Croatia is a country that blends natural beauty, historical treasures, and cultural richness into a captivating experience for every traveler. While its stunning beaches and iconic cities like Dubrovnik and Split often dominate travel itineraries, Croatia offers countless opportunities to venture off the beaten path and discover unique experiences. From hidden islands to ancient ruins, there’s something for everyone seeking an adventure away from the crowds.
Exploring Hidden Islands and Secluded Beaches
Croatia’s coastline is dotted with over 1,000 islands, each with its own charm and character. While popular spots like Hvar and Brač attract significant attention, lesser-known islands offer solitude and untouched beauty. Vis, one of the farthest islands from the mainland, is a haven for those seeking tranquility. Its unspoiled beaches, such as Stiniva Cove, and quiet villages provide a refreshing escape from the bustling tourist hubs.
The best way to access these hidden gems is by sailing. Opting to charter a yacht in Croatia allows you to explore the Adriatic Sea at your own pace, discovering secluded beaches and coves inaccessible by land. This personalized approach to travel offers a unique perspective on Croatia’s coastal wonders, combining adventure with serene moments in nature.
Discovering Croatia’s Underground Wonders
Beneath Croatia’s surface lies a world of caves and caverns that are as mesmerizing as its coastal landscapes. The Blue Cave on Biševo Island is a must-see natural phenomenon, where sunlight creates an ethereal blue glow inside the cave’s walls. For those seeking an underground adventure, Vranjača Cave near Split offers guided tours through chambers filled with stalactites and stalagmites.
These subterranean wonders showcase a side of Croatia often overlooked by travelers. Exploring these caves provides not only a connection to the country’s geological history but also a sense of awe at nature’s artistry.
Tasting Local Flavors in Rural Villages
Croatia’s culinary scene is a blend of Mediterranean and Central European influences, and the best way to experience its authentic flavors is by venturing into its rural villages. The Istrian Peninsula, often referred to as the “Tuscany of Croatia,” is renowned for its truffles, olive oil, and wine. Visiting a local farm or family-run estate allows you to savor these delicacies while learning about traditional methods of production.
In the Dalmatian hinterland, the village of Imotski offers unique dishes such as “peka,” a slow-cooked meal prepared under an iron bell, paired with locally made wine. These culinary journeys provide not only unforgettable tastes but also a deeper understanding of Croatia’s cultural heritage.
Immersing Yourself in Croatia’s Lesser-Known Historical Sites
While Dubrovnik’s medieval walls are a highlight for many, Croatia is home to numerous historical sites that often go unnoticed. The town of Šibenik boasts St. James Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a quieter atmosphere compared to other tourist-heavy destinations. Inland, the medieval fortress of Knin offers breathtaking views and a glimpse into Croatia’s past.
For a truly off-the-beaten-path experience, explore the abandoned village of Humac on the island of Hvar. This archaeological site, surrounded by lavender fields, provides a serene and hauntingly beautiful setting for history enthusiasts.
Experiencing the Natural Beauty of National Parks
While Plitvice Lakes National Park is one of Croatia’s most famous attractions, other parks like Krka and Paklenica offer equally stunning experiences with fewer crowds. Krka National Park is known for its cascading waterfalls and opportunities for swimming in crystal-clear pools, while Paklenica is a paradise for hikers and rock climbers, featuring dramatic canyons and rugged terrain.
In the far north, Risnjak National Park is a hidden treasure, offering pristine forests, diverse wildlife, and a chance to connect with nature in complete solitude. Exploring these parks showcases the incredible diversity of Croatia’s landscapes.
Participating in Local Festivals and Traditions
Croatia’s vibrant cultural scene comes alive through its local festivals and traditions, many of which are rooted in centuries-old customs. The Alka tournament in Sinj, a UNESCO-protected event, celebrates the town’s victory over Ottoman invaders with a horseback jousting competition. In the town of Korčula, the Moreška sword dance reenacts ancient battles in a dramatic and colorful performance.
Attending these events offers a unique window into Croatia’s rich history and cultural identity. The warmth and hospitality of the locals enhance these experiences, making them unforgettable highlights of any trip.
Croatia is a destination that rewards those who are willing to explore beyond its well-known attractions. From hidden islands and underground caves to culinary adventures and local festivals, the country offers countless opportunities for unique and enriching experiences. Whether you choose to charter yachts to discover secluded beaches or immerse yourself in the traditions of rural villages, venturing off the beaten path reveals the true essence of this remarkable country.
By taking the time to uncover these hidden treasures, you’ll not only avoid the crowds but also create memories that will last a lifetime. Croatia’s blend of natural beauty, history, and culture ensures that every traveler can find their own unique adventure.
Kamasi Washington was the musical guest on last night’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, performing ‘Lesanu’, the opening track from his latest album Fearless Movement. The jazz luminary’s band featured his father Rickey Washington on flute, Ryan Porter on trombone, Brandon Coleman and Cameron Graves on keys and piano, Tony Austin and Mike Mitchell on drums, Miles Mosley on bass, Patrice Quinn on vocals, and DJ Battlecat. They were joined onstage by a traditional Ethiopian dance group. Watch it happen below.
