The 50 Best Indie Rock Albums of 2024

Wussy, the Cincinnati, Ohio band led by singer-guitarists Chuck Pearson and Lisa Walker, have been putting out great records for years, starting with 2005 wonderful Funeral Dress. Cincinnati Ohio is the first Wussy album since the death of guitarist John Erhardt in 2020, and songs like the haunting  opener “The Great Divide,” “The Ghosts Keep Me Alive,” and “Disaster About You” have a tough, tender melancholic beauty. Wussy seem to draw power not from trying to find light in a dark moment, but leaning into absence and loss for the everyday stuff that it is. They have pain to share, and they play through it.–Jon Dolan 

The Los Angeles songwriter digs deep on her third album, culling tales from her family history and present-day romances and friendships to weave a gorgeous web of intricate, dreamy folk music. From the gripping opener “I’m the Same” to the easygoing, porch-swinging rocker “Swinging Doors,” the nine tracks offer a glimpse into Allen’s mind, where the mythology of the North Star and the music of her hero, Joanna Newsom, reign supreme. “Music is definitely a burden as well as a calling,” she told us in the spring. “And I sometimes wish that I was just a normie who worked at Google, but I’ve just never been like that and had to come to terms with that.” We’re glad she did.–Angie Martoccio

On his debut album, Geordie Greep — formerly of English avant-rock favorites Black Midi — mixes technical wizardry and classic panache, all while singing about (or straight from the perspective of) some of the most obnoxious dudes you can imagine. Delusional Lotharios (“Holy, Holy”), self-indulgent wankers (“Blues”), sadsack johns (“As If Waltz”), and more. This menagerie of guys receives a thrilling soundtrack that finds Greep leaning into his love of Brazilian music (part of the album was recorded in São Paulo) and salsa, while also splitting the difference between Franks Zappa and Sinatra.–Jon Blistein

Formed in the late-2010s and led by Parquet Courts drummer Max Savage, the charming Maxband deliver prickly prettiness on their second album, On Ice. They specialize in sharp, tuneful post-punk that will be happily embraced by fans of the first two Parquet Courts albums, especially “Rich Man” and “Take-out Menu,” wry songs about life in New York (one satiric, one sweet). On Ice also has more wide-open highlights like “Fabric,” “Slipping On Ice” and “Recreate the Start,” taut guitar jags that peel out into dreamy expansiveness that brings to mind bands like Pylon, Love Tractor and Deerhunter.--J.D.

The fourth album from singer-multi instrumentalist Dave Benton is an open-hearted breakup record that pays tender tribute to its influences, from late-era Petty to War on Drugs to the protagonist singing the praises of the Replacements on the final track “Won’t Go Home.” Benton has progressed as a writer, singer, and record-maker; Just listen to the spacing of instruments and vocal phrasing on the slow-building TK “Hard to Accept.” From the opening opus “In A Dream,” to the blissed out mid-tempo “Ponies” to the immaculately recorded pedal steel rocker “Gone & Done,” Into the Burning Blue is the most fully-realized Trace Mountains record to date.--Jonathan Bernstein

The D.C. quartet Bad Moves have always been DIY power-pop ragers with their own clever sense of humor, ever since they started turning heads with tunes like their 2018 “Spirit FM,” about finding queer romance at Christian summer camp. Wearing Out The Refrain is their most rambunctious album yet, with their tag-team multigender harmonies over the sugar-pop guitar rush. They mix up political rage and personal travails in witty tunes like “Outta My Head” and the bummed-out (yet catchy) seasonal lament “New Year’s Reprieve.”–Rob Sheffield

Jess Viscius’ 2021 debut as Bnny, Everything, was an intense reflection on grief and absence. Her view of the world expands from there on the band’s follow-up, but don’t get it twisted — Bnny still do gorgeous gloom better than most. “Something Blue” is soaked in grungy atmosphere and memory: “I’m runnin’ from the past, but the past keeps catchin’ up,” Viscius sings over simmering electric guitars. It’s a thrill to hear Bnny capture the late-night intensity of their live shows on these louder highlights. But “Rainbow,” a pretty ballad on similar themes, is just as moving: “I’ve got a rainbow on a rainy day,” Viscus sings. “But the past, the past, the past, keeps getting in the way.” —Simon Vozick-Levinson

