As we head into the second half of 2023, Pitchfork’s writers and editors are already thinking about what albums have left the biggest impressions and will land a coveted spot on our end-of-the-year list. So we’re spotlighting some of the year’s most outstanding releases to date by rounding up albums that have earned high scores and Best New Music designations with a quick list of RIYLs (that’s Recommended If You Like) and links to our coverage. Unlike our year-end lists, this one is organized in reverse chronological order, from our most recent faves to the December 2022 releases that just missed the deadline for last year’s list. To help you keep track of the year’s best music, we’ll be updating it periodically throughout the remainder of 2023.
(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)
October
Sufjan Stevens: Javelin
RIYL: Career-spanning albums; crackling fires; waxing ontological about love and death; backing choirs; a guitalin, which is actually a type of lute; whispering to God
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Pangaea: Changing Channels
RIYL: Light-up dancefloors; glossolalia; hard trance; platform sneakers; dropping acid in the IMAX
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
September
Armand Hammer: We Buy Diabetic Test Strips
RIYL: 1992; pirate radio; masked rappers; black comedy and Black comedy; “cellar door”; wheatpastes; speaking your mind; protecting your peace
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
yeule: softscars
RIYL: Sprawling and intricate tattoos; meeting your online friends in real life; iPod Nanos; Avril Lavigne; Smashing Pumpkins; creepy graphic design; the color blue
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Loraine James: Gentle Confrontation
RIYL: Fog machines; the glitch; R&d’n’b; melted flexi discs; synapse mapping; club technique for home listening; taking the time to process
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Laurel Halo: Atlas
RIYL: Dusty pianos; blurry photos; the sound of the train coming into the station; fog settling over the city; Apichatpong Weerasethakul films; dusk
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Tomb Mold: The Enduring Spirit
RIYL: Death metal; math rock; jazz fusion; albums that play like one long, beautiful, uninterrupted song; complicated emotions in complicated time signatures
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Corinne Bailey Rae: Black Rainbows
RIYL: Garage sales; the photography of Carrie Mae Weems; loud, scuzzy rock; Sun Ra; Santigold; afternoon trips to the museum; W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Raphael Rogiński: Talàn
RIYL: Melancholy late-night walks; instrumental scores for nature documentaries; solo guitar music that aims to conjure spirits not soothe them
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Mitski: The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
RIYL: Clarice Lispector novels; existentialist philosophy; spaghetti westerns; old Hollywood film scores; looking up at the sky and reckoning with your smallness in the universe
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Olivia Rodrigo: GUTS
RIYL: Toxic situationships; Bring It On; rock star fantasies; “medium-ugly” guys; stalking your ex’s ex on Instagram; Weezer; talk-rapping; being your worst critic
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
August
Ratboys: The Window
RIYL: Waxahatchee, Illuminati Hotties, Alex G, road trips, fiddle parts, writing to your grandparents, smashing the overdrive pedal, smashing the like
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Ruth Garbus: Alive People
RIYL: Prose poems; first-person essays that expand into cultural criticism; surrealist paintings; the guitar sound on ’90s Joni Mitchell albums
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Jaimie Branch: Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))
RIYL: Music at the beginning or the end of the world, post-punk rave-ups, fire-breathing trumpets, Art Ensemble of Chicago via New Orleans, hillbilly jazz, ecoterrorism
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Victoria Monét: Jaguar II
RIYL: Hotel jacuzzis; premium blunts; vintage sports cars; golden sunsets; “Pretty Girl Rock”; throwing it back to the ’70s
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Noname: Sundial
RIYL: Real talk; spoken word; holding contradictions; sauntering down a sunny block; dunking on Obama’s summer playlists; pointing out that bell hooks was a landlord; calling Eric Adams a cop
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
July
The Clientele: I Am Not There Anymore
RIYL: Sensory nostalgia; the smell of used record stores; smoking cigarettes indoors; comparing mono and stereo versions of ’60s psychedelic albums; getting your autumn sweaters out of storage
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Blake Mills: Jelly Road
RIYL: Robert Fripp guitar solos; the Brattleboro, Vermont jazz scene; Cass McCombs; fretless bass; saying “I just got this on vinyl” when no one asked; albums that sound like you’re inside an intricate wooden cuckoo clock; sweet little songs about different colored fezes
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Julie Byrne: The Greater Wings
RIYL: Cosmic chamber folk; aimless drives; overpowering longing; feeling it in the body rather than the mind; “Bridge Over Troubled Water”; every shade of blue
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
ANOHNI and the Johnsons: My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
RIYL: Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On; queer liberation marches; honoring old friends; reckoning with climate grief; the Sinéad O’Connor adage that “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
June
Veeze: Ganger
RIYL: Idiosyncratic Detroit rap; sped-up Bone Thugs-N-Harmony samples; hookless rhymes; nonchalance; the concept of $20 bills being loose change; new ways to talk about promethazine; rhyming Tarantino with Finding Nemo
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Joanna Sternberg: I’ve Got Me
RIYL: Nostalgia-induced emotional spirals in your childhood bedroom; sad jazz standards; self-help books; folk singers who play the punk house shows; when Peanuts comics make you cry; Carole King style on a Daniel Johnston budget; a less problematic Charles Bukowski; self-love; self-criticism; long afternoons in the art supply store; try, try, trying again.
