Music! There's so much of it! Fifty albums doesn't begin to encompass the scope of the sounds that have animated 2026, but it does present a cross section of the tunes and rhythms that have driven Stereogum wild thus far. As always when June rolls around, we're taking a moment today to round up the best albums we've heard.
The following list is limited to albums released by the end of May. It represents the combined perspectives of the Stereogum staff — the records that excited, inspired, and surprised us during days and weeks spent searching for the best sounds around. If you're a regular around here, you'll surely see some of your own favorites represented, and you'll probably have some strong opinions of your own. Dig into the list, stream tracks from the albums in our playlist at the bottom, and (if you're a subscriber) share your own picks in the comments. Like you, we're always looking forward to discovering our next favorite record. —Chris DeVille
Danny L Harle’s official debut album has a world-building aura to it, but beneath all its maximalist glow is something deeply earnest. It feels like an excavation of feeling. Cerulean is built from the things that clearly thrill Harle most about music: clouds of harmonies, shifting chord sequences, ecstatic melodies that keep stretching toward the sky. The album is huge and luminous without losing its emotional core, turning excess into something strangely tender and human. —Margaret Farrell
Johnny Blue Skies & The Dark Clouds - Mutiny After Midnight (High Top Mountain/Atlantic Outpost)
- [Amazon]
Sturgill Simpson’s revolution stretches from the dancefloor to the bedroom. The man now known as Johnny Blue Skies wants to make America fuk again, and he’s opted to instigate the uprising with funky disco-country tracks full of sick licks and unchained sexuality. It’s a boisterous good time, even (maybe especially) when Simpson lets his anger boil over on a handful of more overtly political numbers. I suspect these songs will feel even more incendiary when woven into three-hour Dark Clouds live sets this fall. —Chris DeVille
The final installment of the Toronto producer’s trilogy is his most kaleidoscopic. It’s like being zapped into Dance Dance Revolution's colorful and eclectic world, full of rhombus-shaped melodies and neon-lit percussion. Sd-3, which is his longest project to date, holds some of Loukeman’s most ambitiously carbonated (“Pink Bape Lighter” and “Elktorn”) and blissfully dazed tracks. Vocals are warped and squished like sun-melted Gummi Bears. Elsewhere, the songs are less gooey but still just as hyperactive (“Baby Why”). —Margaret Farrell
During the pandemic, figures from all over the underground joined forces remotely to form Winged Wheel. Eventually, it became a real band, one whose inspired, challenging music often shifts shape significantly from track to track. One minute, you’re cruising the Autobahn, riding the placid, percolating groove straight to outer space. The next ,you’re being visited by spirits — the ghost of Trish Keenan, perhaps — in a creepy house of oblong proportions. Further beautiful, unnerving racket ensues. —Chris DeVille
Whether or not you believe Lip Critic's outlandish backstory about the obsessed fan who stole frontman Bret Kaser's identity and thought he perceived secret messages in the band's music, they definitely came into Theft World inspired. On their second LP, the New York synth-rockers build a dense, jagged soundworld out of cracks and blurts and electrified bellow-yelps. It's a paranoid record for paranoid times — a record so paranoid that it might make you paranoid that its backstory is publicity-stunt fakery. —Tom Breihan
No one is doing it quite like April George and Matthew Thompson. The DC duo’s long-awaited full-length feels organic even when it’s the product of electronic tinkering, vulnerable even amidst its grand cinematic swells. It’s hard to define a record where bits of rock, R&B, electronic, hip-hop, and classical music are synthesized so seamlessly. But more than anything, Traditional Noise is deeply human music, steeped in familial love, generational trauma, and the cathartic power of song. —Chris DeVille
Nine Inch Nails & Boyz Noize - Nine Inch Noize (The Null Corporation/Interscope)
Everything about Nine Inch Nails' 2025 arena tour was cool as hell, but the bit that evidently fired Trent Reznor's imagination was the electronic mini-set that they played with opening act Boys Noize, cranking up the clubby throb of a series of NIN classics. Now, they've expanded that mini-set into a hybrid remix collection and live album, and it sounds even better, reinventing old songs both beloved and forgotten as colossal, grinding stadium-rave monsters. Now, can we get an album out of the semi-acoustic mini-set at the beginning of the show? —Tom Breihan
