimmering with the kindness of those who helped him survive. De Augustine told MISRYOUM in 2023, “Sometimes life is too much, you know.” On this album, he sounds determined to live.

Anjimile — You’re Free to Go
After working with Shawn Everett on 2023’s “The King. ” a starkly dramatic grief-stricken record. Anjimile’s 4AD debut followed 2020’s “Giver Taker.” On “You’re Free to Go. ” he linked up with Brad Cook (Bon Iver. Waxahatchee. Hurray for the Riff Raff) to shape airier. relaxed. quietly cathartic songs out of a period of renewed freedom. On “Waits for Me. ” he sings. “It comes in waves / Memory and empathy / It stays and waits with me. ” letting the music ripple and crash without pushing it toward a final resolution—often retreating into a question. The desire here feels easy, like it washes over you.

Avalon Emerson & the Charm — Written Into Changes
Avalon Emerson deepens her emotive songwriting on “Written Into Changes. ” a record shaped by five years of constant travel. That movement includes moving from Berlin to Los Angeles to New York. On the glistening chorus of “Happy Birthday. ” she sings. “Too young to die / Too old to break through. ” and in the verses she confesses. “I have wasted all these years / Collecting and perfecting this game.” Her vulnerability isn’t blocked by sonic perfectionism or industry know-how. Her writing can zoom out to the solar system—on the early single “Jupiter and Mars. ” for instance—but it still zooms in on small. persistent pleasures like drinking a cold beer. Even when those pleasures are frustratingly miraculous, Emerson makes them feel real. “How dare it cradle me in my tears so gently?” she wonders.

Broken Social Scene — Remember the Humans
Broken Social Scene’s “Remember the Humans” asks you to think of music in organic terms. The title came from Charles Spearin. who initially framed it as a joke. with a sound that evokes an AI version of their seminal 2002 LP “You Forgot It in People.” The songs drift through personal memory haze. eulogizing individual people and placing relationships under the microscope. Even in that abstraction, there’s relief in the habit of leaning into cliches—homecoming without performance.

Buck Meek — The Mirror On “The Mirror. ” Buck Meek looks back at himself as if his cover photo is a meeting with his reflection—his shoulder obscuring just enough to keep you unsure whether he’s startled. running away from something. or trying to “break on through.” The record points toward a “tunnel underneath the road” on “Demon. ” where he finds a “place I go to sing with echo. echo. echo.” The natural magic

in that idea is filtered through voices across the album: Adrianne Lenker. Germaine Dunes. Staci Foster. and Jolie Holland appear in the choir-like space Meek builds. The album borders an electronic world fashioned by Big Thief bandmate and producer James Krivchenia. On “Heart in the Mirror. ” Meek sings about trying to write a song that isn’t “for others. ” while the dark side of his soul feels exposed. He’s also learning to foster something

good—something even divine—without projecting it outward.

cootie catcher — Something We All Got
cootie catcher’s restless rhythms land as “laptop twee” in the description the internet has tried on them. but the title of a new song. “Puzzle Pop. ” actually captures the energy better. The Toronto-based quartet’s “Something We All Got” arrives just a year after their previous album. “Shy at first.” The new record carries distinct lyrical perspectives that collide as often as they connect. meeting the vulnerability of putting yourself out there and expecting more than you’re bound to get.

Death Cab for Cutie — I Built a Tower
“I Built a Tower” is an album that doesn’t ride purely on nostalgia. but the band’s momentum has a backboard: Death Cab for Cutie’s 2023 anniversary tour celebrating “Transatlanticism” and the Postal Service’s “Give Up.” Ben Gibbard and the band were energized by revisiting breakup albums. even if it couldn’t be emotionally the same thing at their age. Working with producer John Congleton—who balanced Death Cab’s gentle and aggressive sides on 2022’s “Asphalt Meadows”—Gibbard builds a new world of sorrow that breaks away from old habits. musical and otherwise.

