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The 25 Best Electronic Albums of 2023

While the world of electronic music is bigger than ever, it’s virtually impossible to cover every speck of it. As 2023 is coming to a close, I’ve been trying to catch up on the genre as much as possible—but I can’t seem to make even a dent. Luckily, the Paste music team and our coterie of contributors have made easy work on electronica this year. For this list in particular, we are covering everything we can—from industrial to synth-pop to instrumental work. Ambient albums are largely absent here, as are more pure pop records. If you’re looking for folks like Romy or Caroline Polachek, stay tuned for our pop list later this month. Instead, the focus is on synthesizers here, and we’ve assembled a roundup of small triumphs from folks like JFDR, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (yes, you’re reading that correctly), Strange Ranger, yeule and more. We will only be considering LPs for this list, but we did include a bevy of electro-centric projects on our EPs roundup last week. So, without further ado, here are our picks for the 20 best electronic albums of 2023. —Matt Mitchell, Music Editor

Decisive Pink: Ticket to Fame

An amusing and instructive moment happens about eight seconds into “Potato Tomato,” the fifth track on Decisive Pink’s debut album Ticket To Fame. After a series of tinny beats, the beginning of an odd bass line and a couple electronic squiggles, one of the project’s principals—either American singer-songwriter (and former Dirty Projector) Angel Deradoorian or Russian pop experimentalist Kate NV, presumably—lets out a genuinely startled-sounding “whoa,” as if a button they just pushed made a particularly strange or unexpected sound. The feelings embedded within that exclamation–surprise, delight, frivolity, a sense of possibility—encapsulate exactly what makes Ticket To Fame such an engaging and enjoyable listen. Here, we have an opportunity to hear two top-shelf artists come together and explore a sound that sits comfortably between them, free from expectation and abuzz with spontaneous creativity. Decisive Pink’s debut is a dancing fountain of colorful tones, a wistful rocket ride through pixelated zones, an extravagant peacock’s plumage of electro-pop and a guided tour of moods and textures achievable in synth music. It’s also a wonderful first product of Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV’s creative union. Let’s hope there’s more where it came from. —Ben Salmon [Read our full review]

Depeche Mode: Memento Mori

Even now that they’re both past the age of 60, Depeche Mode’s David Gahan and Martin Gore are still capable of making music that’s every bit as brooding as their classic catalog. The iconic electronic outfit’s 15th studio album Memento Mori finds frontman Gahan and multi-instrumentalist Gore consumed by the same attractions—anguish, yearning, religion—that have long defined their work, a remarkable feat considering how mature and settled they come across in interviews these days. It’s this maturity, in fact, that’s helped keep Depeche Mode’s music so vital. Gore and Gahan may still be tapping the same emotional well, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t grown with every album. Over the last two decades, Depeche Mode have more or less successfully balanced between referencing their past and breaking new ground. Memento Mori, with its fresh production courtesy of James Ford and Marta Salogni, tilts rather decisively towards the latter.

Sure, tracks like “My Favourite Stranger” and “Don’t Say You Love Me” contain nods to fan favorites from their holy trinity of albums—1987’s Music for the Masses, 1989’s Violator and 1993’s Songs of Faith and Devotion—almost as if the band is paying homage to itself. But “Wagging Tongue,” “Before We Drown,” “People Are Good,” and others update that familiar Depeche Mode recipe in myriad ways, proving that DM can hold their own with current artists across the entirety of the electronic-dance-pop spectrum. Few, if any, acts in music have been able to make inner turmoil sound as sexy as Depeche Mode, and they don’t disappoint this time. A record that’s permeated by such a heavy sense of mood it creates a kind of humidity out of sound, Memento Mori doesn’t actually stay in the same musical gear from start to finish. As it turns out, Depeche Mode still have a few tricks left up their sleeve. They also have quite a lot to tell us about human nature, the search for meaning, memory, mortality and—most of all—life. It’s been a long time since Depeche Mode have sounded this alive, or powerful. Memento Mori sees them in fine form as they come damn close to recapturing the creative reach we came to expect during their prime. —Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