Daughn Gibson’s music continues to be singular even as it takes new forms. His lavish comeback album Lake Mary not mysterious finds him channeling Elvis and Leonard Cohen amidst gorgeous countrypolitan soundscapes that threaten to morph into outright new wave. It’s the sort of surreal Florida noir that an actual Floridian weirdo like Carson Cox might summon into being, suave yet chintzy yet profound. —Chris DeVille
“It's over, but we never die,” Namasenda sings on her album's simmering, synthy trance closer “Alright.” The Swedish popstar's voice sounds like a quartz crystal, dulcet but calcified by Auto-Tune. Limbo’s enchantment arises from Namasenda’s ability to maintain a hypnotizing tension: light, effervescent pop choruses pushed against industrial claps and strobe-lit beats, a dreamy steeliness. We’re not stuck in Limbo, but free-floating. —Margaret Farrell
Frog For Sale is the third Frog LP in less than a year and a half, and it also might be proof that creative practices come more easily the more time you dedicate to them. The album's oddball singer-songwriter jams are decidedly lo-fi, no frills, and rough around the edges, putting the focus on bandleader Daniel Bateman’s audacious lyrics: “I got dough, I’m that bro, we’ll dance slow after the show/ Get fucked, get sucked, get fleeced down on your luck,” he croons over the jaunty “All The Things You Get.” Frog For Sale is sweet without sugar-coating anything. —Abby Jones
In the wake of the long-gone Brat Summer, the dancefloor is still where people want to be. Ninajirachi provided the soundtrack last year with I Love My Computer. Now, Wichita dance-pop sensation Tiffany Day’s Halo is where the party’s at. The beats bounce and skid; the 26-year-old sings like a pop star in the making, especially on the clubby anthems “Breakup” and “Copycat.” Even when she leans into introspection on the lyrics, it only heightens the energy and excitement. —Danielle Chelosky
Big Long Sun - love songs and spiritual recollections (Self-Released)
Big Long Sun’s most recent project has an air of beautifully constructed chaos. They’re a band guided by manifestos, fictional histories, and shape-shifting identities, but that instability is part of the illusion. Big Long Sun meticulously crafted a world where myth and sincerity blur together. Arriving just nine months after whatever (whatever), the album swaps the futuristic haze of its predecessor for something warmer and dustier, as though beamed in from the ‘70s. —Margaret Farrell
"Hoes on my dick 'cause I got a self-hatred." That's one of the first lines on Xavier, xaviersobased's debut studio album following a slew of mixtapes and EPs. It sums up the appeal of the 23-year-old rapper — he has the bravado of a hip-hop artist and the jocular self-deprecation of an internet-addicted zoomer. Even when bragging about sexual exploits, he mumbles in a detached, nonchalant flow that's morbidly amusing and weirdly catchy. The beats are moody, stark backdrops with subtly booming bass, except when buzzy, glitchy sounds infiltrate on tracks like "iPhone 16" and "Skrap." —Danielle Chelosky
Despite her dizzying levels of online popularity, Mitski doesn't really have any imitators. How could she? Who else could do it like this? Mitski's songs can be so sad and so remote at the same time; she's got the rare ability to elegantly lament without searching for empathy. She drags us into her firestorm, only to precisely demonstrate its architecture. On her latest, Mitski draws from the skills that she's adapted across a long career, from jagged discordance to jazzy sophistication, to build a character study of a nervous wreck who never leaves the house. Wonder where she got that idea. —Tom Breihan
Riya Mahesh has opened for Nilüfer Yanya, Chanel Beads, and Ana Roxanne, and her Quiet Light project feels like an amalgamation of those three great acts. The Austin-based artist has mastered a sound that captures the intimacy of bedroom-pop that also emanates the texture of another world. Surreal synths are laced with soaring saxophones, gentle breakbeats, and distorted guitars, but it’s always Mahesh’s breathy vocals that serve as the centerpiece as she sings in vignettes littered with images of cigarettes, stitches, and coffee. —Danielle Chelosky
The way I see it, there are two main sides of the indie pop coin: The guitar side and the keyboard side. Something We All Got, the infectious new album from Toronto’s Cootie Catcher, sees them effortlessly stake their claim in both of those opposing categories. Highlights like the cheekily-titled early single “Quarter Note Rock” are a masterclass in coalescing analog and digital. Little contrasts seep into the lyrics, too, as the members of Cootie Catcher unpack the paradox of wanting to be understood but feeling skeptical about being truly seen. Awkward moments, Something We All Got argues, are inevitable — why not make them fun? —Abby Jones