Dry Cleaning — Secret Love
Dry Cleaning’s “Secret Love” follows 2022’s “Stumpwork.” The album can feel like the band’s darkest or most optimistic. because it blurs the line between harmlessness and real horror. self-growth and destruction. It’s dreamier in a way that doesn’t soften the edges: subtle. reconstructive production from Cate Le Bon helps the band break out of their shell and sound more like themselves. The result stays hard to shrug off.

feeble little horse — bitknot
Recorded across the trio’s homes in Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania. “bitknot” arrives as a surprise follow-up to feeble little horse’s 2023 LP “Girl With Fish.” It’s not exactly nostalgic for the idea that tech and money only caused human suffering “in different ways. ” even if the record still grapples with memory and self discombobulation typical of the current cultural moment. Digital tools serve as an extension of their knotty group dynamic, with Lydia Slocum’s wiry introspection as a spine. The songs interlace sugary melodies with dizzying left turns, refusing to pale in comparison to its predecessor.

Friko — Something Worth Waiting For
Chicago band Friko titled their sophomore album “Something Worth Waiting For. ” though the timing makes it ironic: the record follows just two years after their debut “Where we’ve been. Where we go from here. ” and the follow-up sounds like the kind of epically anthemic release an indie rock buzzband might deliver over a decade after their debut. Friko returned with an expanded lineup. Vocalist/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger—who formed the band right out of high school—were joined by bassist David Fuller and guitarist Korgan Robb. While the album builds on raw. explosive dynamics. anthemic choruses. and infernal yearning from the first record. it feels anything but rushed. It rides relentless touring rather than letting the wave subside.

Gladie — No Need to Be Lonely
Augusta Koch sent demos of Gladie’s “No Need to Be Lonely” to Jeff Rosenstock. The relationship wasn’t just demo-friend territory; it was friends friends. the kind of bond that shows up in the record’s uplift. “I brace myself to embrace you. ” roars the chorus of one early single. and another goes. “Know that I look to you. just to keep myself moving.” Rosenstock decided to produce the record and they tracked it live to tape with Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden in Oakland. The album’s dynamic songs erupt. but the quieter ones hit too: “Fix Her” delivers devastating catharsis. while “Blurry” brings raw confessions. The emotional punch leaves you feeling lighter each time you press play.

Grace Ives — Girlfriend
On the outro to Girlfriend’s penultimate song. Grace Ives sings. “I’m no stranger to that sage advice / If you love her. let her find her life.” She’s headed for the freeway—“off with my little mind”—and the “little” is a kindest-possible compliment to anyone who knows her past work. The album charts her journey to sobriety. with co-producers Ariel Rechtshaid and John DeBold digging through the wreckage to uncover an artist more big-hearted. bold. and buzzed with life than the introvert who would’ve shrunk at the scale of it. You can catch Ives on the road on many songs, playing them, while she marvels at the shift.

Greg Mendez — Beauty Land
After releasing his disarmingly intimate self-titled album in 2023. Greg Mendez had already spent a decade and a half in Philadelphia’s DIY scene. “Beauty Land,” his full-length debut for Dead Oceans, is thematically heavy but more unburdened than its predecessor. The songs swell with unguarded emotion, looping a single thought over spare keyboard or slow-burning into miniature symphonies. Recorded almost entirely alone, Mendez finds ways to stir feeling outside the confines of his own reality.

hemlocke springs — the apple tree under the sea
hemlocke springs’ going…going…GONE!. EP showcased her larger-than-life, 80s-inspired, maddeningly catchy art-pop, and helped her open for Conan Gray, Ashnikko, and Chappell Roan. In the light of her debut album. the apple tree under the sea. Roan interviewed her “favorite artist.” The album digs into hemlocke springs’ origin story while interrogating narratives projected onto her—lyrically and musically. The production is eclectic, triumphant, crafted alongside BURNS. It’s escapist pop that keeps becoming more inescapable.