draag me: lord of the shithouse

Formed by Spirit of the Beehive members Zach Schwartz and Corey Wichlin, draag me is a vessel for off-kilter, industrial, dissonant pop music that feeds into the unease that, sometimes, gets distilled into the work of their other band. This new joint, lord of the shithouse is the first draag me record since 2020’s Mixtape II, and you can see just how far Schwartz and Wichlin have come. It’s cluttered with patterns and vibrant as all get out, and the record aims to accomplish what parts of Spirit of the Beehive couldn’t make it onto ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH two years ago. These tracks aren’t scraps, though—far from it, actually. They are fully formed and glitching and unwavering and sublime. “wax figures in the rain” and “death cult” are big standouts, though the 15-song tracklist is very much a rewarding listen from start to finish. You can hear draag me influence on the most recent Spirit of the Beehive release, i’m so lucky, but they come to full and awing fruition on lord of the shithouse. There’s much noise to wade through here, but the reward makes pressing play worth it. —Matt Mitchell

Faith Healer: The Hand That Fits the Glove

It’s important that the fourth album from Edmonton pop outfit Faith Healer, The Hand That Fits the Glove, does not float under your radar this year. Vocalist Jessica Jalbert merges her own kaleidoscopic singing with rich, dense electronic soundscapes that make the record one of the most electrifying indie pop projects of the year thus far—but, even then, The Hand That Fits the Glove flirts with indie rock, shoegaze and synth and dream pop architecture. Songs like “Another Fool” and “I’m a Dog” and “Green Velvet” absolutely glow with wonder, as Jalbert and her co-writer and producer Rene Wilson meditate on pleasure, romance, interpersonal connections and momentous forces. As a follow-up to their 2017 album Try, it’s a beautiful sequel; by itself, The Hand That Fits the Glove is a standalone marvel that sets Faith Healer apart from their peers. —Matt Mitchell

Fever Ray: Radical Romantics

It starts with fear, because that’s present even in pleasure. As a phantom synth melody swirls between channels in the mix, Karin Dreijer’s lyrics return to the same uneasy question: “Did you hear what they call us?” “What They Call Us” hangs a pall over the rest of Radical Romantics, the third album from Dreijer’s solo project Fever Ray. Though Dreijer’s slippery experimental synth-pop record never explicitly returns to the social peril of this opener, it looms like a latent hitch to queer desire, a subconscious state that must be confronted to achieve unguarded connection. It’s a thread made all the clearer in a stray aside on second track “Shiver,” with Dreijer interrupting their lustful lyrics with a simple question: “Can I trust you?” It’s a question of unclear directness—is it asked in actual conversation, or to themselves in thought?—but one that places all its impact in unambiguous baggage, holding the tacit hesitancy that comes after past hurt. Dreijer penetrates these themes with pop songwriting that cuts to the chase like a forthright come-on. For all their uncertain trust on “Shiver,” Dreijer and their brother/former bandmate Olof infuse the song with a deep, bubbly bounce, as if to prove that the track’s unquenchable thirst remains even through anxiety. What makes Radical Romantics, like the best of Dreijer’s work, a cut above merely great pop is its subversive streak. Their lyricism is unapologetically queer while sidestepping empty platitudes, more often nodding to the knotted complexities of queer and trans people’s existence against marginalization and endangerment. Even in the face of apprehension, Fever Ray has never surveyed their own future with this much conviction. —Natalie Marlin [Read our full review]

Glasser: Crux

The work that Glasser—aka Cameron Mesirow—performs on her new album Crux is experimental, trippy and adventurous. Across various compartments, you’ll find clicking and shimmering synth instrumentation of delightfully ambiguous origin, as Mesirow’s Björk-reminiscent vocal runs and discomfiting dissonance create an otherworldly sound which tumbles forward with an energy wholly its own. A song like “All Lovers” floats comfortably in confusion, ebbing and flowing rhythmically as lyrics swell and sway. Fascinating and disorienting, the track details a breakup in a language foreign yet familiar, its message shining through despite (or perhaps because of) its sonic idiosyncrasy. Likewise, “Easy” is a dashing and dazzling synth-pop offering. While Crux is Mesirow’s first new album in 10 years, “Easy” makes it seem like there was never a gap. The song details Mesirow’s first love—who has since passed away, and you can feel just how visceral that loss was for her. “Easy”—and Crux—arrives like a dream glossed over a rich, shimmering soundscape—with Mesirow’s angelic inflection standing confidently in the eye of the electronic storm. Mesirow’s return as Glasser is a moving, unforgettable one. —Matt Mitchell