It's a cliché, but sometimes words just aren't necessary. Sure, ear's songs have lyrics, but I can't hear any of them. When Jonah Paz and Yaelle Avtan's voices come in, they're often mumbling or whispering, the meaning further obscured by the sonic turbulence. Their harmonies operate as an oasis amidst the torrent of blips, buzzes, clicks, pulsations, and reverberations, all creating an atmosphere so abrasive and immersive that language simply isn't needed. —Danielle Chelosky
Detroit-native jazz drummer and hip-hop producer Karriem Riggins and Dallas-reared singer, rapper, and producer Liv.e are from different generations, but they’re part of the same lineage of sonic explorers, pushing the boundaries of Black music while remaining tapped into its roots. Their debut together as GENA is so engaging on a surface level that you might find yourself compulsively playing it back, and there’s so much detail (rhythmic, textural, metatextual) that you’ll probably have some fresh epiphany with each subsequent listen. —Chris DeVille
There’s a lot of good scuzzy indie rock out there, but Lowertown’s is special. Olivia Osby’s voice cracks and sighs in a convincing delivery that other vocalists can’t offer. When she duets with Avsha Weinberg, it’s clear the duo has a chemistry that other acts would kill for. This is most evident of the scrappy self-sabotage anthem “Worst Friend,” a track that masterfully taps into a quiet-loud dynamic that’s as addictive as self-sabotage itself. —Danielle Chelosky
There’s a surfeit of post-punk records that reckon with the advancement of tech, but Chicago’s Stuck have managed to make one that sticks out. On Optimizer, Greg Obis sings of self-help huckster gurus (“Instakill”) and Manosphere menaces (“Deadlift”) while the guitars mimic the instant gratification of the former and the dark, evil energy of the latter. At the core of the LP is a canny depiction of the underlying self-annihilation of it all, or as they amusingly put it: “Don’t you ever make yourself sick?” —Danielle Chelosky
Middle age, fatherhood, and a cancer scare have softened up Bill Callahan quite a bit, but he’s still the guy behind all those inscrutable, perverse Smog records. When that persona is overlaid with those experiences, you get an album like My Days Of 58: wise and wizened enough to be cranky about the computer and enthralled with the great outdoors; full of good humor and exquisite taste; loose, lived-in, and far more vulnerable than you ever would have expected. —Chris DeVille
hemlocke springs is our new pop enchantress. With the apple tree under the sea, she weaves fairytale pop through shimmering '80s synthscapes, channeling the mystique of Kate Bush with a voice both captivating and limitless. Coupling angular melodies with cinematic production, the record balances dreamlike vulnerability with bold, otherworldly energy. Listening to this album is like guzzling pixie dust and going for an epic flight with Tinkerbell. Every track is a portal further into her expansive realm that I never want to end. —Margaret Farrell
Pop-punk is objectively one of the worst genres. Warped Tour is over, and society has progressed past the need for bands like New Found Glory or Neck Deep. Joyce Manor, though, take what they need from pop-punk — playful melodrama, riffs reminiscent of Sum 41 or Blink-182, relatable clichés, silly attitudes — and use it to craft genuinely fun songs. I Used To Go To This Bar is a shot of adrenaline; it’s for circle pits and crowdsurfers; it’s another awesome album from an awesome band. —Danielle Chelosky
Some albums feels heightened by the month they’re released in, like an eclipse where the timing magically works out, supercharging the moment. Jana Horn’s self-titled album came out at the top of this year and embodies January: It feels calm and desolate, exhausted and tender, the way the quiet at the beginning of the year, post-holiday chaos, feels invigorating and slow. Compositions expand and devastate. This album makes me feel grounded — the greatest gift I could ask for in 2026. —Margaret Farrell
For more than a decade, Justice Tripp and his revolving Angel Du$t bandmates have pushed hardcore into strange and tuneful new directions. They've made great records, but they've never been tight or as instinctive as they are on Cold 2 The Touch. The band's current lineup is fully locked-in, sounding less like a project and more like a band as they careen heedlessly from psychedelic-sunburst power-pop hooks to guttural breakdown stomps. Tripp's great mission is to embrace life as messily and energetically as he can, and he and his collaborators are at their very best right now, this moment. —Tom Breihan
Since her emotionally turbulent, sonically scrappy beginning, Lillie West has gradually refined the Lala Lala sound and approached self-actualization. The songs of Heaven 2 are the product of a person who’s on an endless journey, collecting epiphanies like crystals. “Arrow” is a burst of joyful indie-pop about accepting that the only way to move is onward. Struggles still exist — like on the jittery, conflicted “Anywave” — but the difference is that West faces them and pushes through instead of shying away into bad habits. —Danielle Chelosky
