Putting together a list of the year’s best songs can be a rather arduously subjective exercise. There’s always those individual personal preferences that meant something more to you than anyone else, or the non-singles that may have hit you a little different than the next listener. 2024 didn’t really feel like that, though. It was easy. Looking across the board, we probably all had a general consensus going into our collective listmakings of which songs resonated deeper with the culture the most without argument. It’s fine, it’s cool, because when there’s unanimous praise, it means we had some bulletproof songs to contend which are going to continue living on well past the date of this post.
From the holy trinity of pop girls who repeatedly blew up the Internet at every turn, the rap beef that brought the whole music world together, rock music getting very good again, electronic excellence, and those who dared to venture beyond structural convention, these are the 30 Best Songs of 2024.
30. Shellac – “I Don’t Fear Hell” [Touch and Go Records]
Usually anyone who drops dead of a heart attack doesn’t typically anticipate such an inconvenience to happen one week before releasing their new album. Still, there’s a great play of morbid, cosmic humor going on with “I Don’t Fear Hell”, the final track off Shellac’s sixth and now-posthumously released album following the death of Steve Albini, To All Trains. The listen stabs us with the hardest of dark wit from the other side of the void. Acerbic lines have never been lost from Albini’s tongue, and there’s plenty of them abound here. “Something, something and when this is over / I’ll leap in my grave like the arms of a lover,” he mutters over a hardened elasticism of tight-wound guitar alongside Bob Weston’s heavyweight bass and Todd Trainer’s nail gun drum. “If there’s a heaven, I hope they’re having fun / ‘Cause if there’s a hell, I’m gonna know everyone.” When it comes to self-eulogies, these are some last words that couldn’t have been any more truer to form in the case of the underground rock and recording engineer legend, delivered our way from six feet under.
29. Wishy – “Planet Popstar” [Winspear]
“Planet Popstar” didn’t make it onto the final cut of Wishy’s debut album, Lucky Sevens, but it’s got the kind of energy you makes you see it from anywhere the band moves within its orbit. The Midwestern alternative-pop rock quintet have a certain way of emotionally thrilling the ear with vivid, electrical texturizes strewn through a shoegaze-adjacent galaxy, and on their latest listen, it’s maximized in the red to make longing from a distance just another challenge to get to where the heart wants to be. To get there, they’re strapping on their jetpacks and doubling down on fully amped and loaded energy to strewn themselves across the skyline as compressed fuzz blows any space between co-vocalist Kevin Krauter and the object of his desire out of the way. “Book a flight to the sun / ‘Cause I’d rather be burned alive,” he sings. Even at the risk of combusting into a million pieces across the cosmos, Wishy commit to that star-struck feeling.
28. Julia Holter – “Sun Girl” [Domino Recording Co.]
Maybe it’s because this year oversaturated our listening experiences with varying patterns of shoegaze synesthesia bleeding into one that when along comes something from ambient experimentalist, Julia Holter, you’re reminded of a different environment in which the senses can explore sound, light, and the energy of being. “Sun Girl” exits the cool chamber pop dwelling of 2018’s Aviary and into warmer climates and high places in this physical world which her compositions describe in dreams of golden yellow. “Sun maze, some girl / Outrun, dream day / Dream day, guess game / Guess game.” Her words parse together like pieces of one, blinkering an arrangement of string melt, plucked keys, and an electronic psychedelia as if caught between that space between REM and lucidity where the subconscious meets the awakened, feeling warm while out of body.
27. oso oso – “that’s what time does” [Yunahan Entertainment LLC]
“Where could we go / With so many holes?,” Jade Lilitri asks in the opening moments of “that’s what time does”, a crafted highlight from oso oso’s life till bones. Though his inquiries are into that are — as typical — of the anxious attachment relational kind, he and the band’s knack for filling in all of them fully with hook-driven, power-pop-indebted emo sap with crisp, Aughts indie rock creases is what keeps this listen brimming full of timelessness. “You said, ‘Need a little more from you,’” he sings at one point in it chorus. Maybe his patterns as a standup partner are inconsistent, but if this is what you get when you let your heart lose, it’s a perfect consolation.