Iceage — For Love of Grace & the Hereafter
Iceage often obscures the narrative details of its songs. but on the opening track of “For Love of Grace & the Hereafter. ” frontman Elias Rønnenfelt sings about catching “you like an ember falling down. ” like the sparks of a new song. The Danish punks have pushed their sound forward since their 2011 debut “New Brigade. ” but days have been taken on the process of recording—especially as the last couple required up to two weeks. Perhaps responding to the insularity of Rønnenfelt’s recent solo work, the band returned to a speedier, raucous approach.

Ivy Knight — Iron Mountain
Growing up in Oakland. California. Ivy Knight absorbed different strains of alternative music early: her dad brought her into punk and experimental music. while her mom played indie mixtapes in the car. On the opening track of her debut album. Iron Mountain. she sings. “You’re painting colors / A picture for the sky / The thin blue beads / On the mirror while you’re speeding.” That imagery feels oneiric and often escapist. with frequent collaborator Deer park shaping organic production. After a couple of blearier, stripped-back EPs, her first full-length homes in on subtly accented folk-rock. The record harkens back to songwriters like Marty Robbins and Kate Wolf. Filters and synth flourishes can place her within a new wave of alt-pop. but they also function as tools for her to plant dreams into her own landscape.

Jana Horn — Jana Horn
Jana Horn’s self-titled album is the follow-up to 2023’s The Window Is the Dream. It’s marked by open-endedness: behind every loss and human sense of finality is the cyclical nature of change. The album documents her first year living in New York after moving there following completion of a creative writing MFA in Charlottesville. With her band. Jana Horn refuses to paint a portrait of an artist unstuck from the past. unmissing. or untroubled by a changeless future. They simply inch toward an answer to the album’s final question: “I don’t know. how do you feel about that?”.

Joshua Chuquimia Crampton — Anata
Joshua Chuquimia Crampton’s music can sound harsh enough to become overstimulating on first listen. But with context and emotional attunement, its spiritual, medicinal, and deconstructive properties come forward. Inspired by the ceremonies of the Great Pakajaqi Nation of Aymara people and the idea of “activated ceremonial music. ” the Los Thuthanaka guitarist’s album. Anata. riffs on and blows apart its influences not to distance from them but to approximate their ecstatic essence. It’s the way low-quality audiovisual can elicit a more visceral response than the best technology. Crampton lets his refractive. impossibly layered guitar playing soar while still making it slip away in a flash—so you feel pulled back to hit play again.

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore — Tragic Magic
Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore performed live together and collaborated on singles for years. but it wasn’t until they were invited to record an album in Paris—using the vast and historic collection of instruments at the Musée de la Musique—that their joint full-length finally materialized. The ambient composers admire each other’s spiritual world-building. Through technology and looping, each elevates their instruments, and their kinship bends reality toward the cosmic. The album moves from strange survivor’s guilt leaving California in the midst of last year’s tragic wildfires. to the reverie of a once-in-a-lifetime creative opportunity.

Kacey Musgraves — Middle of Nowhere
Kacey Musgraves spotted a small sign in her Texas hometown: “Golden. Texas: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.” She loved it because it was “self-deprecating but also kind of confident. ” and the record matches that tonal balance. Middle of Nowhere begins “out there on the edge of the world. way past common sense. ” before she proclaims that she lives in “the great state of confusion.” Yet it’s less incoherent than her 2021 pop pivot “star-crossed. ” and more grounded than 2024’s Deeper Well. which focused on growth and healing. Her comfort shows up in how incisive she becomes. The album leans into the country classicism of Pageant Material and the radiance—if not the total brilliance—of Golden Hour.

Kelsey Lu — So Help Me God
After returning musically since 2019’s Blood. Kelsey Lu describes going back to their musical identity as homecoming. Scoring award-winning films. working across galleries. and collaborating with musicians ranging from Beverly Glenn-Copeland to Jamie xx made songwriting feel like an exercise in uncertainty. slowness. and lack of resolution. “While many things can serve as beautiful guides. ” they say. “I believe that. at our core. we are made from beauty and love. Being able to return to that source feels deeply important. especially now.” Those qualities spill into So Help Me God with painstaking precision. A classically trained cellist and a perfectionist at heart, Lu still resists giving the album linear structure. Instead, it glides from “burning desire” to “volcanic gaseous tremblings” with emotional logic that keeps its own rules.