MUNA lead singer Katie Gavin goes her own way to great effect on this understated collection of folky, Lilith Fair-inspired singer-songwriter tunes. There are fiddles, there are delicate touches from Phoebe Bridgers’ producer Tony Berg, there are songs about baby lizards. Songs like “Casual Drug Use” and “Inconsolable” prove that Gavin’s switch from synths to strumming didn’t remotely tamper her knack for melody and sing-along choruses. “As Good As It Gets,” a duet with labelmate Mitski, is a slow-burning indie folk-pop ballad that shows off Gavin’s boundless cross-genre versatility as a songwriter and arranger.–J. Bernstein

If you’re not familiar with Haley Heynderickx, just know that Lucy Dacus cited her as one of the few musicians she could envision joining boygenius. The Oregon singer-songwriter returns with her second album, a stunner that fuses storytelling and the natural world (she titled her 2018 debut I Need to Start a Garden, so it only makes sense to call this one Seed of a Seed). Heynderickx is just 31, but her music is eerily reminiscent of Sixties folk, from her Bert Jansch-esque fingerpicking to her vocals that soar across chilly winds like Sandy Denny. Cuts like “Foxglove” and “Redwoods (Anxious God)” glow like fireflies in a forest — or the glorious hummingbirds she tends to sing about.--A.M.

North Carolina singer-songwriter Rosali Middleman has a warm, enveloping voice that blends perfectly with the carefully rocking accompaniment of her backing band, led by guitarist David Nance. Bite Down is a sweet slow-drink of a record, sometimes sounding like what might have happened if Stevie Nicks had joined Fleetwood Mac when they were making Bare Trees, or Linda Ronstadt fronting Crazy Horse. Songs like “On Tonight,” “Hills On Fire,” are luminous studies in meditative desire.–J.D.

Few artists out there write a melancholic smasher like Babehoven’s Bon and Ryan Albert, whose swaying and unique melodies can make the listener feel like they’re hearing something totally new. The songs on Water’s Here in You blend indie rock with folk and country twangs, occasionally venturing into shoegaze-y territory. At times, the music feels holy and hymn-like. Part of that disarming enchantment comes from the contemplative loop-like quality of the duo’s songwriting. Bon’s use of chant-like repetition can feel almost liturgical, as if her purely emotional confessions might someday become sacraments. —Leah Lu

 “Now is the time for me to get what I want/And when I figure it out, consider it bought,” Kim Deal sings on her first solo LP. Here she is at 63, and still figuring it all out like the rest of us. She’s a Frank Sinatra-esque crooner on the title track. She flirts with calypso on “Coast” (whose vocal melody recalls Blondie’s “Sunday Girl”), straddles the late-Fifties nexus between gentle Everly Brothers crooning and weepy Patsy Cline on “Are You Mine?” (whose lyrics quote her mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, but also read like a romantic love song), and finally catches up with the Nineties’ trip-hop fascination on “Big Ben Beat.” Each track represents a different quadrant of Deal’s life.–Kory Grow

Free Energy, the second album from Los Angeles’ Dummy, is like a taxonomy of all things psychedelic. A heady jangle of guitars transforms into a shoegaze wallop on “Soonish…”; “Blue Dada” follows an atmospheric Madchester groove to a motorik freak-out; the swooning ambiance of “Dip in the Lake” is juxtaposed with the live-wire jolt of “Sudden Flutes” (which, you better believe it, does contain the sudden arrival of flutes). In exploring every corner of these styles, tones, eras, sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres, Dummy follow the most reliable guiding lights: Good old fashioned pop songwriting sensibilities.--J. Blistein

Before making his second album as GIFT, Brooklyn musician TJ Freda put together a crack new lineup of backing musicians including a local venue owner and a professional photographer to help realize his starry-eyed visions. The result was the improbable alchemy of Illuminator, which plunges the listener into an ocean of arpeggiated dream-pop bliss from the first note. There are hints of Balearic groove and My Bloody Valentine in sunshine-shoegaze bangers like “Wish Me Awake,” “Light Runner,” and “Going in Circles.” With its infinite-loop hooks and endless sparkling reverberations, this is a gift that keeps giving. —S.V.L.

