A new season is upon us, and in spring that means new music—a lot of it. As days grow longer and the chill begins to thaw, more great artists are lining up new music releases. This spring, that includes big names like Beyonce and living legends like Neil Young, but we’re always just as invested in the under-the-radar favorites, if not more so. And in the coming months we’ll be seeing a heavy sampling of innovative electronic music, forward thinking noise rock, abstract hip-hop, shape-shifting jazz and more. We used to only run these lists twice a year, but there’s too much music on the way to let this season slide, so here are our picks for the most anticipated albums of spring 2024.
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Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future
(March 22; 4AD)
Adrianne Lenker’s solo material eclipses that of her beloved band Big Thief, which just two years ago released an excellent double album in Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. But as a solo artist she hones in on a particular intimacy that can be both gorgeously affecting or hauntingly abstract, or sometimes all of these at once. The first single from her latest, Bright Future, “sadness as a gift,” leans more toward the former, reinforcing her status as one of the best singer/songwriters in indie music right now.
Adrianne Lenker: Bright Future
Julia Holter – Something in the Room She Moves
(March 22; Domino)
Julia Holter has spent some of the time since the release of her last album Aviary working on film scores and modern classical collaborations, though there’s always been an element of the avant garde in her own unique art-pop sound. Those elements are still firmly a part of her approach on new album Something In the Room She Moves, her first in six years. But there’s also an ease and beauty in songs like early singles, “Spinning” and “Sun Room,” which offer outstanding showcases for Holter’s unique hybrid of abstraction and immediacy.
Julia Holter: Something in the Room She Moves
Jlin – Akoma
(March 22; Planet Mu)
Less than a year after last year’s outstanding EP Perspective, Jerilynn Patton returns with her latest full-length, which continues to expand her constantly evolving world of exploratory and invigorating electronic music. Her latest features collaborations with the likes of Björk, The Kronos Quartet and Philip Glass, and first single “The Precision of Infinity,” featuring Glass, is a showcase of a delicate balance between intricate rhythms, haunting melody and rich arrangements.
Jlin: Akoma
Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood
(March 22; Anti-)
Katie Crutchfield has gradually been easing toward more of a country-influenced sound, realizing one of her strongest albums to date with 2020’s outstanding Saint Cloud. Four years later on its follow-up, she’s delving deeper into folk and bluegrass, as evident on the stunning first single “Right Back To It,” featuring guest vocals from MJ Lenderman. With a focus on sobriety and a slower pace of life, Tigers Blood makes good on the idea of a “mature” album, one both musically sophisticated and with the benefit of perspective and wisdom earned through an arc of personal growth.
Waxahatchee: Tigers Blood
Beyonce – Cowboy Carter
(March 29; Parkwood)
Beyonce delivered one of the best albums of 2022 with Renaissance, her dancefloor-friendly set of house and disco jams that found her fully embracing the allure of the beat. With her follow-up to that album, Cowboy Carter, she’s taking a decidedly different tack, offering up her first proper country album. Early singles like “16 Carriages” showcase the promise of what Bey can do with American roots music, and the album features collaborations with the likes of Rhiannon Giddens, Raphael Saadiq and more.
Kelly Moran – Moves in the Field
(March 29; Warp)
Kelly Moran returns six years after the release of her outstanding 2018 release Ultraviolet with a new full-length. In the time in between, she’s worked with Oneohtrix Point Never, FKA twigs and Yves Tumor, and as she returns to her own compositions, she focuses on work written as duets with herself with the Disklavier piano, pushing herself to bold new physical performance limits, as heard through early singles like “Butterfly Phase.”
Kelly Moran: Moves in the Field
Shabazz Palaces – Exotic Birds of Prey
(March 29; Sub Pop)
After 2020’s The Don of Diamond Dreams, Shabazz Palaces released the mini album Robed in Rareness, along with a seven-track release under the alias Lavarr the Starr, with Exotic Birds of Prey continuing the ongoing streak of shorter releases. Yet its early singles have proven strong as usual, with songs like “Angela” further showcasing the abstract hip-hop project’s cosmic vision.
Shabazz Palaces: Exotic Birds of Prey
Drahla – angeltape
(April 5; Captured Tracks)
Leeds post-punk group Drahla make their return after five years with their follow-up to 2019’s Useless Coordinates, and expanding to a quartet. Where that album showcased the group’s tendency toward abstract art punk with occasional forays into saxophone-driven no wave skronk, their latest continues to deepen and expand their aesthetic into new and unfamiliar territory, with a new energy and sense of experimentation inspired by bands like This Heat. On singles like “Grief in Phantasia,” their sound is bigger, more driving, but still miles from straightforward.