Washington recently co-produced two tracks from Kendrick Lamar’s latest album GNX, ‘tv off’ and ‘luther’. He also got a shoutout on the rapper’s No. 1 hit ‘squabble up’.
Fred again.. has teamed up with Angie McMahon for a new song, ‘light dark light’. The producer first sampled McMahon on 2021’s ‘Angie (I’ve Been Lost)’, and the new track reimagines McMahon’s ‘Making It Through’. Today, Fred again.. has also shared ‘little mystery, which reinterprets John Martyn’s ‘Sweet Little Mastery’. Take a listen below.
Grouped together as two more days, the new songs form the closing chapter of Fred again..’s latest LP ten days. “(little mystery).. sorta started the 10 days chapter,” the producer wrote on Instagram. “so it felt right to me that this is the last song i put out from that chapter.”
Saint Etienne have returned with their twelfth studio album, The Night, via Heavenly Recordings. The British trio produced the follow-up to 2021’s I’ve Been Trying To Tell You in collaboration with composer and producer Augustin Bousfield. “It was great to all be in the same studio together again up at Gus’ in Bradford,” Pete Wiggs said in a statement. “We realized that it had been several years since we’d actually done that, sprawling out on the carpet, mugs of coffee in hand, sheets of lyrics and half ideas for titles lying around us. We wanted to continue the mellow and spacey mood of the last album, perhaps even double down on it, but it’s a very different album, not based on samples; Songs, moods and spoken pieces drift in and out whilst rain pours down outside. It’s the kind of record I like to listen to in the dark or with my eyes closed.”
Röyksopp have surprise-released a new album, Nebulous Nights (An Ambient Excursion Into Profound Mysteries). Recorded live, it serves as an ambient reinterpretation of their 30-track LP Profound Mysteries. “Outside the pure listening pleasure, Nebulous Nights seeks to underline the importance of critical thinking and curious pondering,” the Norwegian duo said in a statement. “To foster a mindset that allows for exploration and personal growth, by not limiting one’s imagination and inquiry to a particular worldview or framework. Encapsulated succinctly in this quote by Albert Einstein: ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. To whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.’”
Roc Marciano and the Alchemist have joined forces for a new collaborative album, The Skeleton Key. The follow-up to 2022’s The Elephant Man’s Bones was preceded by the single ‘Chopstick’, which was accompanied by a music video. The 10-song effort features no guest features or production.“Me & Alchemist, we the gatekeepers, Key Makers,” Marciano remarked in press materials, “your shit don’t shake unless we sanction it.”
Damon McMahon is putting an end to his Amen Dunes project with Death Jokes II, a remix album featuring stripped-back versions of songs from his last album, Death Jokes. “This is the last chapter of the final volume,” McMahon explained in a press release. “Goodbye, I’ve barely said a word to you, but it’s always like that at parties — we never really see each other, we never say the things we should like to; in fact it’s the same everywhere in this life. Let’s hope that when we are dead things will be better arranged.”
Having scored a viral hit early this year with ‘Get In With Me’, Florida rapper Bossman Dlow has dropped his debut studio album, Dlow Curry. The 23-song project boasts guest spots from Ice Spice, Lil Baby, French Montana, Glorilla, Babyface Ray, and NoCap. It follows his 2024 mixtape Mr Beat The Road as well as collaborations with the likes of Lil Baby and Ciara.
Fabiano do Nascimento is a Brazilian guitarist who has gained popularity in Japan; Shin Sasakubo is a guitarist from Chichibu, Japan. Today, they’ve issued a new album titled Harmônicos, which they recorded during a three-day period four days after playing their first concert together in the country. “Sharing the same space and time, the two guitarists, with their different styles and origins, explored sounds, let them resonate and repel, and engaged in a dialogue and exchange of ideas that shaped this music,” the LP’s Bandcamp description reads.
Other albums out today:
Snoop Dogg, Missionary; YhapoJJ, No Ceilings; Mario, Glad You Came; Daniel Blumberg, The Brutalist (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack).
Julien Baker and Torres have released their new song, ‘Sugar in the Tank’, which they debuted on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday night. Listen to it below.
Baker and Torres also played the track at their first-ever live show as a duo at NYC’s Mercury Lounge the next night. They’re set to perform a number of festivals together next year. Announcing the shows last month, both artists posted Instagram stories promising “more soon.”
2024 has been an eventful year not just for music, but for albums in particular. Some of the best the year had to offer will be remembered as events more than just compelling collections of songs: the pop album that “invented” a color and defined a season, a two-hour epic only available on YouTube that became an indie phenomenon, a surprise-drop from a rapper riding off the success of possibly the biggest diss track of all time – all inviting enough discourse to mess with how much you actually enjoyed the music. Ranking albums might be difficult and even absurd, but these lists are a convenient way of cataloging the enjoyment, comfort, and company so many of them offer every year. These albums surprised us, sparked conversation, stuck around, and resonated deeply. Here are the 50 best albums of 2024.