26. Allegra Krieger – “Never Arriving” [Double Double Whammy]
Wouldn’t it be nice to move through this life with nothing but wonder and adventure rather than letting all of the human-made distractions — capitalism, war, violence, and prejudice come to mind — sidetrack us from aspiring to those much more fulfilling experiences? Allegra Krieger is thinking about it a lot on “Never Arriving”, in which she threads intimacy, biology, the cosmos, and a slow wandering death into one beginning and endpoint, pondering what that freedom would feel like. “Never arriving / No common goal / Just connecting flesh in the night / Eliminate edges.” Less fragile than her last sonic plane of exploration on 2023’s I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane, the listen ventures into discovering that exhilaration through dusky rock vibes that roll through the space-time continuum until it meets its natural end. A life without pressure, and a true choose-your-own-adventure…
25. Mandy, Indiana – “Idea Is Best” [Fire Talk]
“Plays in Berlin once,” captioned Mandy, Indiana over the post accompanying their new single, “Idea is Best”. Even if you yourself have never been set foot inside a Euro rave underground, you understand thoroughly through sensory upon pressing play. The experimental industrial quartet are definitely logging more mileage and life experience beyond Manchester lines after breaking through with last year’s debut full, I’ve seen a way, and here, they sound fully immersed in that moment while embracing the newness of all the ways the world of sound expands when moving in their direction. The listen’s footprint remains steeped in heavier flash sonic effects as Valentine Caulfield’s echoes carry, murkily, through the light pollution, but there’s also a different plane unlocked within their energy field here that act like electronic portals leading into a more dangerous form of ecstasy. It’s highly potent and inescapable — Mandy, Indiana following their intuition into paths unknown fully.
24. ELUCID – “THE WORLD IS DOG” [Fat Possum]
Where billy woods is like the knife exacting wordsmith precision within Armand Hammer’s flow, ELUCID can be heard as the jagged edge of their boundlessly innovative equation. With “THE WORLD IS DOG”, the opening highlight from ELUCID’s latest solo effort, REVELATOR, it’s easy to imagine him stepping even further off Armand Hammer’s last point in 2023’s bleak and noisy We Buy Diabetic Test Strips and into further oblivion. Working alongside avant-garde electronic artist, Jon Nellen, and jazz bassist Luke Stewart, the three produce a flurry of fight instincts of the brain and synth synapses rallied hardcore by free-spiraling rhythm staircases into the abyss. “Chaos hour, shadow play / Hammers hang on loop / I’m chewing at the bit / Hard to mark the day / Be not afraid,” ELUCID proclaims. He says he sought energy inspo on this one from the creative mind of Miles Davis, but left to his own devices, this “Dog” is feral.
23. Yaeji – “booboo” [XL Recordings]
Yaeji is a master in the art of electronic introversion in feeling moments in her headspace before turning that energy into matter outside of it. “You know the one time I wrote a banger that goes like / ‘Make it rain girl, make it rain, make it rain girl make it…,’” the experimental dance producer reminds us on “booboo”, before going on to fill in some of the blanks as to why last year’s excellent debut album, With A Hammer, wielded what moved the dial forward toward meditative self-preservation. Yet, “booboo” returns to the floor with a recharged brat energy to fuel the club with molecular beats fast-bouncing from wall to wall. “You know the right amount of space / To spread open your wings wide / Dance and shake your booty / From the left to the right.” Maybe she wasn’t ready to accept the invite to the party before, but after some time to process it all, she’s sounding ready to embrace the good times in full.
