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
Diamond Jubilee
Cindy Lee
The sprawling and spectacular Cindy Lee album is an essential trove of music. Each song is like a foggy transmission from a rock’n’roll netherworld with its own ghostly canon of beloved hits.
By Andy Cush
Only God Was Above Us
Vampire Weekend
On their masterfully knotty fifth album, Vampire Weekend go on a self-mythological journey into old sounds, old haunts, and old cities to find something new within.
By Matthew Strauss
Cowboy Carter
Beyoncé
The follow-up to Renaissance is a powerful and ambitious country album cast in the singular mold of Beyoncé. She asserts her rightful place in the genre as only a pop star of her incredible talent and influence can do.
By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
For Your Consideration
Empress Of
Lorely Rodriguez’s fourth album is a dazzling showcase for her unexpected vocal and production approach as she experiences the peaks and valleys of heated romance.
By Eric Torres
Tigers Blood
Waxahatchee
Carrying forth the Southern sound of Saint Cloud, Katie Crutchfield does it again. Her dazzling, piercing songwriting is perfectly in tune with the band behind her.
By Jayson Greene
Best New Albums
Bright Future
Adrianne Lenker
Recorded straight to tape with a small group of close confidants, the Big Thief singer’s latest solo album is free-flowing and intuitive, reveling in the space between spontaneity and impermanence.
By Andy Cush
The Collective
Kim Gordon
Pairing blown-out trap beats and industrial noise with deadpan stream-of-consciousness lyrics, Gordon’s second solo album revels in the broken and the mundane.
By Shaad D’Souza
Keeper of the Shepherd
Hannah Frances
With the energy and conviction of a debut, the intuitive singer-songwriter returns with a dazzling folk album that contends with the long grip of grief and the belief that it will steadily loosen.
By Grayson Haver Currin
All Life Long
Kali Malone
On an interconnected suite of pieces for pipe organ, brass ensemble, and chamber choir, the composer balances minimalist intensity with sacred music’s depth of feeling.
By Marc Weidenbaum
I Got Heaven
Mannequin Pussy
The Philadelphia rock band meets the moment with an essential, wide-ranging record that’s mouthy, messy, and self-assured.
By Sadie Sartini Garner
Best New Tracks
“Life Is”
Jessica Pratt
The lead single from Pratt’s new album, Here in the Pitch, takes the time-obsessed spirit of her music, adds a drummer and a bassist, and welcomes a new era.
By Jeremy D. Larson
“Right Back to It” [ft. MJ Lenderman]
Waxahatchee
MJ Lenderman guest stars on the lead single from Katie Crutchfield’s new album, Tigers Blood.
By Anna Gaca
“Oral”
Björk / Rosalía
Rescued from the archives, the musician’s sweeping new song with Rosalía supports the legal fight against foreign commercial farming operations in Iceland.
By Matthew Ismael Ruiz
“Will Anybody Ever Love Me?”
Sufjan Stevens
Here’s a new Sufjan song that might make you cry even before you listen.
By Jaeden Pinder
“I Got Heaven”
Mannequin Pussy
On a blistering new single, the Philadelphia band chooses spitefulness as a form of love.
By Nina Corcoran
“Pet Rock”
L’Rain
The new single from I Killed Your Dog hinges on a Strokes-style guitar melody and a sense of deep alienation.
By Eric Torres
Best New Tracks
“So You Are Tired”
Sufjan Stevens
The lead single to Javelin is an elegant break-up song that sounds like a lullaby.
By Marc Hogan
“Bad Idea Right?”
Olivia Rodrigo
The second single from Guts is hammy, blasé, and brilliant.
By Shaad D’Souza
“Psychedelic Switch”
Carly Rae Jepsen
The joyous, floor-filling highlight of The Loveliest Time is as transcendent as its subject matter.
By Jaeden Pinder
“Vampire Empire”
Big Thief
The marvelous new single has been a staple of the band’s live sets for a couple of years.
By Jayson Greene
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Best New Reissues
Power to the People
Joe Henderson
The virtuoso saxophonist’s 1969 album with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Jack DeJohnette is an essential document of a transitional moment in which everything in jazz seemed up for grabs.
By Andy Cush
Quiet Logic
Mixmaster Morris / Jonah Sharp / Haruomi Hosono
The 1998 collaborative album brought together a trio of legends from the worlds of ambient and chillout. It’s a placid but playful collection that is like nothing else in their repertoires.
By Shy Thompson
Souvenirs
Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
A remarkable archival release captures rare vocal performances that the esteemed nun, composer, and pianist recorded in the late 1970s and early ’80s amid political turmoil in Ethiopia.
By Eric Torres
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Microstoria
On two LPs from the mid 1990s, members of Oval and Mouse on Mars ask what lies beyond music’s borders. Their sonic abstractions are as bewitching as the most tightly composed song.
By Daniel Bromfield
Hudson River Wind Meditations
Lou Reed
A new reissue of Lou Reed’s final solo album spotlights a side of the New York icon that few ever got to see: a quiet ambient composer.
By Philip Sherburne
Echoes, Spaces, Lines
Pauline Anna Strom
In the 1980s, the legendary Bay Area composer self-released her first three albums of roving, curious synthesis. Restored and remixed by master engineer Marta Salogni, they’re collected in a new box set.
By Eric Torres
Best New Reissues
Waillee Waillee
Dorothy Carter
Self-released in 1978, this gorgeous set of ancient songs and instrumental abstractions predicted the shape of folk to come.
By Grayson Haver Currin
The World Is a Ghetto: 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition
War
The new reissue of a landmark album of 1970s funk restores the Los Angeles group’s reputation as multi-cultural pop savants and unstoppable improvisers.
By Sadie Sartini Garner
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Alcachofa (2023 Reissue)
Ricardo Villalobos
The minimal-techno icon celebrates the 20th anniversary of the breakthrough LP where he first established his otherworldly percussive sensibility.
By Will Lynch
I’m still waiting.
Acetone
Once lost in the major label trend-chasing of the ’90s, the soft, slow, and sad trio gets its rightful due in an essential box set that reissues all of their studio albums.
By Grayson Haver Currin
Surround
Hiroshi Yoshimura
Commissioned as the soundtrack to a line of prefab homes, this 1986 ambient masterpiece doubles as a frame for the smallest, most quotidian sounds. It’s a testament to the act of listening itself.
By Joshua Minsoo Kim
Tim (Let It Bleed Edition)
The Replacements
This deluxe reissue is the holy grail that fans of Tim have dreamt of: a new mix that instantly becomes the best and most definitive album in the Replacements’ catalog.
By Jeremy D. Larson