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Blue Lake: Sun Arcs
RIYL: Rare seed oils; meditating in a sunroom; placid lakes; placid skies; William Tyler; DIY zither; taking up a second career as a goatherd
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Asake: Work of Art
RIYL: Motivational speakers; amapiano; dreaming of getting rich and retiring early; counting your blessings; sinuous horns; jubilant choral harmonies
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Home Is Where: The Whaler
RIYL: ’90s Modest Mouse; Groundhog Day as a tragedy; daytime festival sets with revival-tent energy; anhedonia; the Instagram account @emo_encyclopedia; a little singing saw as a treat
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Feeble Little Horse: Girl With Fish
RIYL: Watching cartoons late at night on Adderall; listening to your favorite 10 seconds of a song on loop; guitars that don't sound like guitars; seemingly abstract lyrics that break your heart upon closer inspection; eviscerating sadbois
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Sexyy Red: Hood Hottest Princess
RIYL: Gassing yourself up; getting eaten out; late-2000s Gucci Mane; acrylics; giving loud, play-by-play rundowns of your sex life to your friends and not giving a shit who hears
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Youth Lagoon: Heaven Is a Junkyard
RIYL: Architectural salvage stores; home video on VHS; finding the key to your padlock diary; spotting a UFO; long dark nights of the soul; going to therapy; rededicating yourself to the process
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Amaarae: Fountain Baby
RIYL: Amex Black cards; VIP lounges; going out with your baddie friends; negging as flirting; Co-Star notifications; glistening skin; the scent of money; Missy Elliott and Janet Jackson; pussy
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
May
Water From Your Eyes: Everyone’s Crushed
RIYL: Shitty DIY basement shows; inscrutable poetry; Sonic Youth and Deerhoof; hijinks and tomfoolery; relentless shitposting; classic rock references; blaming things on late capitalism; weed logic
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Mandy, Indiana: I’ve Seen a Way
RIYL: Military documentaries; life-size chess; warehouse raves; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; polished silver; tarnished silver; the one house on the block that every kid swears is haunted
Read more: Mandy, Indiana Combat Our Dystopian Hellscape With Menacing Post-Punk
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
TisaKorean: Let Me Update My Status
RIYL: Soulja Boy; ringtone rap; learning HTML to design your Myspace; oversized basketball jerseys over oversized white tees; picking up boppers with a Sidekick
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Yunè Pinku: BABYLON IX
RIYL: Night lights; Lite-Brites; zoomers doing breakbeats; Celtic lore; every color of gel pen; the city skyline; the blue glow of the screen
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
billy woods / Kenny Segal: Maps
RIYL: Airplane safety cards; conch fritters; David Attenborough narration over Alchemist beats; privacy curtains in the limo; piff
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Nourished by Time: Erotic Probiotic 2
RIYL: Roller skating; ’80s karaoke nights; wingtip shoes; 12" extended dance remixes; day drinking on a quiet summer day
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Avalon Emerson: & the Charm
RIYL: Home hair dye; cross-country road trips; toy karaoke machines; Dido, Jewel, and Jem; sun visors; the warm waters of the Mediterranean
Read more: Why Techno Rule-Breaker Avalon Emerson Traded Club Bangers for Featherlight Dream-Pop
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
April
Jessie Ware: That! Feels Good!
RIYL: Gin martinis, extra dirty; ’70s disco; backless evening gowns; wedding jazz; beluga caviar; vibrators; inner glow
Read more: Jessie Ware’s Pleasure Principle
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Kara Jackson: Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?
