Best New Music
Launched in 2003, Best New Music is Pitchfork’s way of highlighting the finest music of the current moment.
Best New Albums
Mahashmashana
Father John Misty
Josh Tillman is at his spiritual peak: The mood swings are wilder, the logic more tangential, and the songwriting might be the best it’s ever been.
By Anna Gaca
Piedras 1 & 2
Nicolás Jaar
Condensed from a five-hour radio play, Jaar’s 2xLP weaves a story of Chilean colonial history, military dictatorship, and Palestinian erasure into a dizzying mixture of abstract sonics and avant pop.
By Andrew Ryce
Groovy Steppin Sh*t
Lisha G / Trini Viv
An unlikely meeting between the South Carolina rapper and Philadelphia producer yields thrillingly alien results. It’s the rare perfect marriage of tough underground MC and nerdy beatmaker.
By Mano Sundaresan
Night Palace
Mount Eerie
Phil Elverum’s first Mount Eerie album in five years feels like a culmination of his work over the past 25 years, making room for all his earlier selves and sounds.
By Daniel Bromfield
Patterns in Repeat
Laura Marling
Following the birth of her daughter, the accomplished singer-songwriter carefully unspools a homey, quiet record. It’s one of the best of her career.
By Marianela D’Aprile
Absolute Elsewhere
Blood Incantation
Following their proggy instincts to galactic new heights, the Denver quartet balances krautrock’s surreal splendor with death metal’s profane madness, finding hypnotic focus in even the heaviest riffs.
By Sam Goldner
Best New Tracks
“Bumblebee”
Chuckyy
The Chicago rapper’s delivery makes it seem like he’s in a life-or-death time crunch.
By Alphonse Pierre
“Magic I Want U”
Jane Remover
On the producer’s lighthearted new single, her experience in EDM, digicore, and guitar music adds up to a frothy pop concoction.
By Mano Sundaresan
“Holy, Holy”
Geordie Greep
The black midi frontman’s debut solo single introduces one of his most pathetic characters yet.
By Sam Goldner
“The girl, so confusing version with lorde”
Charli XCX / Lorde
It’s a meeting of the minds, two great pop stars being vulnerable and self-aware while making a watershed moment in pop in the process.
By Jeremy D. Larson
“Von Dutch”
Charli XCX
The first single from Brat has its heart in the club and its ass on a Harley.
By Anna Gaca
Best New Reissues
Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (20th Anniversary Edition)
TV on the Radio
An expanded reissue calls back to the tumultuous era that produced the New York band’s landmark 2004 debut, which posed desperate pleasure as a way of making meaning in a hostile world.
By Sadie Sartini Garner
Virtual Dreams II, Ambient Explorations in the House & Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999
Various Artists
A spellbinding compilation of seldom-heard tracks from the 1990s revisits the moment when Japanese ambient music absorbed the influence of a rapidly evolving worldwide techno scene.
By Shy Clara Thompson
Plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes
Raphael Rogiński
Over the past nine years, the guitarist’s hushed, hypnotic suite of koan-like pieces has gathered a cult fan base. It’s a perfect encapsulation of his music’s mystical, spiritual energies.
By Philip Sherburne
GAS
GAS
Finally reissued in full, the 1996 debut from Wolfgang Voigt’s ambient techno project deserves every second of its 92-minute runtime. It’s music to get lost in, meditative and mind-numbing—in the best way.
By Daniel Bromfield
Troubadour
Dorothy Carter
Originally released in 1976, the pioneering artist’s debut album is filled with countless moments of disarming beauty. It plays like a map of her musical passions, linking folk traditions with avant-garde innovation.
By Stephen M. Deusner
One Hand Clapping
Paul McCartney / Wings
Shelved for decades and now finally released in full, Wings’ 1974 Abbey Road sessions are intimate and exploratory, showcasing a seldom heard, anything-goes side of the former Beatle.
By Stuart Berman