Drahla: angeltape
Mount Kimbie – The Sunset Violent
(April 5; Warp)
Electronic group Mount Kimbie are no strangers to evolution, initially crafting future garage beats before transitioning to a post-punk-inspired sound with 2017’s Love What Survives. With their latest, The Sunset Violent, the UK duo expands to a quartet with the additions of Mark Pell and Andrea Balency-Béarn, further leaning into their post-punk and krautrock influences, as showcased in new single “Empty and Silent,” featuring King Krule.
Mount Kimbie: The Sunset Violent
METZ – Up on Gravity Hill
(April 12; Sub Pop)
In 2022, METZ leader Alex Edkins explored his scrappy garage rock tendencies with his side project, Weird Nightmare. But the melodic elements of that project have seemed to seep back into his primary group in the best ways. The first couple of singles from the band’s fifth album Up on Gravity Hill reveal a focus on intricate nuances and more prominent hooks alongside their more searing noise-rock bashers, like early single “99“. It’s always rewarding to hear such a powerful band find space within that furious thrum.
Metz: Up on Gravity Hill
Necrot – Lifeless Birth
(April 12; Tankcrimes)
There has been no shortage of incredible death metal in the past decade, though among the many great bands at it right now, Necrot rises to the top tier. Their 2020 album Mortal only made a good thing even better, and after a few years spent overcoming various physical challenges and ailments, the members of Necrot return with some of their most furious songs to date, including first single “Cut the Cord,” an absolute ripper of a song that may or may not be about canceling your cable subscription.
Necrot: Lifeless Birth
Shabaka – Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
(April 12; Impulse!)
Last year, Shabaka Hutchings performed his final show as a saxophonist, and since then he’s focused on other instruments, like flute and shakuhachi—which he immersed himself during lockdown in 2020. His first solo album, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, finds him moving on from the sounds he crafted with the likes of Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, but with a cast of collaborators that includes Andre 3000, Floating Points, Saul Williams, Esperanza Spalding, Elucid, Moses Sumney and more.
Shabaka: Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
Big|Brave – A Chaos of Flowers
(April 19; Thrill Jockey)
Montreal trio Big|Brave have long approached heavy music through an unconventional lens, embracing minimalism even when playing loud as hell. Last year’s nature morte, one of the year’s best, found them finding new avenues of exploration without abandoning their ethos, and its follow-up, A Chaos of Flowers, extends from a similar concept, drawing on beauty as much as power, space as much as mass. The first single, “I felt a funeral,” is a prime example of their ability to build something delicate and stunning from such powerful elements.
Big|Brave: A Chaos of Flowers
Cloud Nothings – Final Summer
(April 19; Pure Noise)
Cloud Nothings are one of the most consistently great bands in indie rock over the past decade, kicking off a streak of albums with 2012’s Attack on Memory that hasn’t waned in either energy or quality. Final Summer promises to be no different, packing 10 songs in under half an hour, driven by their signature post-hardcore punch as heard through the hook-driven first single “Running Through the Campus,” which pairs soaring vocal harmonies with thick layers of guitar.
Cloud Nothings: Final Summer
Full of Hell – Coagulated Bliss
(April 26; Closed Casket Activities)
Full of Hell had an eventful 2023, releasing two equally strong but aesthetically different collaborative albums with Primitive Man and Nothing. And now they’re returning with a proper follow-up to 2021’s Garden of Burning Apparitions. Its first single “Doors to Mental Agony” is a raucous slice of hardcore devastation, as intense as anything they’ve released before but with a more pronounced groove and a thrilling immediacy. We expect this to rip.
Full of Hell: Coagulated Bliss
Inter Arma – New Heaven
(April 26; Relapse)
During the early days of the pandemic, Inter Arma released a covers album, Garbers Days Revisited, which revealed the more playful side of the Richmond metal band’s sound, but it’s been a good five years since their last proper album of original material, Sulphur English. The group’s never been particularly interested in adhering to simply one style or aesthetic within heavy music, and the title track from New Heaven finds them continuing to push those boundaries even farther.