22. Knocked Loose feat. Poppy – “Suffocate” [Pure Noise Records]
The universe of Knocked Loose is expanding rapidly at this stage. To what extent? It’s enormity feels boundless and like we’re on the verge of cosmic collapse with “Suffocate”, the destabilized centerpiece from the Louisville hardcore sluggers’ third full-length album, You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To. There’s no rest for the wicked here, as the whole crew does their part in doubling — tripling? quadrupling? — down on their heavy alter onslaught with brutalist designs of blast beats and axe grinds wielding more weight in swinging for the knockout hook. Bryan Garris brings in an assist from metal-pop crossover songwriter Poppy to delve deeper into the band’s dynamo, amounting to a superhuman effort in delivering a crushing blow against backstabbers with ultimate finality. “I will dig until I find the fucking root / I suffered because of you”. Not even the god particle itself can stop them.
21. Burial – “Dreamfear” [XL Recordings]
“Back from the dead / Fucked up your head.” Words couldn’t be any more truer than they are when they come crashing through the energy pulse that is “Dreamfear”, the A-side from Burial’s 2024 12″ single and first release since leaving his longtime label hub of Hyperdub for XL Recordings. William Bevan’s reintroduction to his singular-yet-shapeshifting form of enigmatic electronica at this exact moment in his creative arch compliments some intentionality behind that, as the listen exits the desolate, ambient post-snowstorm soundscapes of his more recent releases and throttles back into hard and fast dance experimentation where he anoints himself the “the lord of ecstasy.” That goes uncontested when taking in the eight minutes of pure, fantastical sensory fuckery in hype breakbeats and voices from the otherworld. Each of its detours lead to a next level of high that is equally exhilarating as it is terrifying.
20. Beth Gibbons – “Floating On A Moment” [Domino Recording Co.]
Death is coming for us all, and in some instances, you can never be too sure whether the warm path you’ve found yourself on may in fact lead to your demise earlier than expected. Beth Gibbons acknowledges that she is but a mere passenger along for that ride headed into oblivion with “Floating On A Moment”, from the Portishead vocalist’s first solo effort, Lives Outgrown. “I’m floating on a moment / Don’t know how long / No one knows / No one can stay.” From that vantage point, she travels her own closing loop with the same kind warmth as one might if they believed they had all of the time left in the world. A bassline toes in as instruments chime celestial, as if awakening a new day of sun. There’s even a children’s chorus to welcome her toward her end journey into the great big nothing on the other side. Where her work in Portishead often places an unease of darkness directly on its surface, Gibbons subverts it here in a way that makes the death rattle sound more like a welcome to a well earned rest.
19. FKA twigs – “Eusexua” [Young Records]
“We rave, we sweat, we kiss, we make love to the booming thud of culture. EUSEXUA is a practice. EUSEXUA is a state of being. EUSEXUA is the pinnacle of human experience,” wrote FKA twigs in introducing the world to the first chapter of her next album. The song and title track from the album is a tantalizing mediation that coexsists between that space and the scope of her ambitions. Syncing itself electronically with an immediate club energy produced by twigs, Koreless, and Eartheater (who also appears in the listen’s backing vocals,) it only a need to soft touch the senses to stimulate you fully. “And if they ask you, say you feel it / But don’t call it love.” No, that’s that FKA twigs euphoria only she can create.