Diaz has been cutting her teeth in the music industry since 2007, but she’s only gotten her due in recent years, touring with Harry Styles and collaborating with everyone from Maren Morris to Waxahatchee. The stunning Weird Faith continues this momentum, as Diaz delivers incisive songs that contemplate the longevity — and at times disillusionment — of romance. “Don’t Do Me Good,” her heartbreaking duet with Kacey Musgraves that threatens to wave the white flag in a crumbling relationship — is her strongest song yet. Both the album and “Don’t Do Me Good” were recently nominated for a Grammy, proving that Diaz’s moment is only beginning.–A.M.

The L.A. band Julie are in love with early Nineties grunge-pop and shoegaze. The spacious beauty and seething tunes keep coming on My Anti-Aircraft Friend. The band’s two vocalists – guitarist Keyan Pourzand and bassist Alexandria Elizabeth – have totally mastered the just-got-out-of-bed mumble-sing that My Bloody Valentine perfected on Isn’t Anything, and bands like Versus and Butterglory added their own spin to, cutting through the sharp, spiraling noise of “Clairbourne Practice” and “Feminine Adornments” with shy, distracted passion. This record would’ve set college radio playlists ablaze in 1994.–J.D.

The guitar legend Mary Timony goes for emotional catharsis on Untame the Tiger, her first solo album in almost 20 years. It’s got the massive guitar clang she pioneered in Helium and Wild Flag. The songs are full of pain and grief, mourning her parents along with the demise of a relationship. But she also shows off the melodic, downright playful side she displayed in Ex Hex, with British folk-rock drummer Dave Mattacks, so it also feels strangely uplifting. In “No Thirds,” she faces the future as an open road, with the clear-eyed credo, “Let the sun shine on everything that’s wrong.”--R.S.

While method acting has garnered its critics over the years, Nilüfer Yanya grew fascinated with this technique (where actors try to fully become their characters) while making her third album. For Yanya, the theory behind it tapped into something personal — a process of becoming, both as an individual and as an artist. That’s not to say My Method Actor is aiming for total existential singularity. Rather, the songs follow Yanya’s guitar playing, multi-faceted and fascinating, down myriad paths: “You’re never gonna find me but can’t be sure what’s calling me, my friend,” she sings on “Made Out of Memory.” “I think a lot about what I’m destined for, I’m dreaming of the end.”–J. Blistein

Cloud Nothings sound renewed on Final Summer, leaping out with the frantic emotional faster-faster punk punch that the Cleveland band defined on early gems like 2012’s Attack on Memory and 2014’s Here and Nowhere Else. Dylan Baldi’s racing into his thirties with no sentimentality (and none of his beloved free jazz side experiments) but plenty of bite, with madman drummer Jason Gerycz propelling it all. The title song rides on Krautrock synths, with Baldi ranting, “Coming into final summer / What’s the use in trying to be undercover?” Despite the title, Cloud Nothings aren’t at the end of anything—they’re marathoners with staying power.–R.S.

Forget the Platonic ideal, Shellac have always aspired to the sardonic ideal. On a ditty cheekily titled “Chick New Wave” — off To All Trains, the noise-rock group’s sixth and final album following the death of its singer-guitarist Steve Albini — we hear Albini hector, “I’m through with music from dudes … all I care about is chick new wave.” Shellac always existed in the interzone between Serious Art Rock and serving as the genre’s preeminent roastmasters general. The Fall and Cheap Trick were equal influences on Albini, but he also liked to play Lenny Bruce onstage. To All Trains captures the nexus of serious/not serious that Shellac made their métier.–K.G.

