Collaborating with a host of producers from across Africa, Europe, and Asia, the Nairobi vocalist shrieks and growls his way through a harrowing fusion of metal, rap, club music, and noise.

With spruced-up production highlighting new subtleties in their sound, yet never abandoning their melodic fundamentals, the Cleveland indie rockers’ latest radiates a renewed sense of purpose.

After a life-changing illness, the UK folk singer returns with a gentle, subtly experimental album that finds hard-won solace in motherhood and recovery.

The English producer’s new album reflects his gift for meticulous construction, but it feels more akin to a well-curated playlist than a unified statement.

The New York band’s debut is a dreamy, druggy pop album that finds a provocative sweet spot between being chintzy and being sincere.

The experimental composer’s new album is a shapeshifting stream of crackling electronics, wordless singing, and gasping breaths. It’s a stark, solitary listen that radiates an unsettling beauty.

Three weeks after We Don’t Trust You, Future and Metro return with another 90-minute cinematic project that’s mostly the same but a little bit better.

The D.C. punks channel their hometown scene’s confrontational spirit on a debut album that backs its progressive politics with a fierce belief in the necessity of joy.

Soft-hearted and whisper-voiced, Chicago singer-songwriter Jessica Viscius’ band reflects on loneliness and loss with no hint of resentment.

The Norwegian alt-pop singer’s second album feels both evocatively raw and painfully shallow.

Beneath the thick veneer of droll affectation, this London-via-Scunthorpe band writes with uncommon poignancy about the nature of art, ambition, and success.

In the second volume in a series of free-flowing, ambient-tinged mini-albums, the composer—daughter of the late sitar virtuoso Pandit Ravi Shankar—seeks out a new vocabulary for her instrument.

The British producer’s debut full-length illustrates her gift for rewiring jungle into arena-sized pop catharsis.

The German producer abandons his customarily bass-heavy breakbeats in favor of smooth, pumping techno. It’s an unexpected shift, but the details and the dynamism are pure Skee Mask.

The Lil Yachty-led rap crew’s debut mixtape has a handful of memorable moments, but its members are mostly on autopilot.

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the Waterboys’ definitive statement, a sweeping rock album from 1985 that pours its heart out from start to finish.

Paying tribute to the late bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik in a 2022 live recording, this European jazz quartet turns an understated 1961 single into a thundering, hourlong rave-up.

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.

The singer-songwriter’s third album is her strongest yet, the sound of a wise, clear-eyed, melodious prodigy coming into her own voice.

The Australian singer and actor is blessed with a commanding and magnetic voice. Over these soul ballads and torch songs, she holds nothing back—for better or worse.

Channeling new age and spiritual jazz, the multidisciplinary artist’s debut solo album creates its own thoughtful and potent world with the help of many guests and many flutes.

The Belgium-based composer—best known as a member of Stars of the Lid and A Winged Victory for the Sullen—steps out with a solo debut that plays like an ambient-drone crowd-pleaser.

The Los Angeles-based artist’s full-length debut uses Peruvian chicha, Congolese soukous, and Afro-Colombian percussion to explore both personal grief and the abiding melancholy of diaspora.

Skilled though he may be, J. Cole’s surprise mixtape makes good on its promise to negate its relevance in real time.

This domestic, stripped-down edition of Khruangbin has all the comforts of home, wherever in the world that may be.

The 17-year-old rapper-producer’s solo debut is pastel pretty in the Surf Gang tradition, coating pristine samples in a thin layer of digital grime.

The debut EP from TikTok’s favorite teenage shoegazer includes breakout song “Your face” and other delicate acts of genre worship.

Drawing freely from funk, gospel, African pop, and electronica, Ahmed Gallab’s exuberant new album rejoices in the power of Black diasporic identity and community.

The trio’s latest album proposes a distinctly South African brand of sophistipop, folding elements of amapiano, mbaqanga, and house into a breezy, wistful blend.

Dominic Maker and Kai Campos blaze another new path, but the genre vagabonds get a little lost in their sleek shoegaze post-rock album.