Fine’s music doesn’t feel timeless so much as lost in time. She writes about days that wisp by and drown you along with them, writing as if it’s the only way to get a grasp on reality. “Oh boy,” she exclaims in a daze at one point, “I still remember the heart becoming you and me.” This you and me never feels tied to particulars – it’s always something, somewhere, sometimes in these lyrics – yet the songs are so textured and delicate that you can feel the air they’re breathing, old yet captured straight from the present moment. The word Fine uses, halfway through her entrancing debut album Rocky Top Ballads, is “ageless,” which is a broad feeling as much as the promise of a romantic escape: “Would you get lost with me, my love?” Read the full review.
“This is supposed to be fun,” Eva Hendricks recalls her brother saying during the making of Charly Bliss‘ 2019 record Young Enough. “Fun,” guitarist Spencer Fox notes in press materials, is the Brooklyn band’s “natural state.” But for a particularly intense period in their lives, it was a state they had trouble accessing. Forever is catchy and crushing and, yes, deliriously fun, but it’s also an emotional rollercoaster, careening through the head-spinning euphoria of infatuation (‘Easy to Love You’), the double-edged sword of nostalgia (‘Nineteen’), new and old friendships (‘In Your Bed’, ‘Waiting for You’), and career jadedness teetering on self-deprecation. “How do you do it?” Hendricks sings about handling, well, all of it. “You get through it, and then you do it again.” Read our inspirations interview with Charly Bliss.
48. Chelsea Wolfe, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
The title of Chelsea Wolfe‘s new album might point to the continuation of a infinite cycle, but it also marks what the artist has called a “rebirth.” Though once again cloaked in a storm of noise, sound effects, and electronics, Wolfe’s music comes across as a meditative practice rather than an effort to chart an enigmatic and fantastical journey around the self. Rather than another resetting of musical boundaries or a simple regression to older, sludgier sounds, its aim is the reconciliation of “darkness and cosiness,” in her words, stepping toward the light in the converging paths of self-actualization and undoing. She’s now found ways to separate the brooding, gothic nature of her past work from the perpetuity of toil and unrest, leading to her most spectrally cathartic and euphoric album to date. Read the full review.
Kali Uchis has said her first label didn’t give Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞, her previous Spanish-language LP, the proper promotional push. But after the success of ‘Telepatía’, which became her biggest hit yet, there had to be more support behind Uchis’ multi-faceted approach. But Orquídeas, named after the national flower of Colombia,also happens to be an overall stronger album than Sin Miedo, bolder and more dynamic in its embrace of different styles. She seeks not just to combine genres but, in her words, “re-define the way we look at Latinas in music,” and her take on traditional Latin styles like bolero and dembow are not only refreshing but integrated as fluidly as the way she switches between English and Spanish – seamless while also punctuating her lyrical shifts and nuances. Read the full review.
Nandi Rose made her latest Half Waif record in the midst, or the edges, of immense personal turmoil: she found out she was pregnant in the summer of 2021, then endured a miscarriage that December, followed by months of medical complications. Working with co-producer Zubin Hensler, she hangs onto the music to capture the cosmic tide of anticipation, the magnitude of hurt and exhaustion, the hunger for a road ahead, the sounds of rejoicing in beauty and community, all swirling into one. It’s the kind of album we tend to call an emotional triumph, but it’s also a marvel of attention: to Rose’s immediate surroundings, to her stream of consciousness, to the particular cadence and melodic potential of words, to the textures and colour in music and beyond. It’s in this transformative wavelength Rose hopes we can all meet: feet firm on the ground, head up to taste the sky, moving on. Read our inspirations interview with Half Waif.
Though steeped in abstraction, there is a stark physicality to Julia Holter’s Something in the Room She Moves, which stands as one of the most sensual and somatic works in her career. While the music glides in different directions, she never strays from the central goal of “evoking the body’s internal sound world.” Whether breezy, dizzying, soothing, or bombastic, Holter’s output has always been immersive, and her latest is, too; yet she also eliminates any distance from the people, spaces, and ideas with which she interacts. “In the past my records were more focused on the past or the future, about love from afar, as maybe more of an ethereal thing,” Holter remarked in an interview. But Something in the Room sees the present as an endless stream – of days and nights, of unresolved mysteries, of love and grief entwined – and keeps its hands outstretched for everything that passes through it. Read the full review.
Crumb’s third album, AMAMA, is no less hypnotic and disorienting than the New York band’s previous material, but it longs to keep its feet on the ground. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Lila Ramani, keyboardist and saxophonist Bri Aronow, bassist Jesse Brotter, and drummer Jonathan Gilad remain wandering experimentalists, and the new record – produced in Los Angeles alongside Johnscott Sanford and Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado – hones that quality by restlessly locking into a groove and playfully straying away from it. But, abstract as it still is, Ramani’s songwriting is also tenderly introspective and emotional, threading together signifiers of her upbringing with memories from the band’s early touring days. But through these trips, down beyond what we might reasonably call memory lane, Crumb wake to a more solid and present understanding of home. Read our inspirations interview with Crumb.