This Brattleboro, Vermont, band switched things up in the best way possible for their second album, trading in the somber goth overtones of their 2022 debut for an electric jolt of glam-rock/ punk energy. Songs like “Get Stable” and “On the Floor” have the stylish, stomping swagger of prime Franz Ferdinand or Arctic Monkeys — with riffs this tight, you can almost see the iPod commercials and primetime-soap montages they would have soundtracked in a previous era. But this is no throwback. Every word that Thus Love’s wildly charismatic lead singer, Echo Mars, howls is full of the raw desperation and promise of life lived on the edge of right now. —S.V.L.

“I have got some questions/Filed with discontent,” Cola singer-guitarist Tim Darcy informs us on the Montreal post-punk band’s second album. Cola have their own fun little take on modern alienation. Laying bright, bracing guitars over taut, tetchy, minimalist drums and bass, their sound brings to mind Wire and the very earliest Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen. Yet where those bands had the decaying post-industrial England of the 1970s as a backdrop, Cola are products of our own more ambiently dehumanized times.–J.D.

Eels, the second album from Austin’s Being Dead, is gloriously hard to pin down. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on its rock and roll pastiche, it veers down some jittery, jangly corridor, or gallops into a spaced-out open range. Opener “Godzilla Rises” — a love song to, you guessed it, Godzilla — sets a tone of pervasive joy that even simmers beneath, but never hinders, Eels’ more soft-spoken and heartbroken moments. Fittingly, the album’s most succinct moment is the one where co-bandleaders Falcon Bitch and Smoofy (no, seriously) find just the right words to sum up all this laughing, crying, and feeling: “Rock n’ roll hurts, baby, rock n’ roll hurts, baby/Why don’t you rock out with me?”–J. Blistein

These UK malcontents go back to the high-protein, low-eye contact Midwestern noise thuggery of bands like Arcwelder, Tar, Pegboy, and the Jesus Lizard – the sound Nirvana wanted for In Utero. In fact, their second record was recorded at Pachyderm Studios in Minnesota, where Nirvana made that classic. Wunderhorse are also good at writing catchy songs with sad-boy titles like “Emily” and “Rain,” so the Pachyderm record Midas brings to mind most is Seamonsters, the Steve Albini-produced masterpiece by Leeds, England’s Wedding Present, which also only had one word titles.–J.D. 

“I wanted to make a capital-R record,” Eliza McLamb recently told us. “I wanted to make something that has a concept that’s intended to be listened to top-to-bottom.” Mission accomplished. McLamb’s debut Going Through It is a journey through the hellscape that is being a twenty-something female in 2024, complete with trips to the fridge to eat deli ham (“Modern Woman”) and the urge to murder your friend’s shitty boyfriend (the anthemic “Glitter”). McLamb is just trying to make sense of it all, taking us along for the ride while she dazzles in sharp songwriting and riotous riffs. The Sarah Tudzin-produced album arrived in January, and it spent the year flying just below the radar. By her next album, she’ll be soaring well above it. -A.M.

In nature, an imaginal disc is a goopy collection of larva cells that metamorphose into legs, eyes, antennae, or wings. In the world of Magdalena Bay’s second album, an “imaginal disk” is a consciousness upgrade, uploaded via the forehead. It’s a suitably out-there concept to anchor an existential phantasmagoria of an album loosely centered around True, a character who has to re-learn what it means to be human after receiving her upgrade, Mag Bay’s Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin explore themes of reinvention and actualization, pairing these heady musings with some of the most adventurous and hook-y alterna-pop out there.–J. Blistein

Rose Melberg and Jen Srbagia have the kind of chemistry that comes from the heart. As the Softies, they make intimate indie-pop, as hushed as folk but as powerful as punk, just two voices and their whispery guitars. They made their legend in the Nineties, from the ashes of Melberg’s earlier band Tiger Trap. But these lifelong best friends reconnected musically for The Bed I Made, their first Softies album in 24 years. It’s full of fabulously open-hearted tunes about adult emotion, whether that means insomnia,
grief, or (in “California Highway 99”) driving away from romance at 3 A.M. in a rented Chevy Malibu.–R.S.

