Four writers. Zero consensus. Forty-plus albums that defined indie, post-punk, and everything in between—ranked, argued over, and ready for your queue.
Good morning!
Today we’re taking a quick look at the best records of 2020-2024.
Narrowing down a favorite anything can be tough. It’s much easier to overdeliver and give someone a list of 5 or even 10 top picks. And even that can be fraught. Are these objectively the best, or are they your favorites? Maybe a blend of both? And are you sharing something truly worthwhile — a nudge in the right direction — or have you just given the other person homework?
There’s also a line of thinking that you shouldn’t do these sorts of lists at all — much better to, say, group by genre or list by release date. And to that I say… fair point. But I should be clear here: I love lists — especially when it comes to music. Every music writer is really just three Rob Gordons in a trench coat, and I think (hope?) people like reading them.
If you’re looking for breakdowns on drop tuning, chord changes, or whatever, I’m not your guy, but that’s not usually why people check top 100 or best-of lists anyway. A few are there for the rage bait & hate reads; the rest are there for the recommendations without having to sift through 4000 releases a year.
In other words, they’re trying to avoid a homework assignment.
The first half of the 2020s gave us no shortage of unforgettable albums, from indie and post-punk to genre-crossing experiments. If you’re searching for the best records of the decade so far, consider this your cheat sheet.
For the past couple of years, Sam Colt Steve Goldberg Jami Smith and I have put together our annual favorites. There’s not a lot of overlap in taste—or any other demographic—and that’s what keeps this so fun.
We’ll be doing it again this year, so please keep an eye out! In the interim, we wanted to tee things up by taking a quick look at our faves of the decade so far. A fool’s errand? Maybe, but why not?
Consider it the music writing equivalent of a recap or clip show, only this is the lead-in to 2025’s best-of, and not a “very special” episode of your favorite TV series.
Meet the Contributors
Jami Smith—Author of Songs That Saved Your Life, exploring overlooked queer perspectives in music. Her work has appeared in The Advocate and Out Traveler.
Jami’s List:
- St. Vincent – Pay Your way in Pain (2021)
- Dua Lipa – FutureNostalgia (2020)
- Run the Jewels – RTJ4 (2020)
- Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg (2021)
- Doechii – Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024)
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Cool It Down (2022)
- Janelle Monae – Age of Pleasure (2023)
- Beyonce – Renaissance (2022)
- Brittany Howard – What Now (2024)
- Cimafunk’s El Alimento (2021)
Sam Colt—Recovering copywriter and author of This Is A Newsletter!—a consistently hilarious, biting chronicle of modern life and its indignities.
Sam’s List:
- Alfredo — Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist (2020)
- Promises — Floating Points, Pharaoh Sanders & the London Symphony Orchestra (2021)
- Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You — Big Thief (2022)
- Blue Rev — Alvvays (2022)
- Cave World — Viagra Boys (2022)
- SCARING THE HOES — Danny Brown & JPEGMAFIA (2023)
- 3D Country — Geese (2023)
- “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” — Godspeed You! Black Emperor (2024)
- No Name — Jack White (2024)
- Imaginal Disk — Magdalena Bay (2024)
Steve Goldberg—Writes Earworms and Songloops, weaving personal essays with the songs that lodge themselves in your brain.
Steve’s Picks:
- Bonny Light Horseman — Bonny Light Horseman (2020)
- Fantastic Negrito — Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? (2020)
- Silk Sonic — An Evening with Silk Sonic (2021)
- Arooj Aftab — Vulture Prince (2021)
- Sloan — Steady (2022)
- Weyes Blood — And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (2022)
- Corey Hanson — Western Cum (2023)
- King Gizzard — Petrodragonic Apocalypse (2023)
- Cowboy Sadness — Selected Jambient Works Vol. 1 (2024)
- Storefront Church — Ink and Oil (2024)
My List
- Maggie Rogers — Don’t Forget Me (2024)
- Wussy — Cincinnati, Ohio (2024)
- Sweeping Promises — Good Living Is Coming For You (2023)
- Chemical Brothers — For That Beautiful Feeling (2023)
- New Pornographers — Continue as Guest (2023)
- Spoon — Lucifer on the Sofa (2022)
- Nada Surf — Moon Mirror (2024)
- Destroyer — Have We Met (2020)
- Alvvays — Blue Rev (2022)
- Working Men’s Club — S/T (2020)
2020:
This year started on an auspicious note; I blew out my knee the first week of January, and also managed to fracture my foot in multiple places, because why not? At the time, I assumed that would be the defining event of 2020. Silly me. We went on vacation at the end of the month, my knee held together only by my stubborn desire to sit on a beach, and returned to a world almost unrecognizable. After that, we made the same descent into “online learning” and sourdough as everyone else.
Working Men’s Club’s self-titled debut was a bright spot in a bleak year, and landed with me because its sound harkened back to those late ’80s/early ’90s post-punk and dance records I was binging in my newfound free time. I found Destroyer retroactively, thanks primarily to readers here who never missed a chance to mention Dan Bejar whenever I talked up The New Pornographers. Have We Met is elegant, quirky, and well-built all at once. As good a trifecta as any when looking for a “best of” record. This is still one I play relatively often.