Katy Kirby‘s debut album, 2021’s Cool Dry Place, was full of clever turns of phrase, tender melodies, and hummable choruses that made it feel both genuine and instantly inviting. But what stuck with you long after its 30-minute runtime was the way it treasured human connection in different forms; Kirby’s natural tendency to home in and pick apart the little details made her songs feel special and effortlessly intertwined, even if they were written over long stretches of time. On Blue Raspberry, her sophomore effort and first for ANTI-, Kirby is even more intentional in fleshing out and untangling the similarities and contradictions between her songs – and the people in them. Taking inspiration from albums like Andy Shauf’s The Party and Lomelda’s Hannah, it huddles moments of intimacy that are beautiful, yes, but also strangely playful, ominous, and crystallizing. Read our track-by-track interview with Katy Kirby.
42. Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Past Is Still Alive
Gathering guests that include Meg Duffy, Anjimile, SG Goodman, Phil and Brad Cook, and Conor Oberst, The Past Is Still Alive finds Hurray for the Riff Raff returning to the folk roots of the project following 2022’s synthier Life on Earth. Both musically and lyrically, the past is a subject that Alynda Segarra rumbles and surges through, regarding fellow outsiders with the gentle wisdom she’s acquired over time. Rather than being didactic, though, Segarra reminds us The Past Is Still Alive only because they keep track of it: it feels like we’re strapped into the present even as they recount memories of youth and escape, as if the act of remembering itself is a matter of survival and solidarity – especially when the world is always seemingly beginning to end. “Some things take time, I know they do,” Segarra sings on ‘Buffalo’, but they’re not just waiting; to take time, they suggest, is to find some kind of comfort and reassurance.
Merce Lemon admits she didn’t learn to play a chord on guitar until she was 17, when she moved to Seattle to live with her uncle for a few years. The decision was partly a response to losing her best friend when she was 15, a subject Lemon explores with bracing intimacy on ‘Backyard Lover’, a highlight from her spectacular new LP Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild. Leaning more firmly on alt-country than any of her previous releases, the record is alternately, and often simultaneously, warm and wild, raw and rapturous, lonely and open-hearted. Lemon’s songs are uniquely capable of squaring hardened emotion with gentle curiosity – toward the natural world, which is to say, the wonder of staying alive – making aimlessness sound beautiful, and home a thing like heaven. Read our Artist Spotligh interview with Merce Lemon.
One of the most surprising moments on Wild Pink‘s 2022 effort ILYSM was ‘Sucking on the Birdshot’, its avalanche of sludgy, distorted guitars sounding all the more dissonant on a record of profound tenderness and intimacy. Frontman John Ross finished writing the album after being diagnosed with cancer, and having since recovered, the focus of his songs seems to be “moving on,” as he sings on the title track of its follow-up, “like the cold wind blows/ Like a train in the snow.” It should come as no surprise, then, that an experimental outlier on ILYSM ends up informing the primary mode of Dulling the Horns, at least when it comes to the guitars, which sound remarkably blown-out, massive, and crunchy. There’s an element of strain, of towering through bad weather, in the way a baritone guitar drudges the songs forward; Ross makes them sparkle regardless. Read the full review.
The transition from Chat Pile‘s God’s Country to Cool World is partly, as the album titles suggest, a matter of scope. While the Oklahoma City band’s 2022 debut God’s Country tore into the cruel horrors specific (but not unique) to American territory, its follow-up finds them widening their gaze, “with thoughts,” according to vocalist Raygun Busch, “specifically about disasters abroad, at home, and how they affect one another.” If only they were just thoughts. The profusion of violence, death, and suffering – at times unspecified and often unimaginable, the stuff of nightmares, but always harrowingly, inescapably real – is not merely a thematic concern. It feels elemental. Busch makes no attempt at an argument, and his bandmates offer no catharsis in its absence. To deliver anything but a hopeless and uncompromising vision of reality would be to ignore everything that’s in front of us; it would mean to conform, and Chat Pile have no interest in that. Read the full review.
Mabe Fratti understands improvisation as part of human nature, a conduit to our chaotic inner lives. As much as it burrows reflexively inwards, her music exists and arises as a product of deliberation and communication – on a purely technical level, her latest album, Sentir que no sabes, was built around conversations with her partner and Titanic bandmate Hector Tosta (aka I. La Católica), which would last “until things became inevitable.” Through it, the boundaries of the mind and its surroundings become elastic, but rather than creating a gap between the artist and the listener, Fratti’s fertile imagination acts as the bridge. The results are raw, startling, and liberating. Read the full review.
