Best Songs of 2024

It’s time to cash in on that sweet SEO and release our best songs of 2024. For the first time, our Best Songs list stands separate from our Best Albums, now featuring thirty exclusive tracks to expand your listening horizons. Spanning genre, nationality, and vibe, there’s something for everyone here. Read about our favorite songs of the year and listen along for the ride.

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One of the biggest Deals this holiday season of record rollouts was the anticipated Nobody Loves You More from Pixies bassist and The Breeders frontwoman Kim Deal. Practically a household name within the alt/indie scene, Gordon’s Nobody Loves You More is sort of a catchall for over a decade of solo material and makes a case for one of the most ambitious releases this year. “Crystal Breath” is a yielding march set to the distorted beat of an intrusively busy mind, while also managing to sound upbeat and coastal. – AB

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It was a big year for women named Kim that released solo records and used to play bass and sing for legendary rock bands. On “BYE BYE” Gordon runs through her to-do list and handbag contents over a glitchy, distorted trap beat, further pursuing the hybrid sounds explored on her last album. It seems she was fed up with Playboi Carti’s I AM MUSIC rollout and decided to release it herself. – TM

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Dan Snaith is taking a shot at resuscitating disco after Alcazar… did not do that in 2000. Club indie’s darling returns to Caribou’s tenure sound with this year’s Honey, which optimizes all the highs and lows of being at the discoteque and daydreaming of FIFA menus. “Climbing” does just as it prophesizes, opening with a meltdown sample by duo René & Angela and mixing in glitter until the power cuts off the row of Dance Dance Revolution cabinets at the strip mall arcade. – AB

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Atlanta’s girlpuppy returns for the first time since her 2022 debut album with “Champ” – a punchy rock track echoing Snail Mail and beabadoobee. Becca Harvey boxes her way through a friendship breakup, dancing amidst fuzzy waves of guitar. Lamenting how much shit there’s left to talk before its explosive final chorus, she finds a universal cord to pull on – falling out sucks. – TM

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Detroit is distinguished by its techno scene, Washington D.C. its signature Go-Go music, and in the city of Chicago its house music. Uniquely, Chicago is known for a hyper stylized form of dance music called footwork or juke, which melds house and hip-hop and sets the drum and bass bpm to the resting heart rate of a skunk.

Tracing an influence from early parents of the genre like RP Boo and DJ Rashad, Jlin presents an innovative style that compounds with each release, and with Akoma she advocates a spirit of collaboration. “The Precision of Infinity” is her burgeoning piece with the highly influential composer Philip Glass. The mash is a holy amalgam of electronic-classical bliss, like watching a requiem mass performance on 2x playback. – AB

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Canada’s La Sécurité opened up The Go! Team’s Thunder, Lightning, Strike! anniversary tour this year, bringing their electrifying dance punk to the United States. Admittedly, I tried to skip their set, but got the doors time wildly confused and arrived early for a front row view. I’ve never been more thankful for my inadequacies because they bang. “Detour” is their most recent single and a perfect introduction to their sound; it felt like hearing “Electric Zoo” for the first time. I love this young people’s music. – TM

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Two wizards from Baltimore indie band Creature Consortium take on all the nocturnal naysayers in the industry at once in a handsomely gothic quest. “Vampire Tongues” is the textured collaboration from Tare and Bear that sounds like its attempting to retroactively eat itself while regurgitating creepy reverb. – AB

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Superorganism’s Orono and the guy who’s been singing about the Paul brothers making out form cheese touch. Their debut single opens with a toilet flush and a wishful guitar, layering preppy synth lines and distortion as the narrators work their way through an awkward pool party, joining an exclusive canon of songs that affirm my hatred of summer. – TM

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Shake some rhythm into those middle-aged bones, we’re taking it back to the middle ages with newly discovered footage of America’s very own Fred Astaire. The soundbite of the “Dancer” extraordinaire went face to face (“cheek to cheek?”) with England’s very own combat rock outfit IDLES earlier this year in a swing era clash-off, complete with electrical plugins from LCD Soundsytem. This abrasion of palates is a gurgling lecture on the spirit of dance, and the benefits of stretching regularly. Now, pi⟨r⟩ouette! – AB

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I’ve never been a Drake fan besides More Life, which is probably the weirdest album of his to exclusively listen to. Regardless, I was team Pusha-T in 2018 and team Kendrick Lamar now. “Not Like Us” cleaves Drake and his entourage out of hip-hop entirely, airing out accusations of pedophilia and colonization to paint the Canadian rapper as an exploitative parasite sucking life from Black America. Drake’s response to Kendrick Lamar’s masterclass was to sue Universal Music Group. Yeah… we all know who won the beef. – TM

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Sitting in the theater earlier this year, waiting for trailers to roll, I suddenly recalled why I had recognized the title of the film I was about to see. A Yahoo ad, informing me that the Phoebe Bridgers / Snail Mail beef was officially over, claimed the reconcilers were set to co-star alongside Limp Bizkit’s frontman Fred Durst in a new A24 film titled I Saw the T.V. Glow.