Kevin Morby — Little Wide Open
Kevin Morby’s work carries a sense of place so strong it often reads as devotion to the Midwest. Even if you’ve never been there, it can still land. Little Wide Open is his most settled and. by all accounts. most Midwestern album to date. and his life is split between Kansas City and Los Angeles. He and his partner, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, are expecting their first child. In its grand simplicity and cautious optimism, the album doesn’t treat Middle America as nostalgia. It mines imagery, honoring a region you can drive through and never really exhaust. It’s “the same where you are,” Morby just makes the truth easier to embrace.

Kim Gordon — PLAY ME
On PLAY ME. “BUSY BEE” weaves in a sample of Kim Gordon and her Free Kitten bandmate Julia Cafritz co-hosting MTV’s Beach House. and the sentence reverberates like a warning: “The pressure to relax. it was just too much for her.” Dave Grohl’s drums then thunder back in as the album’s gnarly flow continues. “BYE BYE. ” a highlight from Gordon’s previous solo album The Collective. spawned TikTok videos of teens going through their own packing lists as she does on the track. The humor is sharp: how does anyone go on vacation and actually enjoy it now?. Gordon’s opening track frames the pressure to make music for “chillin’ after work. ” and the album becomes a soundtrack for doomscrolling. brain fog. and the post-Everything. Shorter and more spontaneous than its predecessor, PLAY ME keeps the restlessness fruitful.

Lip Critic — Theft World
The origin story of Lip Critic’s Theft World is almost too good to be true: frontman Bret Kaser’s identity was purportedly stolen while the Brooklyn quartet was writing the follow-up to their 2024 debut. Hex Dealer. The thief turned out to be a devoted fan who believed he’d cracked the code to the band’s loosely conceptual universe. For a record that toes the line between absurdist fantasy and depressing realism. the story might be the hook—but the record’s frenetic machinations are better: delirious characters. adrenaline-fuelled propulsion. ingenious experimentation. Outlandish or not, it lands on the same truth: “It’s happening to you right now.”.

Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon — As of Now
Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon paces himself through As of Now. his 17-track debut LP for Lex Records. The pacing doesn’t mean slowness. The album’s flow contains unsteadiness. punctuated by the nerve to splice together beats that might be destined for separate tracks. Over them, the Charlotte rapper triangulates humour, swagger, and pure skill. Beat-switching mirrors emotional shiftiness he admits to on record. where skits and adlibs are as vital to storytelling as his truth-spilling. heartbreaking soliloquies. Jah-Monte keeps steering the wheel, anchoring his assessment of past and future in the present.

Lowertown — Ugly Duckling Union
“I’m biased. ” begins the commentary on Lowertown—because in Greek. the last name means “duck.” The Ugly Duckling story. a favorite and anxiety-inducing. sets the emotional temperature. Lowertown is a New York duo the writer has interviewed twice. Their concept record follows a duckling protagonist and his companions as they try to defeat a tyrannical media corporation. The album comes with a playable Minecraft world, a handbook, plush dolls, and drawn comics by Doctor Nowhere. Still, the center remains Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg’s playfully ramshackle songwriting, which curves from infatuation to paranoia.

Lucy Liyou — MR COBRA
Lucy Liyou’s MR COBRA adapts her semi-autobiographical theatrical work Mister Cobra. weaving together free jazz. Korean folk opera. musique concrète. 2000s-era pop. drag-inspired performance. and more. The record skirts shame and desire. Her discordant sound poetry juxtaposes with a reverence for pop, including ambiently interpolating Taylor Swift and moving into nu disco. Liyou has explained. “Sometimes trying to adhere to the ‘facts’ of my experiences made other emotional truths feel distorted.” Taken without the multimedia performance context. MR COBRA feels even more layered with meaning.