Hovvdy‘s self-titled album sees them continuing their collaboration with producer Andrew Sarlo and multi-instrumentalist Ben Littlejohn, who worked with the duo on 2021’s True Love and 2022’s billboard for my feelings EP. This time, all four were present for each session, giving Charlie Martin and Will Taylor the space to hone their collaborative craft while finding ways to honour their lo-fi origins. The result is a 19-track double LP of sprawling intimacy, one that allows big choruses to jump out and quiet moments to linger longer than you might expect. It’s a gorgeous record about the passage of time that keeps you hooked, ensuring no amount you spend with it feels wasted. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Hovvdy.
Written, recorded, and produced by Nate Amos (of Water from Your Eyes and My Idea) in the summer of 2022, This Is Lorelei‘s debut proper is sneakily earnest and playful at the same time, committing to the bit without veering into cliché. Prioritizing pure melody, it’s a collection of songs as shiny and gorgeous as it is disorienting; but unlike Amos’ experiments with Water From Your Eyes, the wry humour and chaos aren’t contained in the music so much as his lyricism, whose stream-of-consciousness sincerity is affecting as much as it can throw you off guard. But even when he shifts between perspectives and laces his voice in AutoTune for the sake of the song, the album’s romanticism and emotional pathos feel earned, precisely because of the funny, quotable ways Amos finds to present them. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with This Is Lorelei.
Frog in Boiling Water lifts its title from the “Boiling Frog” in Daniel Quinn’s 1996 novel The Story of B. The premise is well-known and self-evident – if you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will instinctively jump out; but if you place it into lukewarm water and gradually raise the temperature, it will be lulled into comfort and boil to death. The results are neither entirely bleak nor hopeful, and Frog is less of an explicitly political album than a politically outward-facing one, following a series of albums centered around addiction and mental illness. As much it curdles with anxiety and existential dread, the record is alternately haunting, soothing, sour, and enthralling, a culmination of DIIV’s singular sound after their attempt to make a “proper” shoegaze album with 2019’s Deceiver. Read our inspirations interview with DIIV.
In contrast to its predecessor, Chloë and the Next 20th Century, the latest from Josh Tillman feels extremely aware of itself, even if as a writer he’s still struggling to find a way out or towards transcendence. In classic FJM fashion, Mahashmashana is maximalist in both its self-indulgence and musical structure, its lyrics mixing wry humour, imagination, and longing that’s deep-seated and well-hidden. At the same time, it’s touching and selfless – or at least luxuriating in a space where, in Tillman’s own words, “the self is receding” – in ways Tillman’s songwriting has rarely been. It accumulates every facet of his persona – sardonic, romantic, even optimistic – and justifies every sprawling gesture through sharpened lyrics and genuine uncertainty. Read the full review.
33. Porridge Radio, Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me
Like every Porridge Radio album before it, Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me amounts to raw, blistering catharsis. The songs are frontwoman Dana Margolin’s way of gnawing through the extremes of human emotion, which, on the new record, range from personal heartbreak to intense burnout following a period of heavy touring behind 2022’s Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky. But the feelings don’t follow a linear timeline: they tumble over themselves and into what Margolin calls “a dissociative fog,” blurring the line between fantasy and reality. Margolin was able to inhabit this liminal space by focusing on writing poems, which, in their transition to songs, remain either searingly literal in their descriptions of numbing pain and mundane beauty, or edge into surreal, symbolic territory. Read our inspirations interview with Porridge Radio.
Kim Gordon didn’t invent SoundCloud rap, but she sounds like she just sort of stumbled onto a whole new sound on The Collective. The former Sonic Youth bassist’s second solo record, carries the fearlessly innovative spirit that has marked her nearly 50-year career, and though she knew early on she wanted it to be beat-driven, how much of it would sound like this particular strain of hip-hop if her collaborator wasn’t Justin Raisen, who’s worked with everyone from Sky Ferreira to Lil Yachty, Yves Tumor to Teezo Touchdown? The Collective is their second full-length collaboration following 2019’s No Home Record, which was dark and fractured in its own way, but not quite as thrilling or cacophonous. Gordon doesn’t sound like she’s absorbed a bunch of contemporary influences, or even dutifully acclimated herself in them, just daring to reel off, hanging on to noise as the obvious thread to her legacy. Read the full review.
As if to make up for the gap between albums, 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City and Father of the Bride were both stylistic swerves: one darker and strangely haunted, the other sprawling and casually vibrant. But Only God Was Above Us is Vampire Weekend’s first album since Contra that’s more interested in merging and retaining qualities from different eras; though lyrically and thematically, strongest are the echoes of Modern Vampires, and there’s even a beautiful ballad, ‘Mary Boone’, that feels like a direct descendant of ‘Hannah Hunt’. The record is focused yet loose, joyful and noisy, anxious yet curiously unfazed. It finds a definition of “alternative” that’s entirely contingent on the band’s own trajectory and musical language, which it unsettles mainly by playing with two elements: distortion – whether sputtering through ‘Ice Cream Piano’ or abrading the bright touch of ‘Classical’ – and space. Read the full review.