fakemink does so many irritating things that should disqualify him from a list like this. He plays boring live shows and then insists that they were boring on purpose. He identifies himself as "one of the most important artists alive right now" while scolding the public for not sufficiently appreciating his boring live shows. He never, ever takes off the squeaky helium-voice filter. He includes a seven-minute spoken-word track on his new album, and it's not even the last song, and he's not even the one doing the speaking. But in the midst of all this, fakemink convincingly transforms rage rap into witch-house brain fog. His spaced-out stagger swaggers hard enough to sell his absurd affectations. He finds slick little pockets in his own static symphonies. Terrified . makes it clear that he's a weirdo auteur and a star. Almost nobody has both of those qualities. When that rare combination occurs, you might have to forgive some bullshit. —Tom Breihan
Feeble Little Horse came back stronger than ever. After 2023’s Girl With Fish, the Pittsburgh band took an unexpected hiatus and lost guitarist Ryan Walchonski. They returned by surprise last month with the endlessly impressive bitknot. The group was already splicing blasts of noise and hard-crunching grunge guitars into their eerie indie-pop sound. Here, the music’s digital edge is more pronounced than ever, providing Lydia Slocum an ideal platform for her catchy, hypnotic narration about cursed mementos, influencer hell, and skipping the Wednesday show to avoid loser guys who wish they were David Berman. —Chris DeVille
Signing to a legendary label like Warp is a huge opportunity, and Angel Marcloid made the most of it. Lavender Networks elevates the Chicago studio wizard’s vision to dramatic new heights. It’s maximalist music, both in terms of its stylistic breadth and its sheer pummeling grandiosity. But even operating at galactic scope, Lavender Networks feels personal in that no one else could have come up with it. —Chris DeVille
After years of hyperpop-leaning releases, sadie’s debut album Better Angels is a tame, acoustic daydream about being at a turning point in your life. Adorned with sputtering beats and celestial synths, the record encompasses a lush, cosmic atmosphere. sadie’s Auto-Tuned vocals cut through like a knife as she offers contemplations in the form of hooky refrains. “Salt” and “Hit & Run” are highlights, as revelatory as they are catchy. —Danielle Chelosky
Patrick Holland (fka Project Pablo) and Francis Latreille (aka Priori) formed Jump Source in Montreal a decade ago, but not until each half of the duo built a thriving solo career did they launch Fold into the fray. It’s an hour of lively, sophisticated, genre-jumping club music that works just as well as a party-starter or a headphone experience. A guest list including Helena Deland, billy woods, CFCF, Loukeman, and more renders the abum all the more eclectic and electric. —Chris DeVille
This came out of nowhere. Neurosis, once a proud and influential underground metal institution, broke up after frontman Scott Kelly wrote a Facebook post admitting to abusing his wife and kids. It was a depressing, squalid ending, and it seemed truly final. But then the other Neurosis members secretly got together with Isis/SUMAC frontman Aaron Turner, one of their closest peers, replacing Kelly, and they dropped a new album on the world as a surprise revelation. Its mere existence would be enough, but An Undying Love really does recapture the band's old sense of endless volcanic groove, channeling ancient heaving forces and pushing themselves toward beautiful guttural catharsis in a truly inspiring rebirth. —Tom Breihan
Following his leave from one of rock’s beloved experimental post-punk groups, Cameron Picton isn’t holding back the mastery of his craft and the limits he’s willing to push. My New Band Believe is an unreal, gripping debut from the former Black Midi member, a luxurious, theatrical chamber-pop odyssey that slowly unravels through one brilliantly pulled loose thread. Grand and romantic at its core, the album wraps itself in plush layered vocals and sweeping orchestration, each arrangement moving with the dexterity and reach of octopus tentacles. —Margaret Farrell
Beauty Land is an apt title for a Greg Mendez album. The gentle ballads exist in a distinct world the Philly singer-songwriter builds with economical lyrics. There’s rehabs, rain clouds, geraniums, pretty little houses, broken noses, and stories within Mendez’s stories. Much like with Elliott Smith’s songs, the beauty feels simple — soft strumming, candid vocal delivery — even if the feelings are endlessly complex, which is a more difficult feat to accomplish than a listener might realize. —Danielle Chelosky