Describing the warm, fuzzy optimism of an Idles record requires only the most pretentious adjectives — ebullience, exultation, jubilation. Their 2020 album, Ultra Mono, brightened the darkest moments of peak Covid lockdown with uplifting punk-rock mantras like “Let’s seize the day … You can do it.” On their fifth full-length, the crew from Bristol, England, dials back some of the intensity, but maintains the positive mental attitude. —K.G.

For her third record, Bea Kristi faces the messy reality of becoming an adult. For someone who is still figuring it all out, she has never sounded as self-assured. Thanks to the help of Rick Rubin’s attentive production style, the album ventures into new territory but makes it feel worn-in. On “Coming Home,” Beabadoobee rounds out the mundane sweetness of missing her partner with jaunty, jazz-inflected jumps. Meanwhile, the sexy, bouncing bass on “Real Man” channels Bea’s inner Fiona Apple and serves as a perfect companion to her flawless falsetto.–Maya Georgi 

Nada Surf made a smashing return this year with Moon Mirror, one of their finest albums, full of exquisite guitar chime and impeccable tune craft. Matthew Caws sings witty but heartfelt vignettes about trying to get a grip on your sanity — maybe even true love? — in the chaos and grief of modern life. “In Front of Me Now” is a playful ode to how multitasking sucks, and learning how to tune out the distractions that block you from showing up for your own life. “I used to be counting when I was sharing,” Caws sings. “I used to be blanking when I was staring.” —R.S.

While Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker were working on Little Rope, they received news that Brownstein’s mother and stepfather had been killed in a car accident while vacationing in Italy. That tragic experience became the emotional backdrop from an album that saw the duo return to the resonant guitar fury that has always defined Sleater-Kinney at their best. Highlights like “Say It Like You Mean It” and “Six Mistakes” are as cathartic as anything in their illustrious canon, even as they keep expanding their sound in new directions. —J.D.

The Spanish guitar goddesses in Hinds have been through it lately, like most of us. But they bounce back hard in their fabulously resilient Viva Hinds. It’s their fourth and finest album, a brash half-hour of swaggering garage rockers about facing heartache by turning it into a sarcastic joke, with guitars cranked up all the way. Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten drops in for “Strangers,” fitting right into their sugary harmonies with his surly Dublin punk sneer. But Hinds aren’t the type to wallow in despair, and Viva Hinds is a righteous soundtrack to leaving hard times behind and rushing forward.—R.S. 

Fronted by a mailman, this Michigan indie-rock band highlights their Replacements-y Midwestern-ness by opening with “Drinking and Driving,” a song that refers to an essential life skill the members of Liquid Mike may have had down before they were out of high school. On Paul Bunyan’s Sling Shot, they play short, fast, muscular songs that split the difference between Nineties pop punk and Nineties indie rock, tempering the petulant angst of the former with the latter’s winning resignation. —J.D.

Claire Rousay has spent the past few years building her own adventurous style of electronic collage, calling it “emo ambient.” Sentiment is her self-described pop album, building her late-night diary entries out of synth textures, warped melodies, robot Auto-Tune vocals, and rock guitar weaving in and out of the mix. Her big theme on Sentiment is loneliness, and she evokes it in the wide-open spaces in the music, from her Auto-Tuned vocal alienation to her nervously clumsy guitar. The whole album flows like Brian Eno’s Another Green World through the ears of a big Pedro the Lion fan. —R.S.