Imagine, for a moment, a world where GNX arrived with no industry-shaking feud in its rearview. Kendrick Lamar could probably make an album like it at several points in his career, but there’s no doubt it’s a hard pivot from 2022’s contemplative and messy Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. As the surprise follow-up to a series of historic diss tracks, however, capping off a year that saw him knocking out the biggest rapper on the planet to be crowned the greatest, it makes complete sense. But you can’t ignore the fact that the artist who looked so nakedly inward on Mr. Morale is the same one who spent 2024 taking victory lap after victory lap. GNX could have been another one of those in album format, which is something the world did not need. What the record – snappy, invigorating, and tireless – manages to achieve is fuelling back our hunger while delivering something quite beyond any fan’s expectations. Read the full review.
Endlessness offers a striking fusion of ambient, electronic, and orchestral jazz music, but the language of genre can hardly do justice to Nala Sinephro‘s pursuit of transcendence. Inviting you to regard time as a beautifully continuous stream of moments, the follow-up to the London-based harpist, keyboardist, and composer’s 2021 debut Space 1.8 gives form to ethereal, cosmic wonders while retaining a warm sense of humanity. It is constantly adrift yet infinitely lovely, basking in the liminal space where boundaries dissipate into a wordless kind of heaven, what Sinephro herself calls “the cycle of existence.” The music relaxes into this space, for all its vastness and complexity – strings shimmer, synths burble, and a host of instruments wisp in and out over the central arpeggio, so that you keep asking yourself just how far we’ve ventured from its origin.
Beth Gibbons‘ recorded output over the past two decades has included Portishead’s starkly haunting 2008 comeback album, Third, a magnificent performance of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 (recorded with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2019), and a memorable appearance on Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Mother I Sober’ in 2022. In her own writing, Gibbons, now 59, isn’t one to unpack intergenerational trauma the way Lamar does on that track, but her delivery of the chorus managed to perfectly encapsulate the tangled yearning at its core. Those great knots of time are threaded through her music, too, however inscrutable, and more than just feeling them keenly, Lives Outgrown is her opportunity to let them unfurl. Its somber, weighty, bone-chilling meditations never overstay their welcome, making brilliant use of both time and space. Read the full review.
EELS, the follow-up to Being Dead‘s 2023 debut LP When the Horses, was this year’s biggest grower for me. The Austin band’s John Congleton-produced LP is the kind of record that sneaks up on you, hitting a bunch of pleasure centers the more you pay attention to it: as infectiously hooky as it is nervy, it’s retro-pop at its most irresistible, garage-punk at its most eerily frenetic, surf-rock at its grooviest. Even when the songs – and there are a lot of them – melt into something off-kilter, understated, or lyrically fantastical, the record finds ways to be strangely endearing, like on the acoustic highlight ‘Dragons II’. Being Dead’s greatest and most human asset, though, remains Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy’s dueling harmonies. On ‘Blanket of My Bone’, one prays to find another to “crush me like the boundless sea.” EELS‘ hypnotic outpouring is not only a product of that daydream, but drags you right in, which is a thrill in and of itself.
The opening track on the Cure‘s first album in 16 years, ‘Alone’, the one that “unlocked the record” for Robert Smith, begins with the line “This is the end of every song I sing,” and the sequencing seems to have been firm in place for a long time; they’ve been bookending their live sets the same way since first introducing those songs on tour in 2022. ‘Dregs’, a poem by the decadent poet Ernest Dowson that ‘Alone’ was inspired by and directly echoes, does provide some useful context: “And health and hope have gone the way of love/ Into the drear oblivion of lost things.” This is the world Songs plunges headfirst into, where oblivion isn’t just an inevitability but the starting point, the throughline, and above all, a container for everything that cannot be restored in the mortal realm. The preposition matters here: not for, or in, but of a Lost World. Read the full review.
The most marvelous thing about Absolute Elsewhere, the third LP by Denver death metal band Blood Incantation, isn’t how brutal but how gloriously open-ended and far-reaching it is. It’s not a departure from their wordless ambient record Timewave Zero so much as the latest step in their evolution: passages of mind-mending extremity give way to sweeping, synth-infused soundscapes, and the record is as compelling and uncompromising when it builds and erupts as it is when it winds down. Its musical journey – psychedelic, gnarly, deliriously playful – is befitting of a sci-fi epic, revolving around the battle for human consciousness following the discovery of an alien text. The quartet made a whole documentary about the making of the record, which in itself invites deep analysis on a conceptual level. But there’s no bigger delight than just taking the music in, the way Blood Incantation intended.
The build-up to Chromakopia primed us for a new era of Tyler, the Creator: a sepia-toned visual aesthetic, a main character drawn from Norton Juster’s 1961 children’s book The Phantom Tollbooth, and so, it seemed, a new persona. But after killing off his former selves on the music video for 2023’s ‘Sorry Not Sorry’, Tyler is left with no choice but to remove the veil of a character study; he gives form to the masked St. Chroma character, wearing a military jacket and foreshadowed in that same video, but doesn’t go as far to weave him into the narrative fabric of the album. The facade is thinner than ever, and he has no one to turn to but himself. What could’ve been another victory lap instead shines as an attempt to reconcile his conflicted personality – and the disparate styles that come with it. Read the full review.
