The Best Music of 2023 So Far

A rolling list of our favorite albums of the year, updated somewhat frequently.
SZA Sufjan Stevens Yves Tumor and more
Image by Marina Kozak, photos via Getty Images

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

Asthmatic Kitty

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


Hessle Audio

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

Fat Possum

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


Ninja Tune

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


Hyperdub

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


Awe

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


20 Buck Spin

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


Thirty Tigers

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


Instant Classic

Raphael Rogiń​ski: Tal​​​à​​​n

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


Geffen

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

Topshelf

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


Orindal

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


International Anthem

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


Lovett Music / RCA

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


Self-released

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

Merge

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


New Deal / Verve

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


Ghostly International

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


Secretly Canadian

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

Navy Wavy LLC

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


Fat Possum

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


Tonal Union

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


YBNL Nation / Empire

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


Wax Bodega

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


Saddle Creek

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


Open Shift Distribution / Gamma

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


Fat Possum

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


Interscope

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

Matador

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


Fire Talk

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


Jazzzy

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


Platoon

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


Backwoodz Studioz

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


Scenic Route

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


Another Dove

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

Interscope

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


September

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


XL

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


Dead Oceans

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

Interscope

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


Epic

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


Verve

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


International Anthem

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


Thrill Jockey

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


Interscope

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


Warp

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


Dog Show / Atlantic

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


Jagjaguwar

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


Mute

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


Geffen

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


True Panther

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

Def Jam

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


Flariella

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


In Real Life

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


Perpetual Novice

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


Warp

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


Matador

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


Poclanos / Topshelf

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

Ideologic Organ

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


Editions Mego

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

Top Dawg Entertainment / RCA

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