Listening to Robyn’s ninth studio album is like being caught in the warm glow of a spaceship beam, levitating in the thrill of something new. Astral synths, fun glitches, and her honeyed vocals capture the warm fuzz of euphoric anticipation. Throughout, she transforms supposedly unsexy encounters or human rumination into something magnetic and intimate. Whether she sings about masturbation or flying toward the sun’s atmosphere, she makes the vulnerable feel cosmic and vice versa. With luminous imagery and razor-sharp self-awareness, Sexistential treats the body as its own unruly galaxy, vast enough to hold loneliness, lust, and the need to be witnessed all at once.—Margaret Farrell
Sometimes, you don’t want to feel better. Sometimes, all you want is reassurance that you’re justified in feeling bad. For those moments, you can lean into Somersaults, the latest album from deathcrash. Via standout tracks like “The Thing You Did” and “NYC,” the gloomy London band reinterprets beloved slowcore and post-rock formulas into something a little more lucid and vivid. End-of-the-world depression anthems can easily feel trite, but there’s a subtle urgency bubbling beneath deathcrash’s bleakness, a refreshing call to arms. —Abby Jones
Isn’t it wonderful when a band can surprise you by slightly rearranging the familiar ingredients? Such is the case with Cardinals. They’re the sort of Irish university lads who can shut down the pub while maintaining a hearty conversation about cinema and literature, but they’re no post-Pogues caricature. They aren’t even a Fontaines-era trope. They sound like they were raised on Bright Eyes and The Bends and Arctic Monkeys, and they aren’t afraid to make liberal use of their accordion. An album that lives up to that elevator pitch would already be a winner, and there’s more going on with Masquerade under the hood. —Chris DeVille
Sometimes, I take the worst pictures on my phone. They’re blurred ghosts, colored blob splotches, fucked-up snapshots that somehow feel more revealing than the candid moment I was trying to capture. Victoryland’s debut reminds me of those images. The music is weathered and scratched-up, wobbly and drunk in a novel way. Corroded for the better. From the ramshackle percussion to Julian McCamman’s wild screams, My Heart Is A Room With No Cameras In It feels euphoric and feral, packed with massive pop choruses that crash through all the noise. It’s been my comfort listen of the year, an album that makes me feel giddy, seen, and alive. —Margaret Farrell
As both a solo artist and a bandmate of musicians like guitar experimentalist Bill Orcutt, Wendy Eisenberg’s career has taken them through a wide array of sounds, sometimes entirely instrumental. It feels significant that their self-titled album, then, sees them magnificently step into the role of country-folk orator. Though the record overflows with sublime, twangy arrangements (requisite fiddle and pedal steel included), you’d be remiss to overlook Eisenberg’s reflections on passing time, broken down into simple observations that can stop you in your tracks: "Do you ask water to move differently when you’re watching it boil?" Queue it up for your most pensive summer yet. —Abby Jones
This eponymous album is the Brooklyn act youbet's first project as a duo, and it sounds that way. Nick Llobet is a force on their own, but with the help of Micah Prussack, youbet have the energy and emotion of a real band. The album captivatingly ricochets between quiet and loud. The anarchic anthem “See Thru” is fuel for a circle pit, while “Embryonic” operates as a sweet blip of chamber-pop. Whatever they do, it’s mesmeric. —Danielle Chelosky
Robber Robber made Two Wheels Move The Soul during a particularly tumultuous time in the lives of band members Nina Cates and Zack James, and you can tell. The Burlington quartet’s sophomore album is an exhilarating ride of post-punk for the modern age, where those classic wiry guitar riffs meet blasts of distorted noise and discombobulated production. Cates’ lyrics are cobbled together from stream-of-conscious musings about topics like screen time, the corporate grind, and coming of age. Anxiety has hardly ever sounded so fun. —Abby Jones
Arima Ederra’s sophomore release is a reminder to breathe. Each track feels like a new way to meditate, to stop feeling the abrasive weight of time. Close your eyes, ground your feet, and just exist. On “In This Life,” she sings, “Don’t chase time/ It’s always on your side,” a gentle reminder that maybe we’re not as behind as we think we are. Delicate without being fragile, headstrong and optimistic without sounding preachy, A Rush To Nowhere feels like a chat with a good friend. —Margaret Farrell