Just days after Los Campesinos! announced All Hell, their first new album in seven years, the Welsh seven-piece put out a second single from it. ‘Feast of Tongues’ and ‘A Psychic Wound’ didn’t serve as a one-two punch so much as a preview of the record’s emotional dynamics, or rather, tonal whiplash: the first turns a single brooding note, a flickering ray of hope, into a fiery anthem about survival, while the latter leverages its explosive hook to bear the universal weight of its lyrics. The cosmic wound may never heal, but Los Campesinos! know what a song can do to treat, however slightly, the bitterness another one has just left in your mouth. For longtime fans of the UK’s self-proclaimed “first and only emo band,” it is a familiar spiral of self-diagnosis and self-medication, and the fact that the group’s seventh LP was also self-produced and self-released may give it the appearance of a rather insular pursuit. Read the full review.
Dubbing their style – an uncompromising mix of hardcore, noise punk, and no-wave – “mascara mosh pit” music, the Washington, DC-based outfit’s debut album, produced by Pure Adult’s Jeremy Snyder, is by turns galvanizing, raucous, and uneasy, but never totally dispiriting – confronting a world of suffering and disillusionment not only by pointing to it, but ceaselessly invoking and subverting what it feels like to inhabit it. Jael Holzman’s lyrics are as hyper-referential as they are exacting, as riveting as the music that drives them forward. “I can see you shifting in your seat,” she intones at the very beginning, but Ekko Astral ensure you remain strapped in. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Ekko Astral.
Nilüfer Yanya is less interested in naming the feeling than learning to trust it. It’s not always a straightforward path; her songs have a way of winding around a range of themes and emotional states, finding warmth and purpose in the in-between where others would see a maze of unanswerable questions. “There’s nothing out there/ For you and me/ I’m going nowhere/ Until it bleeds,” the London-based singer-songwriter sang on the chorus of ‘shameless’, a highlight from her excellent 2022 LP PAINLESS, and it’s the same nothings and nowheres that creep up on her latest effort, My Method Actor, whether she’s chasing storms or some semblance of certainty. But Yanya moves into it – and kineticism has been as crucial a component of her music as anxiety and exhaustion – with a deeper sense of confidence and intentionality. Read the full review.
The follow-up to 2022’s Skinty Fia is framed as the now London-based band’s least Irish, most Korn-inspired record yet. And while it doesn’t exactly sound like Lana Del Rey or any nu-metal band – if anything, the album’s cinematic, colourful palette and thematic undertones owe more to a visual inspiration Chatten has cited, Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Akira – what’s remarkable is how much more like themselves Fontaines D.C. sound they further they’re removed from their origins. At their heart is a duality: infectious melodies are elevated by sweet, luscious orchestration – which, with help from producer James Ford, is brighter than ever – yet deeper still is the yearning, more complicated and confounding. Read the full review.
“I can feel there’s something in the between,” Claire Cottrill sings on ‘Glory of the Snow’, the penultimate track of her third album Charm. The song itself is a rather inconspicuous moment on a record that begins with two memorable singles before loosening up a bit, nestling into a kind of freewheeling whimsy. It doesn’t have the most distinct melody or lyrical ideas, but Cottrill has a gift for making the things that might slip through your fingers feel vivid, inescapable, and uniquely hers. “I pull on the string that binds me/ To memories of the way I loved you,” she goes on, as if describing the very act of songwriting; in her hands, restless and tender, gorgeous yet unshowy, hushed but never quite distant. It’s how we’ve come to know Clairo, and with each release, she’s getting better at refining these qualities and bringing them to the surface. Read the full review.
The Thief Next to Jesus came out in the last month of his life; the Brooklyn rapper and firefighter passed away unexpectedly in October, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most singular and consistent voices in hip-hop. With brilliantly deployed gospel samples and typically understated precision, his last album explores the relationship between Black Americans and Christianity, a framework that allowed him to continue his meditation on themes of mortality, religion, and generational trauma. His lyricism, like his delivery, is subdued and weighted as ever, but paired with some of the most strangely minimal instrumentals of his career. And while there’s something about every new Ka release that strikes you as haunting, you can’t deny this one’s eerie resonance. “I hope it’s borrowed time when my time come,” goes a line on ‘Borrowed Time’. It’s hard to believe, still. But these are words you can hang onto.
Eight solo albums into Laura Marling‘s career, one would be tempted to describe Patterns in Reat using a lot of the same adjectives that have long defined her songwriting: intimate, stunning, sincere. To celebrate Patterns in Repeat on those terms might also be a way to make up for lost time – the record marks the longest wait between new material since the 34-year-old first put out music as a new adult. But while Patterns in Repeat falls spiritually in line with 2020’s Song for Our Daughter and a lot of Marling’s past output, we’ve never heard her quite so unadorned and unguarded, her heart both lightened and moved by the confines of familiar spaces. Intimate, gorgeous, all that still is true – but it’s also tangibly her homeliest and most lived-in record to date. Read the full review.