When Charly Bliss first came out of Brooklyn, they were snappy Nineties alt-rock revivalists. On Forever, they lean way into the pop side of their sound. Indie bands often dream of writing songs that connect with the larger Top 40 world while still maintaining their own musical and emotional integrity. Few do it this well. “I’m Not Dead” suggests Olivia Rodrigo after binging Weezer’s Blue Album. “I Don’t Know Anything” is shoegaze teen pop, like Hotline TNT soundtracking a pivotal scene in a Netflix coming-of-age drama. —J.D.

Meet the year’s favorite indie-rock supergroup. In this corner: Stephen Malkmus, from Pavement and the Jicks. In that one: Matt Sweeney, from Chavez and Superwolf. They’re joined by Dirty Three drum legend Jim White and Ty Segall bassist Emmett Kelly. They’re basically the Matador Wilburys—an all-star team where listening just means hanging out and soaking up the friendly vibe. The Hard Quartet’s awesomely shaggy debut album slams hard in Seventies rock mode. But it peaks even higher when it slows down for hippie-folk bongwater ballads like “Six Deaf Rats” and “Jacked Existence.”–R.S.

Rosie Tucker rips modern culture apart in Utopia Now!, a fresh, biting, innovative, and fantastic piece of indie-rock agit-prop tunecraft. These songs combine a twentysomething malaise with a critique of the consumerist machine, and what it does to our brains. You might hear That Dog or Juliana Hatfield in the sound, with a pop-punk crunch in Tucker’s guitar. But the mix of playful humor and anger also evokes the Minutemen, as Tucker swerves between blunt propaganda and storm-in-my-house emotion. —R.S.

Allegra Krieger won a wider audience for her heady, philosophical indie folk on last year’s I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane. This year, the New York songwriter plugged in for an electric record that’s no less profound. When the LP starts, she’s walking down Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, wondering about the meaning of life; when it ends half an hour later, she’s driving a lonely highway in New Mexico, weighing love and loss. In between are songs like “Into Eternity,” “One or the Other,” and “Came” — slowly winding interior journeys that will floor you on first listen, and keep you thinking long after the record ends. —S.V.L.

Would you believe us if we told you that one of the anarchic noisemakers from New York’s Water From Your Eyes is also a sweet, sad singer-songwriter in the tradition of Elliott Smith? No joke. Nate Amos’ first proper LP from his long-running Bandcamp project is a revelation, full of gorgeous alt-country tunes with a genuine warmth behind them. He sings with open-hearted honesty about love, regret, and sobriety over radiantly melodic DIY arrangements on songs like “Where’s Your Love Now” and “Two Legs.” It’s his greatest trick yet, and a sign of a major talent with much more to show us. —S.V.L.

The Big Thief singer-songwriter’s fifth solo album carries an aura of raw, one-take candidness. It’s sweet and subtle in its sound, though Adrianne Lenker’s lyricism remains characteristically brutal and brave. The tracks share a similar sparseness and uniformity in instrumentation — piano, violin, guitar, and occasional percussion — but rather than melding together, each song stands strong, poignant, and singular. It’s a body of incantations that explore reconciliation, resignation, and reverence. —L.L.

Romance is wildly expansive, and Fontaines D.C.’s bullheaded integrity still stands, perhaps with a stronger spine than ever. It takes a true romantic to be a world-builder, and Fontaines D.C. have mastered the art. Each song on Romance acts as its own fantastical cinematic universe, fleshed out with fictional characters, in-depth monologues, and pristinely curated sonic elements to match. That’s partially indebted to the band’s decision to work with producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Blur) on this record. —L.L. 

Sarah Tudzin, a Los Angeles singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist who has been recording as Illuminati Hotties since the late 2010s, has called her openhearted DIY ethos “tenderpunk.” As a producer and recording engineer, she’s worked with artists from Weyes Blood to Coldplay, and she won a Grammy for her production on Boygenius’ 2023 landmark, The Record. With Power, she delivers a studio-craft masterstroke without scrimping a bit on the hard-hitting honesty that fuels her writing. —J.D.