Standard stuff; would probably go see it; forgot about it that night. Three years, and one stacked soundtrack, later and suffice to say Yahoo ads do not prepare you for filmic experiences such as. I was, however, prepared to hear Caroline Polachek’s “Starburned and Unkissed” steal away with a scene. – AB

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Mercury prize winning English Teacher, another Speedy Wunderground plant, is the ultimate synthesis of Brexit post-punk and a renewed interest in dream pop. Their breakout song features a danceable guitar riff that blurs away into an ethereal, shoegaze-y chorus. Singer Lily Fontaine (of questioning relation to D.C.) personifies the stones beneath her as local celebrities of the English countryside; how massive they feel before stepping on the concrete of the city. – TM

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Synth and glitz cover this masquerading portrait of the artist as a young woman. “I Forget (I’m So Young)” is the dance number from Austrian musician Sofie Royer’s Young-Girl Forever, a record entrapping the existential bubbling of growing up and out of style in a modern age. With one line, “Young forever but I’m also dying,” Royer curtsies to that other song about youth and takes her own irony out for a twirl around the floor. – AB

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The US committed genocide, a Republican Presidential Nominee won the popular vote, and Jack White released good music: what is it, 2004? Jack White’s No Name is a welcome return to the Detroit rocker’s roots, and “That’s How I’m Feeling” sounds like a prime White Stripes hit from their early 2000s garage rock regime. If only it could pay for his Trump lawsuit.  – TM

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The understated lyricist and penner of 2019’s oddly lovely Watch This Liquid Pour Itself, Norwegian / New Jerseyan musician “Okay” Kaya Wilkins pokes and prods more gray matter into shape on “Check Your Face.” On a slow burn trajectory, Kaya tries to coerce her mind on fire into bed with common sense. Hapless and resigned to the task of matchmaker for an incongruous couple, she listens to the awkward flirting. “The mirror on the wall says you’ve seen better days,” yeah, well “if you’re happy and you know it, better check your face.” – AB

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Hyperdrama is packed with hit dance music collaborations with the likes of Tame Impala, Thundercat, and more. But the most catchy of the bunch is with the psychedelic twin duo of The Flints – “Mannequin Love” captures everything great about these electronic giants and their masterful run of French touch classics. – TM

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Disillusionment in career musicians could start right out the gate, or, in the case of U.K. rock band Yard Act, once they’ve “made it.” Its sinking in, that the “Dream Job” is not a palpable point on the career dart board but instead a portrait drawing of an ideal, a trick of the eye distracting from a reality that, in their (brief) case, looks like an exploitative and domineering culture within the popular music industry.

“Welcome to your dream job,” isn’t it everything you ever wanted? Their catchy jape is the epitome of “this is fine” imagery and maybe a moment of entrapping realization, of looking around and wondering “is this it?” – AB

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Panda Bear enlists the enigmatic Cindy Lee on the soon-to-be closing track of his upcoming record Sinister Grift – a rhythmic tune that springs to life with perfect tone from a Diamond Jubilee-esque guitar solo. This song is like “Girl, so confusing featuring lorde” for indie listeners from Western Maryland (say that again…). – TM

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Fearless Movement, the latest expressive installment in L.A. saxophonist Kamasi Washington’s saga, concludes with the start of something, or perhaps the promise of more to come.

“Prologue,” the record’s final track, is a multi-headed movement exploding with emotion and Washington’s stylistic “epic” sound directing a 10-part band of contemporary jazz giants and friends in the spirit of free jazz. Embarking upon an exploration into the ways sound can move people, this piece encapsulates that curiosity with fierceness and invites the listener to surrender to the music. – AB

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The opening chords of Method Actor’s lead single at first sound like an acoustic “Cherub Rock” until some real Siamese Dream shoegaze explodes out of the chorus. This is one of her loudest songs yet, coming far from those initial jazzy EPs featuring “Baby Luv” and “Keep On Calling.” I remember listening to those over some Runk dining hall soft serve. Bad times… – TM

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The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess was at the height of virality, six months following its release. The critically received record by Missouri pop star Chappell Roan was delayed on its initial rise to super graphic ultra modern commercial success, but by the New Year was incipient of algorithmic mega stardom. To appease audiences in this modern pop renaissance the performer releases “Good Luck, Babe!” in April 2024, and the royal courts loved it. “Good Luck, Babe!” is THE cliché, and an excellent one at that. – AB

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As an amateur horologist, I refuse to wear a smartwatch on principle, but MJ Lenderman makes a compelling case. The smartwatch reminds us how much we’re alone, how little we’ve made of our lives. All distilled to a gadget for our wrist that can do everything and nothing. At least it can direct me to the Himbo Dome. – TM

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The majesty of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons is expressed in her commandment of a dynamic and complete range of emotion, often barely contained and just over a whisper. The trip-hop hush-hush is in direct contrast to this corporeal ode on living out single “moments” in the shadow of perpetual death.