JFDR: Museum

After spending countless hours consuming six years of work, it became clear that the solo project of Icelandic singer/songwriter Jófríður Ákadóttir is mystifying, and everyone should be ensconcing themselves in a blanket of her sublime, experimental electro-folk. Her sophomore album New Dreams suggests that her approach to creative projects would never reside in the stratosphere of contemporary or traditional musical foundations. At one moment, she is fiddling with Eno-esque ambience; the next, she is conjuring Bon Iver resplendents atop dainty, plucky acoustic guitars. Upon cracking open her beautiful new LP, Museum, I found myself immediately entranced by Ákadóttir’s seamless command of harmonious transgressions. She does not bend to the expectations of vocal arrangements, opting to instead forge her own curve. Lyrically, Ákadóttir pursues the avant-garde, tumbling through evocative imagery, snippets of fear and alienation and reliquaries of romances both new and old. Across nine songs, she deftly hypothesizes what emotional boundaries exist in and beyond her world. It’s an inpidualistic, tender sermon on healing that arrives as not just a collection of songs, but a full-bodied movement. —Matt Mitchell [Read our full review]

Kate NV: WOW

On WOW, Kate Shilonosova’s latest album as Kate NV, she assembles a panoply of curious sounds and visions to delight beyond what typical music can do. WOW isn’t fun like a class clown, per se, but more like a clown with class. Over the years, Shilonosova’s toying with busted instruments, manipulated vocals and everyday objects has led her to amass a treasure trove of recordings of all things spontaneous. Drawing on the boundless curiosity of her hero Nobukazu Takemura, Shilonosova’s own love for all things fun and vibrant has her eschewing traditional structures in order to construct pop songs so stimulating and multifaceted that they can be hard to keep track of. Her songs ask a lot of listeners not because they are overdetermined works of art but because they require dropping all pretense and submitting oneself to forbidden levels of whimsy. It’s a difficult exercise, but oh so rewarding. —Devon Chodzin [Read our full review]

Kelela: Raven

Experimental R&B singer Kelela has always expected more. In the intervening years between Take Me a_Part, the Remixes and her second studio album, Raven, Kelela immersed herself in everything from Black queer and feminist theory to hooks and Devereaux, and performed an audit of her network—asking what her connections are really doing to support Black women and marginalized people in their practices. She forged a new path ahead based on those responses. It’s this act of expecting better, seeking it out in writings and conjuring a liberated future through ingenious production that makes Raven such a shocking listen. Kelela is no stranger to changing the game through her futuristic dance music, but Raven possesses a unique brilliance. Her heavenly vocals pair exquisitely with LDSXOXO’s disorienting breakbeats; the denouement of “Contact” is psychedelic and all too real at once, an elegant celebration of queer Black feminine pleasure. Ambient comedowns act like valves, reducing the pressure for a few precious moments before the party starts again. Raven is a tour of a freer future, where the party’s only just begun. —Devon Chodzin

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: The Silver Cord

The band’s new album, The Silver Cord, once again finds Walker, Stu Mackenzie, Cook Craig, Lucas Harwood, Michael Cavanagh and Ambrose Kenny-Smith continuing to explore sonic terrain beyond the tried-and-true familiarity of guitar rock. Throughout The Silver Cord, the sextet builds epic, side-long space-disco soundscapes from analog synthesizers. Yet, while the tonal palette is cohesive and consistent, the styles they explore are characteristically all over the map—from the extended odyssey of 20-minute synth-pop opener “Theia” to the hypnotic disco pulse of “Set.” “Gilgamesh” even takes on an early ‘90s hip-house sound in the vein of The KLF’s “America: What Time is Love?,” while a variety of other unexpected influences show up throughout the album, from disco auteur Giorgio Moroder to cult Afrobeat icon William Onyeabor. The band likewise took the unusual move of releasing The Silver Cord in two formats: a single-LP release with edited, more radio-friendly versions of each song and a double-album, in which each track is given the luxury of an extended runway from which to fully take off. The Silver Cord also represents a new milestone for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard: It’s their 25th album. The group seems to only grow more productive and creatively fertile as they continue on and, just last year, they unloaded five full-length records on listeners—which is the second time they’ve done so. To those outside the band and its obsessive legions of fans, the relentless volume of material can feel perhaps like a novelty, but there’s no denying how much fun the band seems to have doing it or, for that matter, the confidence and curiosity that goes into their continued expansion and growth together. —Jeff Terich [Read our full feature]