18. julie – “clairborne practice” [Atlantic Records]
Keyan Pourzand, Alex Brady, and Dillon Lee weren’t even alive when shoegaze came into being in the late ’80s, nor were they even there to see alternative music hit its noisy, grunge peak of the ’90s, but the Los Angeles trio known as julie sound like they lived through it all along on “clairbourne practice”, the standout single from the band’s debut album, my anti-aircraft friend. In a sea of Gen-Zs seeking shelter from the demise of the world through delay pedals, blown out feedback, and submerged vocals, their take on this shape of underground rock scaled up through a careening surge of electricity and layered melodies that crashes lingering desires and heavy confusion into their emotional plane. “It just makes me feel like / The things you do, and all you say / I’ll cut my hair another way,” Pourzand and Brady pore over the same lines, yet the disconnect from each’s directions bleeds volumes. Sometimes a shrug that isn’t anything can be deafening…
17. Adrianne Lenker – “Sadness As A Gift” [4AD]
Adrianne Lenker’s gift is that of a songwriting storyteller who can effortlessly can make plaintive emotions stop you dead in your tracks when caught between the fingertips and lips of her own singular melody and wordsmith ways. On “Sadness As a Gift”, from the Big Thief frontperson’s latest solo offering, Bright Future, the end times of a relationship make for something both broken and beautiful. The listen overflows its rustic hearth — a humble, dressed down path down backroads folkwork, detailed in fiddle, slide guitars, and melancholic harmony. “Leaning on the windowsill / You could write me someday, and I think you will / We could see the sadness as a gift and still / Feel too heavy to hold,” she sings. Though the weight of a breakup presses inward, Lenker considers it all with the kind of grace we wish we all had during these moments of weakness.
16. Dummy – “Nullspace” [Trouble In Mind Records]
Since their inception in 2020 stemming across two foundational extended plays and later in 2021, their debut full-length, Mandatory Enjoyment, Dummy have set out to be something other than the expectant sound — to defy the borders of shoegaze, punk, experimental pop, and new age in the same wavelength where you listen to a song and there is an exclamation point over your head in the realization that this is not just your average record collector’s rock band with ambitious pretentions. “Nullspace”, as bonafide a single as you can get from the Los Angeles four-piece’s amorphous sophomore effort, Free Energy, is again prompting any and all sonic bubbles to burst, and not just in the sense that a Korg EM1 sputters synths elastic in its loop over centripetal psychedelia. “Top below / We swirl / Into density,” Nathan O’Dell and Emma Maatman’s voices soar into the the new matter that’s being built one particle at a time. That which they’ve become competes not with light or frequency, and rather forms something emitting a sound all their own.
15. Cindy Lee – “Dracula” [Realistik Studios / Superior Viaduct]
Many standouts from Cindy Lee’s immersive acclaimed effort, the double album Diamond Jubilee, tell the story of a period just out of reach these days in creating independent art beyond considerations to algorithm and playlist goals is like, but its “Dracula” that’s an apt centerpiece which rediscovers the broader view of this. Stitching together forgotten facets from the rock landscape without necessarily needing to bend toward cohesion, Patrick Flegel’s voice — a shadowed specter forged from inspiration of pop girl groups of the retro radio dial — transmits itself through a churn of hypnotic base layer of psychedelically stretched guitars and unhurried drum. They’re in no rush across the six-minute zone-out, matching the lethargic longing in their bleaker existential woe. “I’m living like Dracula / My heart is made of stone / And I’m all alone.” A holy trinity of gothic, high, and molded from a singular cool inspiration unbothered by the rest of the world around it, there’s still blood left to squeeze in indie rock as art.
14. Jlin feat. Philip Glass – “The Precision of Infinity” [Planet Mu]
Jlin’s sound has become both embryonic of a new being in sound and of a perspective unlike any other in the universe of experimental music, and once again, the timeline shifts eons forward into the future with “The Precision of Infinity”, from the composer’s third proper studio album, Akoma. On her own merits, Jlin already is of an other nature in her physics-defying design of soundscapes created of electronic synapses and fast-firing rhythms that amount to galaxy-building. Enter Philip Glass, renowned minimalist pianist, who here layers in the touches of human fingertips to what Jlin is setting forth. It could go on forever, and never see time catch up with its innovation.