Mandy, Indiana — URGH
For Mandy, Indiana, inspiration can come from anywhere. Their ears are attuned to sounds in their environment—close to their literal walls at home, or entirely foreign. Their body of work is piercing and uncanny. and URGH. their first album for Sacred Bones. partly took shape during “an intense residency at an eerie studio house” near Leeds. Mostly it was built over long distances. The record buzzes, thrashes, and sloshes through unpindownable spaces defined by the coordinates of the band name.

Maria BC — Marathon
Maria BC’s new album follows 2022’s Hyaline and 2023’s Spike Field. and places emphasis on songwriting over the gauzy. fragmented production of earlier work. Hazy synths. twitching rhythms. and overlapping instrumentation still add density. but the songs can be imagined stripped of their textural brilliance and still hauntingly resonant. “The interesting thing about being vaguely ambient musicians for both of us is that without the verb. and without the dream zone additions. ” Marissa Nadler said in a conversation with the Oakland-based artist. “I think that your music still stands up very strongly. even if you were to play unplugged on the street. That’s, to me, the mark of a great songwriter.”.

Mitski — Nothing’s About to Happen to Me
Mitski’s startling eighth album gestures toward a cohesive narrative rather than a series of interconnected vignettes. It comes after 2023’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. with live instrumentation by the band that accompanied her on The Land tour. This album offers more than one way to connect the dots—from one song to the next. from new to old. nothing to everything. At 35 minutes, it’s also her longest album and her boldest statement to date.

MUNA — Dancing on the Wall
On Dancing on the Wall, Katie Gavin is convinced she’s past her prime. “And everyone knows it,” she sings, and “everyone” stretches beyond friends or devoted fans. The band’s self-produced record—like all their records—comes with heightened urgency. It’s songs about doing alright, if with a knowing sigh. Gavin sings, “Lots of people love me now,” about dealing with an unrequited love. Even when the songs latch onto personal grievances. the album points to growth into themselves rather than self-consciously aging out of a peak.

My New Band Believe — My New Band Believe
The original idea for My New Band Believe was to make a collaborative album with the avant-folk octet caroline. That project evolved into a more open-ended studio endeavor led by Cameron Picton, the ex-black midi member. The studio included most of that group and members of Black Country, New Road, shame, and more. Picton handled most of the writing and then also helmed the editing process. creating a natural coherence illusion where dream logic convinces you the scene makes sense after the previous scene—before waking mind offers ambivalent interpretations. The album is fluidly arranged and tender, delirious too. It makes the frantic possibilities of a single night, record, and group structure feel intimately mutable.

Nothing — a short history of decay Nothing has been on a two-year album cycle since 2014’s Guilty of Everything. It had kept busy between 2020’s The Great Dismal and its fifth album and Run for Cover debut. a short history of decay. The break allowed Domenic “Nicky” Palermo stillness to reflect on his pre-Nothing days: growing up with an abusive father. spending two years in prison. and the toll of keeping the band going—on

his body and on relationships from home. Named after a book by Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran. a short history of decay steps back to mirror the raw humanity that’s been responsible for the band’s survival. articulating traumas that had been more shrouded on previous records. Palermo sings on the opener. “When I was old / Ain’t life terrible / With beautiful things getting between.” This may be Nothing’s final chapter. but it still lives in

the in-between.

Olivia Rodrigo — you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love When Robert Smith teased the next Cure album. he said. “It’s really poppy. but it doesn’t compare melodically to the stuff that Olivia does. but it’s my idea of Cure Pop.” He added. “It’s probably 20 BPM slower than anything she does.” The comparison invites the question: slower than ‘honeybee’?. Slower than ‘less’?. The record includes “what’s wrong with me. ” and

it leans into Olivia Rodrigo’s pop identity while triangulating influences that have always included the likes of the Cure and Hole—now also Devo. Weyes Blood. and more. On you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. she charts romance from incandescent beginnings to its very last flicker. showcasing new strengths while throwing herself at forces beyond her control. The album’s execution keeps getting better, even when bittersweet isn’t surprising.