Taken from Lives Outgrown, her first solo release since 2002, “Floating on a Moment” is a string/keys/brass tincture of sweet and bitter reminders of life and death, that “all we have is here and now / all going to nowhere.” – AB

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The first three notes of “NISSAN ALTIMA” are like the Winter Soldier activation code, but instead of transforming you into a war machine to battle the enemies of communism, it makes you eat hot chip, be bisexual, and lie. I’ll leave you with one bar to prove Doechii is the real deal: “Take a trip out of Japan and I tsunami her vagina.” – TM

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Preceding the release of BRAT, rumors surrounding the ambiguously titled track “Girl so confusing” implicate New Zealand pop icon Lorde as the song’s Jane Doe. To confront these rumors Charli xcx releases a remix with, indeed, Lorde herself that pits the two pop superstar’s unspoken insecurities against one another and eventually reaches a mutual affirmation; it’s just “so confusing sometimes to be a girl.”

Then, in a cultural coup during her Madison Square Garden show, Charli brought Lorde out on stage for the live debut of the remix. “One day we might make some music, the internet would go crazy.” They couldn’t have been more right. – AB

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Artists like Faye Webster and mk.gee established a vibes-based indie economy in 2024. Lyrics and song structure were an afterthought when you had a cool guitar tone and chill ambiance. Faye Webster pushes that theory to its limit on “Wanna Quit All The Time”- a moody reflection on anxiety and attention. Spacy chords and steel guitar croon around her musings, fluttering above muted drums. 

The vibes max out as the song goes silent for fifteen seconds at the three minute mark before pulling back into a noodly guitar solo. I don’t endorse fade-outs at the end of songs, but right in the middle is a different story. – TM

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If you give Louis Cole an orchestra, he’ll want some jazz to go with it. Luckily for Cole, jazz is a term the musicians at the Metropole Orkest know very well.

“Cruisin’ for P” gets right down to tacks with a brass fanfare and xylophonic solo before bowing to a drum kit-bound Cole and microphone. Supported by Sam Wilkes on standup bass, the rhythm is set to jazzy. “I’m my own bitch,” Cole chirps in his distinct murmur. Chewing on the human spirit and pining for innate uniqueness, he keeps a steady pace but switches his gaze.

“Is it love” is echoed by a six-part female choir, which includes fellow KNOWER co-founder Genevieve Artadi, and crests octaves while the skeleton-clad brass section harmonize their cushioning melody. “It don’t matter” and “love” persist in his mind to the climatic result and harpist finale. nothing was written and arranged by Cole for a symphony orchestra and recorded with Metropole Orkest under the conduction of Jules Buckley. – AB

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The trio of Adrianne Lenker, Nick Hakim, and Josefin Runsteen sat quietly on The Anthem’s stage, dwarfed against the faux curtains and their soft light. Together, they began flapping their lips, emitting a gentle buzz and inspiring a few mimics from the crowd. That hum built and built, its reverberations a gentle cloud hanging over the audience. Lenker paused, then strummed the opening notes of “No Machine.”

The hum persists through the rest of the song as she sings about her co-dependent love, looking into her lover and seeing through them, flowing into an ocean as a solitary river. It’s one of the simplest songs from Bright Future, and perhaps that’s why it hits the hardest. – TM

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Here in the Pitch is a record that feels like summer’s last warm breeze; but if that sounds sentimental it is a cautionary feeling for a chillier, more indifferent wind comes snapping at the heels of each track: time. Through no degree of bundling can it be kept from settling on our bones, but it may be kept from chilling us so deeply.

On “World on a String” Jessica Pratt warms the pages of that timeworn story by romancing change in its naked, worldly form. Mirrored verses like “luster for the tide” and “[wanting] to be the sunlight” attract the listener to consistent signs of daily change which, when held up against the inconsistencies of temporal changes in daily lives, can affirm in a comforting way.

In her distinct, antiquated hum Pratt ends the track’s first verse with a lighthearted quip: “Don’t suppose the world could spin apart.” Maybe, what can’t happen? There’s an oddly grounding constancy in unpredictability, and with our mirror as the seasons we might begin to grow more secure in our impressions of change; like having “the world on a string.” – AB

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In the last year, marketing interns and chronically online tiktok users invented indie sleaze – a derivative mesh of aesthetic and sound that vaguely invokes a music scene that didn’t exist made up of artists with zero creative crossover. Charli XCX meets Marie Antoinette’s soundtrack meets English millennials who voted for Brexit to bring Doc Martens production back home. 

In their effort to prod nostalgia and re-ignite interest in Dior-era Hedi Slimane, artists like The Dare saw an immense surge of interest online, combining the worst parts of 2000s indie with electronic dance and post-hyperpop production. Where The Dare lacks in musical talent, sex appeal, and fashion sense, The Hellp delivers on their 2024 record LL. Its lead single “Caustic” is a raucous and pulsing track, with an instantly captivating hook and one of their best instrumental productions to date. The drone falls out on each, “cut throat criminal,” and picks back up with a nasty synth line to drive through the rest of the chorus. Its a song about addiction, and they managed to make it addictive as well.

The electronic duo has spent nearly a decade honing their sound and building their ethos, and it seems to have paid off. At their show in DC, I saw skinny jeans on a person younger than me for the first time since high school. Maybe indie sleaze is real. – TM

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Hope you found a new favorite song to round out the year. Onwards to 2025.