13. Sabrina Carpenter – “Taste” [Island Records]
With Sabrina Carpenter, a pop star is properly born in the way that artificial life intended it: a performer who can and will release bulletproof singles fueled by a machine of publicity, and expect to give you nothing more beyond the hits. It’s a great reminder that pop should be fun and wink to our inner hedonisms without necessarily needing to also pander to poptimistic credibility. When Carpenter is in her best recipe, her “Taste” wears modern trends on point in their flair for artsy cunnilingual innuendo that turns the lite disco burn of the “Seven Wonders” and a neon-glossed guitar shimmer into her own sweet revenge party. The co-writing pens of the consistently underrated Julia Michaels and Amy Allen (Olivia Rodrigo’s “Pretty Isn’t Pretty” as well as Carpenter’s other ’24 hits “Espresso” and “Please Please Please”) knew exactly what fashion suits Carpenter’s style of ego-breaking pop to a tee, and it goes down so well.
12. Jessica Pratt – “Life Is” [Mexican Summer]
To experience the aura of Jessica Pratt can be a transcendental one, conflating timelines of past, present, and future selves into a single thread. As much as we change, the times stay the same, however, and with her voice as the needle, we drift through the continuum in a soft flicker of light speed on “Life Is”, the standout single from the Los Angeles-based songwriter’s fourth studio album, Here in the Pitch. The voice breathing through the ether of her previous work is in close company here with the surrounding space inhabited by a haze of old Hollywood pastiche and ’60s psychedelic folk-pop and tempo, softly haunted by what may have been past peaks yet aging timelessly in a cosmic cool. “And so I try to be myself / It’s the same as always I get tricked up / And each and every time it takes me away,” she sings, allowing herself to drift along through with the one constant.
11. This Is Lorelei – “I’m All Fucked Up” [Double Double Whammy]
This Is Lorelei, the side vehicle of Water From Your Eyes’ Nate Amos, can be a lot. Is it under the influence of the deadpan twee of Magnetic Fields? The power-pop perfectionism of Fountains of Wayne? An indie rock waltz down the street with Elliott Smith? Can it be all of them? It certainly sounds like all of them on “I’m All Fucked Up”, a highlight from the project’s proper debut solo effort, Box for Buddy, Box for Star. At least it sounds like the synapses of the brain are working in overload through a manic jangle of instrument and lyric to put it all together at a super fast pace. Yet, it still manages to make the run-on compile cohesively. The mania makes sense. His other band is all about deconstructing pop in a way that challenges commercial viability while this here reconstructs it in a way that asks, “But what if we made it too viable?” The answer is you can’t. His impulses go all in and make it undeniable. It’s a truly fucked up swerve on getting the formula down pat.
10. Chappell Roan – “Good Luck, Babe!” [Amusement / Island Records]
There’s a reason why Chappell Roan hasn’t been mentioned on these pages until this very moment, and in short, it was out of loyalty to a friendly acquaintance who alleges that the then-pre-fame Midwest Princess broke into her Los Angeles home back in 2020 following a messy breakup with her housemate. But then the Summer of Chappell dominated the festival scene this past year, and backed by the hit power of “Good Luck, Babe”, her kind of force of human nature began to add up. Of course she would break into an ex’s house! You see, Chappell Roan doesn’t take shit from anyone, and she’s got the songwriting finesse to put any wrongdoings against her into kiss-off that’ll be remembered by the millions who will adore her back. “Good Luck, Babe” is one of those listens that meets that moment — a heavenly puff of gothic synth-pop produced by Dan Nigro catapulted by her soprano balladry. At the center, a sapphic situationship that shades the fool who could let her slip through their fingers. It’s got the power to stop the world in its track (and as for the aforementioned friendly acquaintance, she wishes her all the best these days, too.)
9. Kassie Krut – “Reckless” [Fire Talk]
Even before forming, Kassie Krut already knew a thing or two about the art of kinetics. Born out of half of the ashes of the cult adored haywire avant-pop quartet Palm, its vocalists in Kasra Kurt and Eve Alpert are joined in trinity with Matt Anderegg of Mothers and Body Meat for something that sounds less technical than their past life. But that’s an intentional decision, as they let go of old restraints and throw their energy into boundless hyperactivity. Blown out dub beats and sheering electrical waves washing through a pop earworm re-introduce them to the world as something feral, determined for fun, and altogether, a new opportunity to become whoever you want to be. “‘Cause I wanna be fast and I wanna be free / Wanna be the best, so I gotta be mean / Yeah, I wanna be fast and I wanna be free / Never look back, there’s a runner in me.” They’re spelling out the invitation for all to see, and from this vantage point, joining their freak fantasy is as simple as letting go.
