2024 was a busy year for music. We had brat summer, a high profile rap beef, and more than enough pop stars going country. Here are some genre-spanning favorites of the year from DPL staff.
Cowboy Carter is the critically celebrated new release from Beyoncé, and the artist's eighth studio album. Cowboy Carter is the musical concoction you did not expect from this influential artist. Cowboy Carter, executive produced by Beyoncé, touches on many musical genres, while being deeply rooted in country.
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Brat is the sixth studio album by English singer Charli XCX. It features production by Charli XCX, her longtime executive producer A. G. Cook, Finn Keane, Cirkut, her partner George Daniel, and others. The album draws influence from the 2000s English rave music scene, with a more aggressive club sound than her previous album, Crash (2022). According to Charli XCX, Brat is her "most aggressive and confrontational record," but also her most vulnerable.
This 10-track EP by Colombian singer, songwriter, and record producer Salomón Villada Hoyos (AKA Feid, AKA Ferxxo) has become a staple in modern reggaeton, spawning the instant hit "Luna," featuring ATL Jacob.
Blues singer-songwriter and five-time Grammy-nominee Ruthie Foster shines bright on Mileage, her tenth studio album offering. Reflecting on journeys both professional and personal, Ruthie brings her soul to the surface with the help of producer Tyler Bryant (The Shakedown). The pair grew in creative partnership from conversations that turned into songs like "Rainbow," "Heartshine," and more, celebrating Ruthie's career as a Black woman and LGBTQ+ artist.
Legendary musician and multi-disciplinary artist Kim Gordon returns with her second solo album. The Collective follows Gordon’s 2019 full-length debut No Home Record and continues her collaboration with producer Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Charli XCX, Yves Tumor), with additional production from Anthony Paul Lopez. The album advances their joint world building, with Raisen’s damaged, blown out dub and trap constructions playing the foil to Gordon’s intuitive word collages and hooky mantras, which conjure communication, commercial sublimation, and sensory overload.
In demand since MTV’s 1984 spotlight on “Draggin’ The Bottom,” multi-media artist Julia Heyward and T-Venus’ present their art rock forty plus years after the buzz started. Heyward is a highly respected video artist as well having directed the Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House" video, and videos for The Red Rockers, Romeo Void and more. Her work has been featured in museums globally including the esteemed Whitney in New York City. Enjoy these previously lost post-punk, art-rock, and synth pop gems.
Concentrating on the basics after the sprawl of Human: The Double Album, Cody Johnson doubles down on the Lone Star State, whiskey, and work boots on Leather, a sturdy and streamlined collection of country tunes. Featuring nu-country sensation Jelly Roll and 90s country superstars Brooks & Dunn. Leather is a record that follows the blueprint initially sketched out at the height of arena country; being melodic, varied, and friendly.
Crash is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Kehlani. The album features guest appearances from Jill Scott, Young Miko, and Omah Lay. Serving as the follow-up to Kehlani's previous album, Blue Water Road (2022), Crash was supported by three singles: "After Hours," "Next 2 U," and "Crash." The album is nominated for Best Progressive R&B Album at the 67th Grammy Awards.
Produced by Mike Elizondo (Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crow), Lake Street Dive's new album Good Together is an eclectic set of genre-bending songs fusing pop, R&B, soul, and jazz. On Good Together, Lake Street Dive’s Rachael Price (vocals), Bridget Kearney (bass), Mike Calabrese (drums), Akie Bermiss (keyboards), and James Cornelison (guitar) have created what is perhaps the most confident and accomplished recording of their career.
MJ Lenderman is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Asheville, North Carolina. Manning Fireworks features warped pedal steels, skuzzed out guitars, and Lenderman’s high-lonesome warble. Songs snake their way from a lo-fi home recording to something glossier; made with longtime friends at Asheville's Drop of Sun studios. Lenderman’s propensity for humor always points to some uneasy, disorienting darkness. The punchlines are still here, as are the rusted-wire guitar solos that have made Lenderman a favorite for indie rock fans looking for an emerging guitar hero.
Adrianne Lenker is the lead vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter of the band Big Thief. On this solo album Lenker delves into a wide range of topics like love, climate change, gratitude, and feeling overwhelmed with her trademark intimate spin.
Belarusian post-punk/synth pop group Molchat Doma have always exuded the kind of brutalist aesthetic of the architecture that adorns their album art. It's cold, gray, imposing, industrial, and yet there are human hearts beating within those foundations. In the wake of their breakthrough success in 2020, the trio endured a polarity of experiences, from being uprooted from their native Minsk due to war, to headlining massive shows across the world. It was in this headspace that the band settled into their new home of Los Angeles to finish writing their fourth album Belaya Polosa, a testament to change in difficult times, a love letter to the digital pulse of the ‘80s and '90s, and a technicolor reinvention of the band's somber dancefloor anthems.