RIYL: Reading an asshole with an articulacy that he could only aspire to; world-wearied wisdom; Lucille Clifton; the Chicago indie scene; protecting your peace; Joni Mitchell; Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism
Read more: Kara Jackson’s Mournful, Joyful, Unapologetic Guitar-Ass Music
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Yaeji: With a Hammer
RIYL: Comic books; old anime; ambient jazz; left-field electronic pop; meeting up with your friends at the protest; moving beyond “boba liberalism”; the Martin Luther King adage that “power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice”
Read more: Yaeji Gets Ragey
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Wednesday: Rat Saw God
RIYL: Making friends at a backyard BBQ while shotgunning beers, telling childhood stories, and sharing recommendations for short story collections and outlaw country deep cuts, then meeting up again months later to see Dinosaur Jr. on tour
Read more: Wednesday’s Curdled Beauty
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
March
Boygenius: The Record
RIYL: Excruciatingly intense homoerotic friendships; long road trips; non-dairy milk; hitting your Goodreads goal; Simon & Garfunkel; Elena Ferrante and Elif Batuman; being seen for who you really are; being loved in spite of your most self-destructive tendencies
Listen: Supergroup Therapy With Boygenius’ Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
ICECOLDBISHOP: Generational Curse
RIYL: Reality; low-rider music to drift through hell to; intergenerational narratives; calling out undercover cops; getting snaps on the petrol
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Arooj Aftab / Vijay Iyer / Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile
RIYL: Mixed emotions; time-lapse videos of blooming flowers; collaborative jazz records by artists at the top of their game
Listen: A Conversation With Improvisational Geniuses Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Angel Bat Dawid: Requiem for Jazz
RIYL: Records that demand your full attention; theoretical rabbit holes; the climactic final scenes of multi-part documentaries; avant-garde music with choirs and Auto-Tune and sampled monologues
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Liturgy: 93696
RIYL: Taking hallucinogens and analyzing the YouTube comments on black metal drum tutorial videos until you’re convinced you‘ve discovered the true meaning of the universe
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Lana Del Rey: Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
RIYL: Long, messy, borderline incomprehensible cult-classic films starring a lead actress who somehow totally sells it
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Yves Tumor: Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
RIYL: Tight leather pants; post-punk; Slipknot, Linkin Park, and My Bloody Valentine; campy horror films; The Crucible; long and ridiculous titles; asking your faves to step on you
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
100 gecs: 10,000 gecs
RIYL: Throwing a “gm” in the Discord chat with fingers that smell like gas station corn chips; slap bass; Blink-182 and Primus; going stupid; being stupid; Whip-Its; ironically watching TikTok hype house content; rhyming things with “penis”
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My
RIYL: Rocking chairs on the front porch; Sun Ra; oral histories; spiritual journeys; herbal remedies; grandfatherly wisdom
Read more: The Music That Made Cosmic Bluesman Lonnie Holley
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Fever Ray: Radical Romantics
RIYL: Feeld; Verso Books; alien music; threatening children; grazing knees under the table; transformative one-night stands; vocal modulation; the subversive power of love
Read more: Fever Ray’s Voices of Desire
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Kali Uchis: Red Moon in Venus
RIYL: Silk peignoirs; crystal balls; being faded at sunset; rose petals strewn over the bed; planetary alignments; lip oil; music that can only be described as “a vibe”
Read more: Welcome to Kali Uchis’ High-Femme Fantasy
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Model/Actriz: Dogsbody
RIYL: Jitters; adrenaline; dark, sweaty concert venues where the shows don’t start until very late at night; post-punk that embraces pop; the theatricality of Lady Gaga; Cats the musical
Read more: For Post-Punks Model/Actriz, Confrontation Is an Opportunity for Intimacy
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
February
Maxo: Even God Has a Sense of Humor
RIYL: Waking up on Sunday morning, making pancakes for breakfast, rolling a blunt, and talking to the big guy one-on-one
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Iris DeMent: Workin’ on a World
RIYL: Reconnecting with your favorite college professor and having a long, profound discussion about aging, Chekhov, and gun violence over coffee and cigarettes
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Liv.e: Girl in the Half Pearl
RIYL: Drinking a martini unbothered as you ignore the advances of the imbecile trying to buy you another; acknowledging the lonely beast inside of you; phone dial tones; drum’n’bass; warped R&B; late-night calls from your sneaky link
Read more: R&B Experimentalist Liv.e Sings Through the Bullshit
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
RIYL: Limerence; The White Lotus; the Blumarine Fall Winter 2021 campaign; ancient European folklore and mythology; The Lizzie McGuire Movie; Madonna’s Ray of Light; Kate Bush’s The Sensual World; the collected works of theorist Lauren Berlant
Read more: Caroline Polachek on Divas, an Acid Trip, and Desire, I Want to Turn Into You
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Kelela: Raven
RIYL: Standing at the base of a waterfall; reaching flow-state at the club; soft rave music; LSDXOXO, Bambii, and Kaytranada; consciousness-raising reading lists and cultivating intentional community
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Yo La Tengo: This Stupid World
RIYL: Road trips; parties in basements; long walks late at night; long-term relationships; group hugs; amplifier noise
Read more: Forty Years In, Yo La Tengo Are Still Making It Up as They Go
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
파란노을 (Parannoul): After the Magic
RIYL: Listening to 2000s indie-rock comfort food as loud as possible in wired earbuds while going for a run on a snowy day
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
January
Kali Malone: Does Spring Hide Its Joy
RIYL: Extending the length of a deep-tissue massage both because it feels so good and because you might be on the verge of an epiphany
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
Tujiko Noriko: Crépuscule I & II
RIYL: Land art; gentle ombre; walking through an endless hallway of books and looking for the one that will teach you to build a piano by hand
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
December
SZA: SOS
RIYL: Getting mad at your man for cheating on you in your dreams; being “wifey” even if you’re not a girlfriend; R&B with both harp and 808s; Hannah Montana; immaculate and conversational melodies; running up your therapy bill
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Rough Trade | Spotify | Tidal