Laura Groves: Radio Red

Radio Red is a pop record through and through, as a song like “Good Intention” has the groove and sensuality of a 1990s mega-hit. It’s like a perfect mixture of Janet Jackson’s Janet and Mariah Carey’s Music Box, as Groves allows her vocals to play out like a rollercoaster—coasting through pitches and octaves that only emphasize her command of finesse on the track. The instrumental flashes like a sugar-sweet bedroom-pop mix, with joyous, dreamy singing. “I overhear you in the distance,” Groves croons. “‘Ready to love!’ And I abandon all resistance.” It’s a beautiful ode to surrendering to the affection we crave. Closing track “Silver Lining” achieves a similar boundary, as Groves makes good on releasing any feelings of possessiveness in the name of growing older and finding more appreciation in natural love. “You’re my silver lining,” she sings, over a beautiful, serenading synthesizer pattern. “I love your perfect timing.” Much of the record taps into pastorals of interstellar imaginings, cosmic ways to make a romance shed its density and ascend towards limitless humanity eons above any grounded limitations. Radio Red is not just a character study on relationships; it’s an undertaking that focuses on compassion towards the people we adore and a curiosity for how we might begin to prioritize our own lights in spaces shared with others. —Matt Mitchell [Read our full review]

Laurel Halo: Atlas

Laurel Halo has historically been one to show not tell but, even here, what she shows is murky. Atlas is a bricolage of 10 jazzy soundscapes, all of which sound distinct but forge connections through their shared ephemerality. “Abandon” sets the scene brilliantly, with Halo’s dizzying electronics humming beneath the piano, cello (Lucy Railton), violin (James Underwood) and saxophone (Bendik Giske). The pieces have sensory antecedents that are especially on point. “Late Night Drive” feels exactly like how it’s titled—its periodic crescendo and diminuendo cycle reminiscent of pumping and easing the brakes, the hum of electric propulsion gaining more steam during periods where the strings soar the highest. “Sick Eros” is where those strings truly reach their apex, rising and falling like a proper symphony, drawn out to spectral extremes that ache. It feels familiar but so very distant. There is charm and richness that is omnipresent throughout the album. Nothing is rushed, but every thought experiment has a distinct time and place, tracing the subconscious push and pull of thought on tracing paper. While everything on the album suggests some kind of swirling motion, there’s also a sense of quietude, of something remaining ensconced in place while these voices negotiate for momentary control of the narrative. In that stillness, the music washes over the listener, replicating the sensory experiences Halo recalls on these tracks. It feels not like nostalgia but like remapping, creating a spatial and sonic archive through recalling and interpreting memory. The music may be quiet, but its implications are far from small. Atlas is ambient neoclassical at its finest; stirring and introspective without succumbing to sameness, furthering Laurel Halo’s extensive, unpredictable influence on experimental and electronic traditions. —Devon Chodzin [Read our full review]

Lost Girls: Selvutsletter

The second album from Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden’s collaborative project Lost Girls, Selvutsletter is eight songs packed to the brim with avant-garde pop music and post-modern reflections on pleasure, dancing and experimentalism. It’s as primitive as a Bjӧrk record, as intoxicating as Hounds of Love-era Kate Bush. It’s not quite as immediately accessible as the pop radio workings of Hval’s own solo work, especially her 2022 album Classic Objects—but Selvutsletter is relentless in its own pursuit towards organic electronica. Guitars and synthesizers flicker and haunt, as Hval and Volden solidify the magnetism of their own creative partnership. Songs like “With the Other Hand” and “World on Fire” sound like they’re straight from a time capsule but, like the standout track “Ruins,” Selvutsletter sounds unlike anything Hval and Volden have ever made. It’s one of the best electronic albums of 2023. —Matt Mitchell