8. Horsegirl – “2468” [Matador Records]
The young-yet-wise Horsegirl proved themselves to be fast learners of indie rock’s coolest classics in their most essential sense with their 2022 breakthrough debut, Versions of Modern Performance, adapting its blueprint for a next generation by channeling exploratory instincts into corners where discovery lead you somewhere undiscovered. This continues to serve Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein, and Gigi Reece’s raw potential maximally even in minimalism on “2468”. Recorded with a fellow cultivator of the avant-garde in Cate Lebon, experimentation continues pushing Horsegirl into their own beyond of art-minded indie rock. It amounts to an exercise in deconstructing, reconstructing, and repeating the process until something uniquely their own is created. Crash-course guitar rock gives way to weaving punky alt-country by striking electric violin against percussive steel in motorik speed. It’s like throwing numbers at the wall until it all computes. No matter which way you add, subtract, divide or multiply this equation, Horsegirl’s math checks out.
7. The Cure – “Alone” [Fiction Records]
If this is the end of every song that we sing, then by all means, let Robert Smith narrate the end credits of civilization’s season finale that goes along with it. It’s been more than a minute (16 years, to be exact) since the Cure felt so alive beyond settling into legacy alternative act status, but maybe a little Armageddon is where they thrive. “Alone” suggests that they’ve made the most of their time away by double down on drama (that three-minute long disintegration loop of effervescent keys and an electrical shutter that rings through its skyline with every guitar and drum aftershock goes hard…) and taking advantage of their own stylistic self-awareness in light of a new generation’s interest in them, with Smith casting dour of the end times, romantically of course. “And the birds / Falling out of our skies / And the words / Falling out of our minds / And here is to love / To all the love / Falling out of our lives.” And here is to the goth icons’ formidable return before time runs out…
6. Kendrick Lamar – “Not Like Us” [pgLang / Interscope Records]
Incredibly, Kendrick Lamar had already won this year’s rap game without even dropping an album yet. For all we know, he may have not even planned on releasing any new music this year for that matter, but Drake poked and prodded the bear, and out came the best of the beast with diss track after diss track until the 6 God found himself buried six feet under. The word-perfect club banger “Not Like Us” definitively put the exclamation mark on it all when it transcended its hate parade and turned into a celebration of West Coast rap culture behind its party-frenzy Mustard beat when it reached number one on the charts, and then was performed on repeat six times to the thrill of everyone in attendance at K-Dot’s celebratory homecoming from the war that was his livestreamed Juneteeth “Pop Out” concert. Everything that has happened since with the arrival of GTX — and will carry through to next year’s Superbowl halftime show and a stadium tour — has been just the cherry on top to Drake’s humble pie.
5. Kim Gordon- “Bye Bye” [Matador Records]
Kim Gordon’s latest musical phase has cemented her as a futurist for life. With her 2019 solo debut, No Home Records, the Sonic Youth co-founder’s further reinvention within industrial, experimental electronic lanes made for an unmatched swerve in the career arc from an artist who literally doesn’t need to prove anything more to us. Yet, even in her post-SY legacy, Gordon stays adamant on contorting the future with “BYE BYE”, off her second solo effort in her ongoing creative collaboration with producer Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira.) Gordon remains comfortable in the dark, though the same may not be said for those who encounter it. She continues merging schisms of noise rock with a tension in trap flashes amid train-of-thought wordsnips. “Milk thistle, calcium, high-rise, boot cut, Advil, Black Jeans, Blue Jeans, Cardigan purse, passport, pajamas, silk.” It amounts to a mad dash, though we’ll never truly know from what beyond the fact that she’s doing so singularly, fashion-forward.
