40 Cheekface - Middle Spoon
America's local band signal more dispatches from the nerdy, mostly impoverished artist ranks, looking out wryly at the outside world
39 C Duncan - It's Only A Love Song
An unexpected turn into romantic chamber pop, ornate swooning and swooping strings flavouring Nilsson-inspired songwriting that borders on the timeless
38 Tulpa - Monster Of The Week
Score another for Skep Wax! Ringing guitars and iridescent melodies nodding at US college rock's early 90s golden age, harmonies and knowing raggedness intersecting
37 Little Simz - Lotus
Inflo doesn't come out of it well. What does, for the most part, is a sense of Simbi trying to find herself again and finding a jazzy stillness
36 Sudan Archives - THE BPM
Taking a turn to the club, while crucially not letting the trap beats, vocal effects and house 303s overtake her well established personality
35 Adwaith - Solas
A 23-track odyssey pushing their expanding post-punk into new musical corners and emerging as psych-dipped warriors ready for arenas or electronic worlds
34 Panda Bear - Sinister Grift
The songs based on loops pick up where his Sonic Boom collaboration left off; the stacked self-harmonies, collages and sunlit uplands refract his own past into something more easily accepting
33 Sacred Paws - Jump Into Life
Back to dance through the anxiety, the exuberant hi-life guitar and restless rhythms one more reflecting the internalised joy and tension
32 Jens Lekman - Songs For Other People's Weddings
Jens takes his talent for extraordinary detail to a lengthy concept based on his nuptials side hustle, capturing unfolding stories amid a return to musical mini-grandiosity
31 Lambrini Girls - Who Let The Dogs Out
The riot grrrls are back alive and giving out about the ever growing list of ills with intense force, both politically lyrically and in slabs of noise
30 Anna B Savage - You & I are Earth
Newly moved to Ireland and reckoning with her new rural surroundings, this might be the most intimate she's been which is some benchmark
29 Wet Leg - Moisturizer
In which they not only have to build on the sturdy foundations but Rhian is negotiating love. Turns out their expansive enough to make sure they're in it for the long haul
28 Ex-Vöid - In Love Again
Owen Williams' first of two appearances comes with his (and Lan McArdle's) already defunct fuzzed out hook factory of a classic power-pop outfit
27 Allo Darlin - Bright Nights
Back together, more low-key, countrified and grown into the demands of family and coping with new priorities while still wistful for the bigger picture
26 Alan Sparhawk With Trampled By Turtles - Alan Sparhawk With Trampled By Turtles
Sparhawk's first full band album since losing Mimi Parker, joining local bluegrass heroes to emotively shape a world after grief
25 Sharon Van Etten - Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
Van Etten forms a band around her and extends her already widescreen ambitions from indie-folk safety into electronic gothic moods and spaces
24 Hayden Pedigo - I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away
Hurrah for the American Primitive! Pedigo's fingerpicked instrumentals tell of wide open spaces, rippling vistas and undimmed small scale ambition
23 Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - Mercy
billy woods' first of two appearances on the list, reteaming with ELUCID to outline a dank manual of survival, keeping heads above the piano/synth loop waters
22 Cate Le Bon - Michaelangelo Dying
Another twist in Le Bon's exploration of post-Bowie art-pop, even finding a distinct, cryptic, sometimes queasy voice in heartbreak of all potential cliches
21 The Tubs - Cotton Crown
Owen again, still sounding like Richard Thompson Sings Bob Mould if more the latter's early solo stuff, the jangle-adjacent power-pop mostly grown up and more contemplative
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