Ratboys — Singin’ to an Empty Chair
Ratboys’ follow-up to 2023’s The Window arrives with an empty chair in the listener’s periphery. The experience of repeated listening made it feel like projecting while letting songs do the talking. Closing eyes, the listener appreciates textures, homed in with producer Chris Walla, spinning head in pure joy. The record is open-hearted and emotionally piercing while still ultra-catchy. Heavier subject matter this time. but it feels less like pulling a blanket over unvarnished truth and more like warming a room that could make it unravel—keeping the door open for anyone who wants to enter.

Remember Sports — The Refrigerator
Remember Sports recorded their new album, The Refrigerator, at Chicago’s Electrical Audio. It’s their first for Get Better Records. The record refashions a surreal collision of past and present selves. inspired by Perry’s job teaching at an elementary school through COVID. The album becomes a head-spinning emotional ride. ranging from the guttural rawness of “Across the Line” to the hypnotic recollections of the bagpipe-led “Ghost.” Perry sings on “Ghost. ” “The kitchen table split in two and I thought of you. ” and the whole band bends that train of thought through time and reason as a thrill to follow.

Robber Robber — Two Wheels Move the Soul
Two Wheels Move the Soul was recorded after an apartment fire left Nina Cates and Zack James displaced. For months, relying on generosity from the Vermont music community, they couch surfed—while music remained their only constant. The album quotes that feeling in “Backup Plan” from their first LP. Wild Guess. calling music “a new familiar place.” The pair. along with guitarist Will Krulak and bassist Carney Hemler. returned to Little Jamaica Studios to lay down Two Wheels Move the Soul for Fire Talk. with engineer Benny Yurco. The record is groovier and grimier than their debut. still hammering on themes of shaky communication and perpetual unrest. as if no time has passed between records. Through the rubble, they find new ways to navigate their shared space.

Robyn — Sexistential
Robyn’s Sexistential is described through a track that begins with her role as a captain attempting a crash landing on her self-financed. self-titled. and first independently released album. The crash landing leads into “Crash and Burn Girl.” The record feels like a spaceship coming through the atmosphere at a really high speed. in her description of Sexistential. More than two decades after Robyn, with early collaborators including Teddybears member Klas Åhlund, Sexistential keeps prioritizing the pleasure principle. “I’m never inspired by pain,” she told one celebrity fan, Tinashe. She also defiantly eschews the trappings of a “maturing” pop star.

Sassy 009 — Dreamer+
After a series of mixtapes—including 2019’s KILL SASSY 009 and 2021’s Heart Ego—Sassy 009 worked for years on her debut proper. struggling to funnel a fantastical narrative where intrusive thoughts become reality into a digestible record. The album squares the nightmarish with the catchy. Dreamer+ includes notable assists from Blood Orange, yunè pinku, and BEA1991. Oslo-born artist Sunniva Lindgård plays a character described. better than by the album’s namesake. on the title track as an “in-betweener.” Dreamer+ embodies blurry. fluid qualities with undeniable kineticism. The dream is more likely to haunt you down than fade from memory.

Slayyyter — WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA
Slayyyter had a promo of WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA ahead of its release. and the promotional rollout included dropping the album’s entire first half. Still. the record didn’t fully land until it was loaded onto an iPod classic and let “OLD TECHNOLOGY” do the work. There’s suspicion around any artist cashing in on electroclash. hyperpop. and dance-punk in 2026—especially as the record came out the same day as Fcukers’ Ö. and in the wake of great pop albums by underscores. Robyn. and Grace Ives. But the record’s euphoric abrasion and pure raunchiness holds its own.

Snail Mail — Ricochet
Lindsey Jordan once believed she could only write in her Maryland childhood bedroom. where she made songs that fueled her indie fame right on the cusp of adulthood. For Ricochet, she’d bought her own house and dodged writing somewhere nostalgically familiar. Working with Aron Kobayashi Ritch. bassist and producer of New York’s Momma. she transposes the self-imposed yet heavenly isolation from that earlier phase into her most comfortably subdued songs to date. A delicate tension still gnaws beneath the surface: the gorgeous quiet of solitude borders obsessive dissociation. Jordan dances around it for the length of the record.