Inter Arma: New Heaven
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – FU##IN’ Up
(April 26; Reprise)
Neil Young is full of surprises of late, perhaps the most significant being that his music will return to Spotify, based more or less on the principle that streaming services are in a four-way tie for worst. A more exciting surprise is the announcement of another new album with Crazy Horse after 2022’s World Record. Its name nods to the song from 1990’s Ragged Glory, and if it’s anywhere near as rowdy and raucous as that era of his music, that’s a truly exciting prospect indeed.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse: FU##IN’ UP
St. Vincent – All Born Screaming
(April 26; Virgin)
Annie Clark has taken some interesting detours through her previous two albums, embracing a brighter pop sound with MASSEDUCTION before nodding to ’70s art-rock and funk with Daddy’s Home. With All Born Screaming, she finds herself in the company of a number of notable collaborators, including Dave Grohl, Cate Le Bon, Josh Freese and Stella Mogzawa. But with the release of its first single, “Broken Man,” she seemed to be indicating something more intimate and personal: “It sounds real because it is real,” she said in a statement.
St. Vincent: All Born Screaming
Ibibio Sound Machine – Pull the Rope
(May 3; Merge)
Ibibio Sound Machine landed on our best of 2022 list with their stellar album Electricity, which found them working with Hot Chip on a set of electronic dancefloor bangers. Their latest is produced by Ross Orton as well as the band’s own Max Grunhard, though they’ve by no means eased up on the funk, as evident on the standout early single, “Got To Be Who U Are.” The use of a “U” in place of “You” may or may not be a nod to Prince, but regardless, their groove is undeniable.
Ibibio Sound Machine: Pull the Rope
Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch
(May 3; Mexican Summer)
Jessica Pratt cites her tendency toward perfectionism for her latest album arriving five years after 2019’s Quiet Signs. Though one can hardly blame her when the result is something like the first single, “Life Is,” one of her most gorgeously lush songs, showcasing a bigger pop arrangement than her more stripped-down folk recordings in years past. It feels like the makings of something special.
Jessica Pratt: Here in the Pitch
Kamasi Washington – Fearless Movement
(May 3; Young)
Kamasi Washington tends to prefer big statements; though he’s released a handful of excellent EPs, his full-length releases thus far have been a triple album followed by a double album, and though the actual running time of new album Fearless Movement hasn’t been revealed, there’s no reason to believe this will be any different. He’s described it as his “dance album,” though he says not to take that too literally, and it features guest appearances from George Clinton, Thundercat, Andre 3000 (who seems to be really making the rounds on jazz records!) and BJ the Chicago Kid. Dance record or not, first single “Prologue” (which is the album closer, confusingly enough) most definitely grooves.
Kamasi Washington: Fearless Movement
Mdou Moctar – Funeral for Justice
(May 3; Matador)
After touring behind 2021’s incredible Afrique Victime, Mdou Moctar ended up unable to fly home after a coup in Niger resulted in a grounding of flights in and out of the country. They did eventually make it back, and the music they made since speaks to a worldwide call for justice and freedom, while the first single and title track reveals a familiar, harder-rocking sound but with even more crunchy power chords.
Waxahatchee: Tigers Blood
Les Savy Fav – Oui, LSF
(May 10; Frenchkiss)
Les Savy Fav were one of the best live bands of the ’00s, along with a group with a number of outstanding studio records (all of which should definitely be reissued, but that’s a concern for another time). Oui, LSF is the band’s first new music in 14 years, and it’s first two singles find the band picking up where they left off—energized and amplified.
Les Savy Fav: Oui, LSF
Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown
(May 17; Domino)
Portishead’s Beth Gibbons never officially released a solo album prior to now. She delivered a collaborative album with Rustin Man, as well as a live classical recording with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. But Lives Outgrown is her long awaited proper debut, a meditation on grief and aging that she previewed with the stunning art-folk of “Floating on a Moment.” However long this might have taken to materialize, early indications are it’ll be a stunner.
Beth Gibbons: Lives Outgrown
Bat for Lashes – The Dream of Delphi
(May 31; Mercury KX)
Five years ago Bat for Lashes crafted a neon-tinted, ’80s-inspired landscape with Lost Girls, but with her latest, she returns to an ambitious, widescreen art-pop world inspired by family and motherhood. Its first single, the title track, is enchanting and bold, the kind of haunted artistry that made her earlier records so captivating. She describes the first single as a “spell being cast,” and upon hearing it, we’re inclined to agree.
Bat For Lashes: The Dream of Delphi
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