Madeline Kenney: A New Reality Mind

A New Reality Mind offers an entrancing, peculiar sonic palette never before seen on Madeline Kenney’s albums, ensconcing her in a tradition with dance music and indie-rock roots to create something unmistakably hers—which makes her stylistic choices, sometimes tame and sometimes daring, a feat to track. The album is curious, careful and, at times, triumphant. Breakups are messy, and Kenney made room on the album for blips of discord through her novel production choices. While there are tracks like “I Drew A Line” where the production choices may flatten her voice, or on “Leaves Me Dry” where they feel too restrained, Kenney’s work toes the thin line between order and chaos—and when she lets herself descend into something more chaotic, her music gets downright exciting. The impulse to choose order is sensible both emotionally and musically; after a breakup, there has to be some logic used to figure out what went wrong and what needs to happen next. —Devon Chodzin [Read our full feature]

Mandy, Indiana: i’ve seen a way

The music of Mandy, Indiana is not for the faint of heart. The band’s intense output over the past three years merges the best of punk, industrial, dance and more into an alarming sonic soup. After self-releasing a handful of singles, the band unveiled their first EP … via Fire Talk in 2021, solidifying their hallmarks: French-language lyrics, thumping beats and gnawing guitars. At some moments frightening and, at others, alluring, Mandy, Indiana is insistent: We are going to make something that we are proud of—that we feel is urgent—and it’s not going to slide under the radar. That’s a good description of their long-awaited debut LP, I’ve Seen A Way. While … introduced a broader audience to the band’s vision and sound, I’ve Seen A Way is a deep-pe into the political motivations and instrumental approaches the band explores through their intense sound. Mandy, Indiana are plainly honest about their disaffection and fury. And the new album is an exercise in unconventional recording. Guitarist and producer Scott Fair embraced the challenge of recording drums in a dangerously damp Somerset cave. Eccentricities in sound and process are not simply points of pride for the band; they embrace the idiosyncrasies that emerge when recording on-location. What the four-piece produces under duress is as natural as it is weird. That’s the beauty of a group like Mandy, Indiana: It’s obvious that they’re comfortable in the extreme, as if to say “get in, the water’s fine” while lounging in a pool of lava. It’s fun to wrap your mind around. —Devon Chodzin [Read our full feature]

Mega Bog: End of Everything

Erin Birgy, the force behind Mega Bog, is not one to shy from experimentation. Over her past six albums under the project, Birgy’s arsenal of avant-pop tools grows every time, and with each aesthetic pivot, the Mega Bog universe grows more colorful. On End of Everything, her first release with Mexican Summer, Birgy sought an icy, glistening synth-pop palette, tapping collaborators like co-producer and Big Thief drummer James Krivchenia and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Otheim to help realize that vision. Overtop the swirling synths, Birgy’s voice dances with Broadway bravado as she reckons with personal traumas and an accelerating climate crisis. From her vantage point in Los Angeles, beneath the constant smog and within sight of burgeoning forest fires that grow more deadly by the year, she sounds like a klaxon that cannot go ignored.Like Birgy’s previous two Mega Bog albums, Life, and Another and Dolphine, End of Everything is full of surprises, but its tools are more concentrated—centered on chilling production and curious, sometimes-confessional lyrics that sit prominently atop bold synth-pop. Birgy’s transition into this musical realm is enthralling and promises more excitement from the dedicated experimentalist. As painstakingly beautiful as her more inscrutable records have been, to witness Mega Bog in crystalline electronica is to witness an artist reclaim and represent her consciousness with unsettling clarity. It is a privilege to behold. —Devon Chodzin [Read our full feature]

Nation of Language: Strange Disciple

The instrumentation on Strange Disciple is unlike anything Nation of Language have done before. On a track like “Sightseer,” you can find all of the familiar fixtures—the push and pull of minimalist arrangements that blossom into an explosive unraveling, all done beneath the gloss of woozy, beautiful electronica. The band making these denser, bolder and bigger songs was always a visible path. The result is an immensity that comes alive more and more with every passing chapter, a living room and nightclub album drunk on technicolor, dancing and candy-coated longing. Strange Disciple evokes a stirring emotional maximalism, through vignettes and a cloud of splashy, arresting opulence. “Weak In Your Light” follows a pulsing metronome of erotic, low-octave key turns—which allow for Ian Devaney to take his own vocals into these operatic, church-clearing ranges; “Stumbling Still” offers a tangible, muted pop tone bustles in conversation with a drum machine—only to tumble into a titanic, appetizing arrangement of malleable dance-floor brushstrokes. Constriction was erased from Nation of Language’s vocabulary, and Strange Disciple is a blown-up, successful imagining that erases the limiting confines of any rough draft. It’s, in no minced words, the band’s greatest document yet. —Matt Mitchell [Read our full cover story]

