In this segment, we round up the best albums released each month. From Olivia Rodrigo to Beth Orton, here are, in alphabetical order, the best albums of June 2026.
Beth Orton, The Ground Above
Beth Orton’s last album, Weather Alive, had a revelatory air to it, meditative in nature but nebulous in its rich sonics, striving for a coherent mood more than any set of answers. The Ground Above is naturally framed as the wakeful and, well, grounded follow-up, situated at least one level above the subconscious. Orton still treasures liminality – “I’ve been waiting at the edge of a dream/ To jump and fly and find my beautiful wings,” she sings at one point. The Ground Above is about coming alive to each day with a wondrous sense of alertness, neither unweathered nor unkind to the dirt below. Read the full review.
Death Cab for Cutie, I Built a Tower
I Built You a Tower doesn’t ride purely on nostalgia, but Ben Gibbard and company were certainly energized by the anniversary tour celebrating Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism and the Postal Service’s Give Up in 2023. Which is a very unemotional way to assume what it must have felt like to be on the road revisiting at least one seminal breakup album at the height of a new separation, if one with drastically different consequences at this stage of adulthood. Working with producer John Congleton, who proved more than capable of balancing the band’s gentle and aggressive sides on 2022’s Asphalt Meadows, Gibbard copes by building another world of sorrow that simultaneously breaks away from old habits – musical and otherwise. Read the full review.
Kelsey Lu, So Help Me God
Though Kelsey Lu has kept busy since 2019’s Blood, returning to their musical identity feels like a process of homecoming. After scoring award-winning films, working across galleries, and collaborating with musicians ranging from Beverly Glenn-Copeland to Jamie xx, Lu discovered that going back to songwriting meant having to sit with uncertainty, slowness, and a lack of resolution. “While many things can serve as beautiful guides,” they have said, “I believe that, at our core, we are made from beauty and love. Being able to return to that source feels deeply important, especially now.” Those qualities spill out of So Help Me God with painstaking precision, but even as a classically trained cellist (and therefore perfectionist), Lu is forced to resist giving them any kind of linear structure, instead gliding from “burning desire” to “volcanic gaseous tremblings” with a distinctly emotional logic. Read the full review.
Olivia Rodrigo, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love
“It’s really poppy, but it doesn’t compare melodically to the stuff that Olivia does, but it’s my idea of Cure Pop,” Robert Smith said while teasing the next Cure album. “It’s probably 20 BPM slower than anything she does.” Slower than ‘honeybee’? Slower than ‘less’? Did he even receive an advance of the 23-year-old’s latest album before going into the studio to sing ‘what’s wrong with me’? If the Cure’s new album is sadder than ‘the cure’, I’m worried. Of course, this is to say that anyone’s idea of Olivia Rodrigo Pop is fallible, as she anchors in a range of influences that have always included the likes of the Cure and Hole – now also triangulated with Devo, Weyes Blood, and more – while stretching them in subtly unexpected ways. On you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, she charts a romance from its incandescent beginnings to its very last flicker, showcasing new strengths while throwing herself at the mercy of forces beyond her control. The fact that it’s bittersweet isn’t surprising; the execution just keeps getting better. Read the full review.
Rosa Walton, Tell Me It’s a Dream
A lighthearted magnetism permeates Tell Me It’s a Dream, the debut solo album from Let’s Eat Grandma’s Rosa Walton, which was far from a solitary effort: working with producer and longtime collaborator David Wrench, as well as a band including guitarist John Victor, bassist Kam Khan, and drummer Elena Costa, Walton crafted a lean, guitar-forward record that still reaches some ethereal places. “I said stop decorating the meaning,” she sings on ‘Heart to Heartbreak’, “Some things really are as they are.” Doesn’t mean they can’t be pretty exquisite. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Rosa Walton.
Sari Lightman, The Way I Saw You
Produced by Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy, Sari Lightman‘s debut solo effort was recorded with an ensemble that only helps heighten the songs’ conversational intimacy. While maintaining a voyeuristic approach to songwriting, they loosen the stranglehold of reality by imagining dialogues between contemporary writers, female mystics, and, of course, sisters, joining their voices like a Greek chorus. For all its preponderance of characters, it’s nothing if not an internal reckoning: “The road inside me folds and I’m warm again,” Lightman sings on the final track, ‘Soon Came the Evening’. Like a sunset, you can feel the light’s affection comforting you a little while after the record’s over. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Sari Lightman.
Tasha, You Are Spring!
Tasha talks about being inspired by looking at the sun out the window while crafting most of You Are Spring! the same way she found comfort, half a decade ago, in “sitting alone in my room with the radiators kicking.” But the point of Tasha’s work is never linear progression, changing while moving from one place to the next, so much as the beauty orchestrating and constantly rearranging itself in between; past selves seeping through the present; via as home. “There’s life to be found now,” she sings, echoing Gwendolyn Brooks’s foundational poem ‘To the Young Who Want to Die’ while harmonizing with Brooklyn’s L’Rain and Chicago’s Jamila Woods. Halfway through beloved cities, but most of all: right here. Read our inspirations interview with Tasha.
Zoh Amba, Eyes Full
Earlier this year, Zoh Amba joined Iggy Pop on saxophone at Coachella, a somewhat surprising move following the news that they would be switching to guitar and songwriting for Eyes Full, their Matador debut. The blazing, heavenly abrasion of the musician’s instrumental work is anything but lost on the self-produced record, which features Jim White on drums, Kevin Hyland on guitar, and a number of associates at Ashevile’s Drop of Sun, where it took shape. The title might as well be an inversion of the famous Shakespeare sonnet, putting it in alignment with Amba’s past work: The lover’s eyes are everything like the sun. Don’t be afraid to stare into them, Amba seems to implore.