Evergreen is indie-rock singer-songwriter’s Sophie Allison’s most unguarded and personal. The single “Driver” is probably the best rocker she’s ever recorded, but most of the album has a sadly reflective, dream-pop haziness, steeped in Smiths jangle, echo, and drift. On “Some Sunny Day,” the guitar glances off her distant voice as she sings about closing her eyes and seeing the face of a loved one she’ll never see again. “But how she feels I’ll never know … it’s lost to me,” she sings. The very moving results brings to mind find-the-river classics like R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People. —J.D. 

The Atlanta singer-songwriter has always depicted romance as a force that shapes our ambient mode of existence. It’s fitting that her music favors a lounging-around easiness; her blend of soft rock and indie country is an ideal soundtrack for drawn-out sessions being consumed by your thoughts, uninterrupted. With her fifth studio album, Faye Webster has her strongest grasp yet on how to convey these obsessive contemplations. —Joshua Minsoo Kim

Sonic Youth co-founder and indie-rock icon Kim Gordon turned 71 this year, and she’s made one of the most daring albums of her career. The plucked plush synth pads, set to an 808-style handclap-spangled breakbeat, could serve as sonic backdrop for verses by Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, or ScHoolboy Q, and it’s equally effective for Gordon’s Delphic rapping. The songs come off as avant-garde, trap, old-school hip-hop, noisy, or musique concrète, depending on where you drop the needle. —K.G.

On the highly anticipated I Got Heaven, the Philly punk rockers have completely leveled up, enmeshing lush synth sounds into their brash sensibility, using anger as a vessel to explore the depths of loneliness and desire. “OK? OK! OK? OK!” and “Aching” step into wild, wailing territory, while “Nothing Like” and “Sometimes” are filled with soft guitars that could easily soundtrack a cult-favorite romantic comedy from the Nineties. They throw raw emotions at the canvas and step back to find a glistening display of human longing. —M.G.

Five long years have passed since Pratt’s striking 2019 LP, Quiet Signs. But the Los Angeles folkie more than makes up for lost time on the excellent Here in the Pitch, a sweeping, nine-track odyssey that culminates with the utterly beautiful “The Last Year.” The album was heavily influenced by the dark underbelly of the Sixties and Seventies, from Spirit to Captain Beefheart, a reclamation process Pratt calls “marching through the psychic waves of all of the history and layers of humanity that have come before you.” —A.M.

Put aside, if you can, the anti-hype cycle around this extraordinary double album — the mysterious release as an unmarked YouTube link, the wild praise that followed from fans and critics hungry for anything that resembles a true underground phenomenon. What you’re left with is two hours of mind-melting low-fi gold, deftly interwoven with threads of psychedelia, funk, garage rock, torch songs, and AM melodies. Unfolding slowly with its own dream logic, Diamond Jubilee is a gem worth getting dazzled by. —S.V.L.

“Drank someone else’s juice and left only the rind,” Katie Crutchfield boasts. She’s got a right to sound cocky. The longtime indie-rock underdog hero won herself a lot of new fans with Saint Cloud, her 2020 breakthrough hit, going for a laid-back style of heartland rock & roll twang. But Tigers Blood is even more rugged and confident, a master storyteller fully aware she’s on a hot streak. She sings about adult romance, struggling for sobriety, the day-to-day work of holding it together — in the poetic voice of a Lucinda Williams who came of age playing DIY punk-house basement shows.–R.S.

Over the past few years, Asheville, North Carolina, singer-songwriter MJ Lenderman has become every indie-rock fan’s favorite dude. He’s really feeling himself on Manning Fireworks, leaning into the country side of his songwriting and the collapsing-back-porch ache in his voice. Hapless, heartbroken men like that show up in pretty much every song, and he tells their stories with homespun irony and droll empathy. Lenderman takes the vaunted sad-sack rock tradition of greats like Neil Young and Paul Westerberg and spins it into something of his own. —J.D.