Thomas Dollbaum — Birds of Paradise
Thomas Dollbaum’s propulsive, twangy, torch-like songs spring from his childhood setting. He drives memory into a magically placeless evocation of empathy and solitude. One of its characters declares. “What the living do is prowl around on their hands and knees / Among the bodies we leave behind. ” and another is purely happy to be alive. Aided by guitarist Josh Halperm. bassist Nick Corson. and MJ Lenderman on drums. guitar. and backing vocals. Dollbaum pools feelings together as if they’re the same thing.

underscores — U
U is both shorthand for underscores and. at least 50 times. a way of spelling the object of desire on the sort-of-self-titled album. “U has a compressed, equalizing power,” leveling the playing field by mathematizing its relationship to I. The album defines I early on: “I get what I want and then find out right after I get it. I don’t even want it.” That’s a reductive framing for underscores’ own trajectory. especially as U abandons the complex conceptual framework of 2023’s Wallsocket. Here. the record becomes a concise. escapist psychodrama and feels like an early contender for the most irresistible pop album of the year. “In truth. you get what you want and then you find out right after you want it all over again.” That’s U in a capsule.

Victoryland — My Heart Is a Room With No Cameras in It
Victoryland is a Brooklyn-based project of Julian McCamman. He quietly released his first tape. Sprain. just a week before his former band Blood released their debut and final album. Loving You Backwards. My Heart Is a Room With No Cameras in It continues his collaboration with producer Dan Howard. who worked on both of those records. The album hones mid-fi pop ambitions to brilliant effect. McCamman sings. “Was it even worth trying / Knowing someone is crying for us / Watching an infinite loop of our lives. ” and even at its most desperate. the album sounds like it enjoys running back the tape.

waterbaby — Memory Be a Blade
On Memory Be a Blade. waterbaby retains a preciously intimate and intuitive approach on her debut album. She works with her primary collaborator Marcus White. who also arranged the lush contributions from violinist Oliva Lundberg. cellists Filip Lundberg and Kristina Winiarski. saxophonist Sebastian Mattebo. trombonist Hannes Falk Junestav. and flutist Pelle Westlin. She also improvises a lot of the lyrics on the record. “Steady waters asking me to leave again” are the first words that come out of her mouth as she embraces that flow—steady is an illusion. a trick of lonely shadows and lights. Still, the listener is left with no choice but to paddle on.

Wendy Eisenberg — Wendy Eisenberg
Wendy Eisenberg’s 2024 LP Viewfinder sought to loosen the parameters of conventional song form. The self-titled album leans into timelessness—or. more precisely. eternal weirdness of classic songwriting. in part as a call back to the inner child who began to show curiosity around it. The record is shaped by contributors: bassist Trevor Dunn, drummer Ryan Sawyer, and co-producer Mari Rubio (aka more eaze). Compared to the predecessor, the album is warmed by their camaraderie while mourning past lonelinesses. Eisenberg and the band sing on the opener. “Looks like luck’s inherent humour pushed you past your sense of loss.” Eisenberg describes self-titling as a “locus point for jokes” that “offsets its vanity by making you laugh.” The frame makes life sound transcendable.

Zoh Amba — Eyes Full
Earlier this year, Zoh Amba joined Iggy Pop on saxophone at Coachella. The move follows news that they would be switching to guitar and songwriting for Eyes Full, their Matador debut. The self-produced record’s blazing, heavenly abrasion isn’t lost in translation. It features Jim White on drums. Kevin Hyland on guitar. and associates at Ashevile’s Drop of Sun. where it took shape. The title might as well be an inversion of the famous Shakespeare sonnet: the lover’s eyes are “everything like the sun.” Don’t be afraid to stare into them. Amba seems to implore.

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