Seven-time Grammy winner Kacey Musgraves’ fifth album features rolling acoustic guitars, strings, synth, warm bass punctuations, layered harmonies, moments of Celtic melody, and plenty of room on each track for Musgraves' silvery vocals. On Deeper Well she surveys her life and priorities, recognizing what feeds her, drains her, and examines the childhood that is the foundation for who she is now as an artist.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Jerron Paxton would sit with an ear by the radio, eagerly absorbing the nuances and history of Black American traditional music that connect him to his ancestral roots in the South. A songwriter, inheritor of tradition, and a walking, talking jukebox, Paxton approaches his craft with equal parts wit and reverence, with a knack for leg-pulling and cracking wise. Things Done Changed is an album of original songs that sound beamed in from nearly a century ago, when jazz and blues were performed as a means of both personal and cultural survival. Lick by lick, Paxton builds a bridge between generations gone and generations to come, singing the heartaches and joys of the past and present.
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Klô Pelgag is the stage name of Chloé Pelletier-Gagnon, a Canadian singer-songwriter from Quebec. Each new album reestablishes her unique place in the Francophone cultural landscape. Abracadabra is no exception. From the first notes, the music displays more refined contrasts, and the lyrics feature more precise, powerful, poetic images. Conveying equal parts fragility and complexity, the melodies fragment, only to reappear transfigured. Klô Pelgag’s elegant voice is front and center, as she uses it in various exploratory ways. With Abracadabra Klô Pelgag hopes to make the world less harsh with a simple formula; she has fun while interrogating her own certainties and anxieties, looking for meaning.
Nala Sinephro’s sophomore album, Endlessness, expands her scope from the inward journey of Space 1.8 into widescreen orchestral ambient jazz compositions. Consisting of 10 tracks, the music was composed, produced, mixed and recorded by Sinephro and includes contributions from James Mollison (Ezra Collective), Morgan Simpson (black midi), Sheila Maurice-Grey (Kokoroko), Nubya Garcia, Lyle Barton, Natcyet Wakili (Sons of Kemet) and Dwayne Kilvington (Wonky Logic). The album’s artwork features a painting by Daniela Yohannes and design by Maziyar Pahlevan.
The Smile’s new album Wall Of Eyes was recorded between Oxford and Abbey Road Studios, and is produced and mixed by Sam Petts-Davies. It features string arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra. Wall Of Eyes is the follow up to their 2022 debut LP, A Light For Attracting Attention. The Smile consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, bass, keys) and Jonny Greenwood (guitar, bass, keys) from Radiohead and Tom Skinner (drums) from Sons of Kemet.
On Taylor Swift's eleventh studio album, she draws from her previous musical eras, mixing country, pop, and folk into songs loosely connected by scenes from a bitter, messy breakup. She conceived The Tortured Poets Department as a "lifeline" songwriting project amidst the heightened fame and media scrutiny ensuing from her 2023 Eras tour. The songs introspect on her public and private lives, detailing tumult and sorrow via motifs of self-awareness, mourning, anger, humor, and delusion.
Orquídeas is the fourth studio album by Grammy Award-winner Kali Uchis and marks her striking return to Spanish-language music. The project features a superstar lineup with KAROL G, Peso Pluma, El Alfa, and JT. Inspired by the sensual allure of Colombia's national flower, the orchid, Orquídeas traverses multiple Latin genres including reggaeton, dembow, bolero and salsa furthering Uchis' connection to her Colombian roots.
Only God Was Above Us is the fifth studio album by American indie rock band Vampire Weekend. It marks the third collaboration between the band and their longtime producer Ariel Rechtshaid. It is also the first album recorded by the band as a trio of vocalist-guitarist Ezra Koenig, bassist Chris Baio, and drummer Chris Tomson after the 2016 departure of keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij. The project draws artistic inspiration from a 20th-century New York City aesthetic. The album's title is derived from the headline of a May 1, 1988 New York Daily News article, as shown in the album's artwork. Described as "direct yet complex," it showcases the band at its grittiest, most beautiful, and melodic.
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Tigers Blood is the critically acclaimed sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield AKA Waxahatchee. Featuring the singles, "Right Back to It", "Bored", and "365".
On Underdressed at the Symphony American singer-songwriter Faye Webster documents what happens once you begin to build a new self from the ashes of your old routines. This rebirth isn't flashy or definitive, but is instead a series of seemingly mundane moments that, scattered across weeks and months, sneak their way toward something like healing. Yes, there's a breakup in play, but Webster is not documenting the heartbreak of a breakup so much as she's navigating the contours of heartbreak itself. Recorded at Sonic Ranch Studios in Texas with her longtime band, Webster is accompanied on Underdressed at the Symphony by shimmering pedal steel, plaintive, unhurried drums, and occasionally, additional guitarwork from Wilco's Nels Cline. The title of the album refers to Webster's post-breakup compulsion to visit the symphony on a whim, usually buying a ticket at the last possible second.