Oneohtrix Point Never: Again

Again is just as warped and bizarre as any Oneohtrix Point Never release, but its optimism is truly next-level. The album opens with NOMAD ensemble’s strings in cacophony on “Elseware,” as if each player were still noodling in their own world before recording—only to fall into place, working through an energetic number straight out of the classical period. The subsequent track—the title track—brings the focus back towards Daniel Lopatin’s electronic production, with synths swelling and harmonizing like a robotic barbershop quartet. The onslaught of keys, strings and static prepare an early climax that refuses to linger, suggesting something big yet to come. “World Outside” offers a sweeping melody bookended by bedlam, followed by sweet singing from Lopatin himself; “Krumville” is meditative and cosmic as Lopatin partners with Xiu Xiu to play in the art-rock sandbox the band has hewn so well. It feels like blown-out slacker rock with sharp edges. “Locrian Midwest” is even more offbeat, leaning on an oft-avoided mode to craft something anxious yet gorgeous. “A Barely Lit Path” ends playfully but quietly, requesting a moment of kind reverence for the fanciful young adult Lopatin seeks to nurture. This track, much like the others, is designed to baffle at points. However, the unconcealed emotion gushing out of Again is stupefying. Where Oneohtrix Point Never takes these sounds may challenge the senses, but the feelings Lopatin is drawing forward are all too familiar. —Devon Chodzin [Read our full review]

Overmono: Good Lies

Good Lies, the debut album from Welsh duo Tom and Ed Russell—aka Overmono—is one of the best electronic albums across the board. The project is roaring with color, glitches and sampling. It’s a dance record that is relentless in beauty and limitless in scope, a true triumph that—to be honest—doesn’t sound much like a debut at all. The Russells plug symmetrical synthesizers and drum machines into vivid places on songs like the title track, “Is U” and “So U Kno.” It becomes quickly obvious that Tom and Ed are perfectly in-sync with each other and with the ins and outs of the UK club scene. The work across these 13 songs is extraordinary, sublime and hypnotic. I dare anyone to tap into a song like “Cold Blooded” and not become obsessed with the cosmic turns of Good Lies. The Russell siblings have been down this road before—countless times—yet, as Overmono, they have ambitiously chosen boldness. —Matt Mitchell

Sofia Kourtesis: Madres

Sofia Kourtesis captures a warmth few of her contemporaries ever achieve. Arriving after a series of singles and EPs, Kourtesis’ first LP—Madres—finds the Peruvian producer working within storied traditions of deep house and the Berlin nightclub scene, while infusing those influences with a beating heart all her own, like a tender embrace in the heat of a crowded dance floor. Tracks like “How Music Makes You Feel Better” live on the miasma of emotions Kourtesis entangles at any turn, skittering house loops, airy vocal exhalations, and brief chops of soul singer howls. On “Moving Houses,” Kourtesis forgoes beats entirely for an ambient piece centered on decaying loops of her own voice, shedding her usual arsenal to even more intimate poignance. Though built through struggles and pain, Madres is a reciprocal gift from Sofia Kourtesis to the listener, a record that seeks to impart its personal comforts and catharsis onto those who take it into their hearts. —Natalie Marlin

Strange Ranger: Pure Music

Pure Music, the latest endeavor by Strange Ranger, is experimental pop and electronica glazed with shoegaze overtones. All at once, it’s gigantic and familiar, embossed with clips of YouTube videos dispersed throughout to give the record a rewarding, digital connective tissue. The tether that runs throughout the record is the unbreakable bond between the four musicians, which was tested when Isaac Eiger and Fiona Woodman ended their longterm romantic partnership. The two vocalists remained band members and, alongside Nathan Tucker and Fred Nixon, decamped to a cabin in the Catskills area of Upstate New York to build the framework of their 2021 mixtape No Light in Heaven and Pure Music. The quartet emerged from their structure with songs like “Rain So Hard,” “She’s On Fire” and “Blue Shade”—some of the most-compelling electronic compositions this year. And the standout centerpiece, “Wide Awake,” showcases Woodman’s angelic, euphoric vocalizations. Pure Music, is a bright, ambitious detour from the emo-inspired indie rock they’d been recording and performing for the last seven years. Strange Ranger have since disbanded, but their swan song’s feathers still flutter beautifully. —Matt Mitchell [Read our full feature]