"I need you like I need a hole in my head/ I need a hole in my head/ How else could I sing?" This is the type of sometimes perturbing, sometimes funny, often gut-wrenching aphorism you'll find across Highway To Hell, the latest album in Star Moles' extensive discography. The Philly musician born Emily Moales makes eccentric, hooky, DIY folk-rock ballads with lyrics informed by the observational humor of outlaw country, the wacky infatuation of Kate Bush, and the everyday mysticism of fairytales. Highway To Hell’s title might be a nod to one of the most influential texts in hard rock, but Star Moles’ approach is intimately charming and quietly devastating. —Abby Jones
Few albums of 2026 so far sound as precisely of-the-moment as U. April Grey, the singer-songwriter-producer who performs as underscores, grew up loving heartland rock heroes and pop divas as much as dubstep pioneers like Skrillex. She leaned into hyperpop on her 2021 debut Fishmonger before embracing guitar on her 2023 concept album Wallsocket, but her broad palette of influences comes together seamlessly on U, a surefooted blast of hard-hitting beats, addictive pop hooks, and razor-sharp production that work just as well on the dancefloor as they do bellowing from the back of a U-Haul trailer. —Abby Jones
It just sounds so comfortable. Kevin Morby has been making ultra-chill rustic folk-rock solo records for well over a decade now, but he's never been quite this blissfully settled. On Little Wide Open, he's got the assistance of producer Aaron Dessner, as well as a whole battalion of likeminded allies. When Lucinda Williams' voice crackles up on "Natural Disaster," it sounds like a blessing from above. But even with all the boldfaced names attacked, the album keeps its focus on the small, domestic pleasures of life, the tranquility that you might find if you stop trying to run from the place that birthed you. —Tom Breihan
Grace Ives' last album, 2022's Janky Star, was a bleary electro-pop manifesto from a Brooklyn party kid whose life was falling apart, and that was its charm. Girlfriend is what she made after cleaning up, moving to LA, and getting her life together. But the great thing about Girlfriend is that it never sounds too settled or mature. Instead, it's a heedless synthpop rush full of irrepressible hooks, as well as the same corroded gloss that co-producer Ariel Rechtshaid once brought to Sky Ferreira's Night Time, My Time. Even after self-destruction exits the picture, Ives sounds like she's trying to figure out her place in the world, and she writes great songs about it. —Tom Breihan
Aldous Harding has never really been the type to play by numbers, but she’s also never sounded as free as she does on her fifth studio album Train On The Island. Here, the vocally blessed New Zealand musician’s folksy art-pop is the canvas for mercurial meditations on memories, infatuation, the grotesque, and each little niche corner in between that she can conjure. The stories Harding weaves into these breezy instrumental arrangements are impossible to sort into either dreams or reality, and that might be their greatest appeal. —Abby Jones
On Something Worth Waiting For, Friko make big-swinging indie rock look easy. The Chicago band hails from a scene noted for its adoration of lo-fi production, but their sophomore album is a jarring evolution from their slacker-inclined roots, culminating in a final product that feels expansive and intricate without ever teetering too far into histrionics. String arrangements and piano tones feel right at home, not like a self-serious front. At the same time, Something Worth Waiting For doesn’t compromise the sort of ramshackle charm that initially put Friko on the map, rooted in Niko Kapetan’s warbling tenor and no shortage of fuzzed-out guitars. Most importantly, Something Worth Waiting For simply rocks. —Abby Jones
It doesn’t make sense. Julia Steiner writes with such tenderness, such intimacy, such preternatural sweetness that Ratboys’ music should be gentle and fragile as a rule. And in some senses, it is. Those elements never disappear from Singin’ To An Empty Chair. Yet these songs unfold into so many shapes, with such energy and assurance. Often, they rock hard, even triumphantly. It’s soulful indie rock craftsmanship as a metaphor for the idea that love conquers all. —Chris DeVille
Is there such a thing as extreme pop music? If there is, this is it. St. Louis native Catherine Grace Garner's voice is a snarling smear, all parking-lot indiscretion and endless appetite, and she uses Auto-Tune and echo to twist it into a post-human blur. She mutters and then screams that she's actually kinda famous through a throbbing, glitched-out fog of blog-house synth-sirens and grimy-nasty artificial basslines. Slayyyter cranks everything up beyond the point of abrasion, and that somehow only makes it more hypnotic. In laying bare the avaricious, hedonistic hunger at the heart of American culture, Wor$t Girl In America hits like the end-times blackout party night of our most euphoric nightmares. Crank it. —Tom Breihan
Stream songs from these albums in the playlist below.