4. MJ Lenderman – “She’s Leaving You” [ANTI- Records]
Dudes rock, even when they’re at a pitiful low, and MJ Lenderman is the one to give them their wilted flowers. That Jake Lenderman has spent a shorter time on this Earth than most of his rockist peers to share a more intriguing, dark-humored take on a warped world is even more so evident with “She’s Leaving You”. The standout single from his fourth solo LP, Manning Fireworks, proves he can sneer with as much, if not more, big divorced dad energy as those who’ve already gotten there. Channeling his inner boomer from the zoomer perspective, Lenderman turns the sad art of being a washed guy into a country-fried-and-kickdrum rock thumping anthem that charms the mid-life crisis point. “Go rent a Ferrari / And sing the blues / Believe that Clapton was the second coming,” he sings. You can see the whole crash coming from miles off in the distance, yet when he sings it through the wire and twang, it couldn’t sound any cooler of a look to aspire to.
3. High Vis – “Mind’s A Lie” [Dais Records]
It’s going to be amazing seeing how the hardcore kids rage when “Mind’s a Lie” pops off at a High Vis show. In the world of progressive hardcore, the highlight from the band’s third album, Guided Tour, is definitively pushing the progressive envelope in where the scene can go, and that’s already saying something seeing as though their 2022 breakthrough, Blending, heard the London quintet blurring the land’s long lineage of pioneering ’80s post-punk and Britpop stylings into a grungy, post-hardcore anthem. A sample of South London house and garage singer and producer Ell Murphy is a sharper move even further out, though intentional with its transcendental effects, helping to focus in on themes of mental health care. “What is truth when your mind’s a lie?,” vocalist Graham Sayles shouts. His burled presence doesn’t break its heavy calm, even if you can imagine the pit’s energy suddenly shifting to something more fit to get you out of just your body, but a negative space in your head as well.
2. Waxahatchee feat. MJ Lenderman – “Right Back To It” [ANTI- Records]
While Katie Crutchfield has been on a long journey over the past decade-plus, her creative arch being that of constant slow-burns has made it worth every step. From the DIY creases of her previous band P.S. Eliot, her solo breakthroughs American Weekend and Cerulean Salt, and the indie rock bursts of Ivy Tripp and Out In the Storm, she has since become one of the most impressive folk heroes of the modern alternative country indie aesthetic, with 2020’s Saint Cloud realizing it as her center. We’re all the more fortunate for her songbook companionship, and on the Tigers Blood slowburner, “Right Back to It”, her warm writ returns right where it left off. Joined in company here with Crutchfield inviting in another cornerstone of the scene in MJ Lenderman, this calm and swaying rekindling of connection, no matter the eggshells and fault lines set her in her path, is like coming home. “But you just settle in / Like a song with no end,” she sings. “If I can keep up / We’ll get right back to it.” Under her hand, it sounds effortless.
1. Charli XCX – “360” [Atlantic Records]
As your favorite reference, Charli XCX’s “360” is BRAT‘s peak personal brand anthem and an iconic statement in what has arguably defined 2024’s biggest pop culture movement. Behind its synthetic beat confection helmed by A.G. Cook and Circut, the track is a listen best consumed as a bite size edible not just because of its flawless gem future-pop production, but because anything more would simply be unnecessary. It’s Charli selling her flex on how she’s handedly outlasting the rest of the modern pop music landscape through evolving fashion, an I-don’t-fucking-care rizz, and being an unwavering girl’s girl (shout out Julia Fox and Gabriette.) To do so in the seconds of time needed to captivate viral attention is the work of understanding her art as a product from all facets. Like the generationally transcendent Chloë Sevigny, who joins the rest of today’s It Internet girls in its accompanying music video to burn the whole scene down while looking like the terrifying pinnacle of cool culture in the process, it’s safe to say that Charli’s impact is more obvious than ever in 2024 when viewed full circle.
+rcmndedlisten 
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