The Serfs: Half Eaten by Dogs

The third album from Cincinnati, Ohio industrial electro-punks The Serfs is a riot of a good time. Half Eaten By Dogs is what you’d get if Joy Division loved Skyline Chili, as there’s a Midwestern bravado injected into a UK blueprint across these tunes. “Beat Me Down,” “Suspension Bridge Collapse” and “Cheap Chrome” are incredible tracks I just can’t get enough of, as The Serfs continue, throughout the album’s 40-minute runtime, to blast their listeners with kaleidoscopic textures and the grime of sunken dancefloors. Dylan McCartney, Dakota Carlyle and Andie Luman make psychedelic proclamations atop familiar rock skeletons, dousing the songs in a glaze tarnished with warm melodies, sexy synthesizer heartbeats and confident precision. Half Eaten By Dogs is magical, especially for how it arrives raw like a debut yet intoxicating like a grand, long-awaited masterpiece. —Matt Mitchell

underscores: Wallsocket

underscores’ newfound sense of creative freedom comes through in the scope of Wallsocket as an album alone, well before the several layers of ancillary content are taken into account. The palette of sounds underscores is operating in is wider than ever—somewhere between early Kesha’s snark pop and the sneering electroclash of Peaches on “Locals (Girls Like Us),” before swerving into grunge-pop on “Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” or minimalist club beats against Midwest emo on “Seventyseven dog years.” Narratively, the record is just as vast, hopping between the perspectives of its residents—a trans girl diagnosed with a rare but benign disease, a stalker obsessed with her every movement, a daughter of a wealthy family and a white-collar money launderer. Each track is a miniature narrative journey in itself, with only a fragment of its complete plot ever explicitly disclosed lyrically. underscores’ characters frequently confront their own beliefs in God and relationships to organized religion—such as S*nny’s disillusionment with God’s penchant for cruel irony on “Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”—and this too is something she drew directly from her own life. —Natalie Marlin [Read our full feature]

Yaeji: With A Hammer

2023 was a great year for electronic music, and Yaeji’s With A Hammer might go down as one of the banner releases for the genre when it’s all said and done in two weeks. The New Yorker’s first album feels like an opus for how well-packed it is with an entire lifetime of color. Fusing tones of ambient, techno, synth-pop and jazz, it’s impossible to know where each of Yaeji’s turns are going to take you, but that’s the album’s brightest reward. “For Granted” and “I’ll Remember for Me, I’ll Remember for You” are perfect examples of just how good Yaeji is at contemplating genre while remaining melodic, untangled and euphoric. Featuring collaborations with Nourished by Time, Loraine James, K Wata and Enayet, With A Hammer is gorgeous and bountiful in its sonic liberation. Yaeji has no interest in standing still for even a second, and the result is an electronic, experimental and poppy triumph that’ll continue to challenge the zeitgeist far after 2023 concludes. —Matt Mitchell

yeule: softscars

Big and bold and vibrant and inhuman are good descriptors for Singaporean glitch pop singer/songwriter yeule’s Softscars. At 12 tracks that never meander or stall, the project builds upon the masterwork of their 2022 album Glitch Princess. It’s impossible to understate how good Softscars is—as songs like “sulky baby” and the title track are absolutely bonkers, beautiful and hypnotic. And a song like “dazies” proves yeule even has some interests that dip into shoegaze and alt-rock, too. There’s a tangible reclamation of grief and trauma across the record, as yeule slides across octaves and pitches, combing through autotune and digital melodies with palpable and generous grace. The work here is evidence that they are one of our next great rock stars—surpassing the work of their predecessors, like Grimes, with ease. There’s no real other way of saying it: yeule is the past, present and future all rolled into one barrier-obliterating voice. —Matt Mitchell

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