2021:
You may notice that there are no 2021 records on the above list. Given the lag between producing a record and us getting our hands on it, 2020 ran on the fumes of records actually recorded in 2019. The dearth of 2021 releases more accurately reflects what lockdown life looked like—a year of live streams and doing shows via Zoom to survive, not booking studio time. At least that’s my impression, anyway.
That’s not to say there weren’t some killer records like Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee. I’m still #teamPsychopomp, but this is excellent, and “Be Sweet” got the nod for my favorite song of 2021, so there’s that. Ditto, Lily Konigsberg’s Lily We Need To Talk Now, and since this is my newsletter, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a live record by a certain Manchester band.But if you only have enough time/money/whatever for ONE record, and asked me which 2021 release to pick up, it’d be Dry Cleaning’s New Long Leg. The English post-punk band knocked it out of the park with their debut album. The musings/vocals mix well with the layered, dense soundscapes she’s talking over (but not overtaking). Dry Cleaning reminds me a bit of King Missile, except frontwoman Florence Shaw is talking about things like lanyards and helicopters, and not detachable… organs…
2022:
Look, anytime Spoon puts out a record, it is a cause for celebration, and Lucifer on the Sofa delivers. They’ve teased a new record for next year, and there’s a greater-than-zero chance I’ll be yapping about it in next year’s year-end piece.
The year also gave us debuts from The Linda Lindas and Wet Leg. The former channeled every pop-punk record in your cabinet, and with tracks like “Ur Mum,” the latter came across like the Gen Z equivalent of Lily Allen.
The Paranoid Style also gifted us For Executive Meeting, an LP where I gave up trying to find new superlatives and just went with: “This record is just one heckuva good time. Have fun.”
Afghan Whigs dropped one on 9/9 that was a solid 10, and 5-3-8 by Dendrons proved post-punk was alive and well. Picture Wire’s Colin Newman, Joy Division (in a good mood), and High Vis all stuck together making an album during the pandemic — and they’re listening to Pavement for inspiration. The result is first-rate post-punk from America’s Second City.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Cool It Down just missed the cut here. Had there not been a deadline to get this out, it’s possible I’d still be fussing with the lineup, and this would likely’ve been on it. As I noted at the time, it managed to thread the needle, making a record that sounds both “like a Yeah Yeah Yeahs record” and brand new all at once. The performance-art element isn’t as front & center as before, but the edge is as sharp as ever. No easy feat.
The record that pipped it? Alvvays — Blue Rev, where the chords are all in the right spots, and where the bridge on a track like “Belinda Says” is exactly as it needs to be. You can hear vestigial traces of the usual suspects here (Lush, MBV, etc.), but nothing is derivative. Blue Rev takes the best parts of power pop, dream pop, shoegaze, and whatever’s going on in lead singer Molly Rankin’s mind and just makes it work.
2023:
If 2021 was a reawakening, and 2022 was an (almost) return to normal, 2023 felt like when we hit our collective stride again. The last of the “pandemic project” modifiers peeled away, and the good music faucet was opened all the way up.
Drop Nineteens came out of nowhere to give us an incredible record, Seablite gave the shoegaze crowd a lil’ something, and the sad dads got a gift from Jason Isbell, the rare songwriter who can tell a whole story in one verse. The Chemical Brothers got in on the action with For That Beautiful Feeling. Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons still know a thing or two about putting together a record rather than piling a bunch of singles together and calling it good
Good Living Is Coming For You from Lawrence, Kansas-based Sweeping Promises was a revelation. The title sounds like the sort of slogan you’d see on Soviet agitprop posters or hear Peggy Olson come up with in a strategy session for Tupperware. Both are true. Speaking with the duo, frontwoman Lira Mondal described their sound as “Voracious, wild-eyed, grabbing-with-both-hands YOLO energy.” I also saw their sound described as “The B-52s if they never saw the sun.” Both of those are true, too.
Continue As Guest will take a listen or two before it clicks. But the band will win you over, as they invariably do. I often find myself writing, “Just go buy this record!” as a placeholder until I can better articulate my thoughts. Sometimes, I wish I could leave it at that. This is one of those cases.
2024:
Is there some recency bias here? Sure, maybe. But it’s undeniable that last year was chock-full of good records from end to end. Cloud Nothings tried to blow our speakers with Final Summer, and Cola dropped the best Parquet Courts record not made by Parquet Courts. What’s old was new again as J Mascis, Jesus and Mary Chain, and Pearl Jam all dropped new records. Kim Deal, too.
Last year saw Nada Surf gift us Moon Mirror, a rock-solid power pop from one of the most consistent, if not popular (heh), bands of our generation.
Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee garnered almost as much ink for how it was distributed as for how good it was. Any record that gets someone to sit down and listen for two hours without doing anything else is worth considering for any best-of list. Cindy Lee is the stage name of Patrick Flegel. No spoilers, but don’t be surprised if another Flegel shows up on this year’s list.
My fave of last year was Wussy’s Cincinnati, Ohio. I don’t know what it is about this band, but man, they strike a chord in me that few other bands can hit. I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I think better than anyone else, they have helped me “get” what living in the Midwest is like. And the music? Well, it’s an LP with gem after gem just waiting to be discovered.
That’s a wrap! Did we nail it? Miss something obvious? Snub your favorite? Let me know—I’m always ready to be proven wrong (or at least add a few more albums to the listening pile).
Thanks for being here,
KA—
Kevin Sent 
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