On the chorus of ‘Gratitude’, a blistering highlight from Foxing‘s self-titled LP, Conor Murphy lists a series of desires, each more striking than the last: “I wanna hear God yelling at me/ I wanna live my life like a memory/ I wanna sow rage into my brain/ I want wrath written into my DNA.” Like so much of Foxing, the moment is visceral, unguarded, and relentless, neatly capturing the band’s catalog of yearning: a violently spiritual search for meaning, a fury so pervasive it needs biology, a reckoning with the past that can’t be chalked up to nostalgia. The album shares the ambition, rawness, and a lot of the same frustrations as its predecessor, 2021’s Manchester Orchestra-produced Draw Down the Moon, but what makes Foxing astounding is less of a streamlined approach than a sharp attunement to its emotional and aesthetic extremes. Read our interview with Foxing.
Even as a more robust, crowd-pleasing effort from Jamie xx, In Waves keeps the pulse going in ways both surprising and enveloping. The meditative sprawl of ‘Breathe’ turns out to be one of the weirder and more fractured stretches of the whole LP; the life-affirming directness of ‘Treat Each Other Right’ bleeds into ‘Waited All Night’, which benefits from the very distinct intimacy harnessed by the xx members, flirting with that hazy territory while delivering one of the album’s most immediate choruses. And ‘Dafodil’, its biggest oddity and standout, comes right after the particularly in-your-face ‘Baddy on the Floor’, a song that delights in its repetitiveness as much as the tinier interplay between the bass and horn sample. The more crowded it becomes, the more In Waves distinguishes itself from the insular (however collaborative still) process behind In Colour. Read the full review.
The marvelous thing about Prelude to Ecstasy isn’t the audience it’s reached as a debut album, but the commitment to craft and world-building that’s apparent as soon as you press play. The whole thing starts with an orchestral overture, signaling the sort of theatrical bombast and ambition that bands – especially “post-punk” bands that grow weary of the descriptor – don’t embrace until much later in their discography. As a group that formed just before the pandemic, the Last Dinner Party have had to take the fundamentally uncool path of taking themselves seriously, fleshing out songs, and establishing a strong visual identity before transferring any of their ideas to the stage. Calling the record “an archeology of ourselves,” the group may like doing things the old-fashioned way, but their assemblage of historical fashion feels fitted to the intensity of the present moment, not a retread of the past. Read the full review.
On My Light, My Destroyer, Cassandra Jenkins’ curiosity becomes a vessel through which to deepen her own emotions and understanding of self, playing with words and perspectives as if the subtlest twist might heal or surprise us. She immerses us in the sound of her environment as much as she observes and pulls us out of it, seeing poetry in this kind of translation, and translation as poetry. There’s so much to run through her filter that My Light, My Destroyer becomes endlessly rich, comforting, and vivifying, even as many of Jenkins’ confessions seem achingly solitary. “How long will this pain in my chest last?” she asks a stick-figure drawing of Sisyphus himself. Her wonder does not need an answer to persist, gentle in the knowledge that, surely, it won’t be longer than all this stuff that keeps us reveling. mj le
Mannequin Pussy have always recognized the power wrought from contradictions. Vulnerability has been as much at the core of their identity as their punk roots, making their music feel uniquely resonant when snuck between moments of searing aggression. I Got Heaven, their first album since 2019’s Patience, is an ambitious step forward that’s eager to express all different sides of the band: as rageful as it is hopeful, intense yet inviting, and altogether marvelous. Part of the record’s dynamism comes down to the way it was made: singer Marisa “Missy” Dabice, bassist Colins “Bear” Regisford, drummer Kaleen Reading, and newly added guitarist and keyboardist Maxine Steen decamped to Los Angeles to work on the songs with producer John Congleton, creating a collaborative environment that allowed them to revel in the nuances of Dabice’s writing – the intersection of pleasure and pain, fear and desire, the body and the divine – by adding new layers to their already versatile sound. Read our inspirations interview with Mannequin Pussy.
How much do you need to know about Phil Elverum to gain something from Night Palace, his first album as Mount Eerie in five years? I’ve been listening to his records for around a decade, yet I feel like I’ve understood on a more elemental level the noisy, turbulent atmosphere of his music just by spending a bit of time in the Pacific Northwest this year. Across 26 tracks, many of them knotty and expansive in their own right, the new record is often self-referential, yes, but also self-effacing, looking for – or through – something bigger than the self. “Can I abandon this position?/ See beyond my little life,” he wonders on ‘Empty Paper Towel Roll’, already in the process of bridging past and present, autobiography and poetry, meaning and void. The astonishing thing, then, isn’t how much you need to know about Phil Elverum going into Night Palace, but how much of everything that’s followed him his entire life – how much of you, maybe – is nestled inside.
the first glass beach album was audaciously maximalist and wildly inventive in the way it both fused and revitalized elements of pop-punk, bedroom pop, and art rock; the effect was by turns playfully cartoonish, bizarre, haunting, and hyperreal. Its long-awaited follow-up, plastic death, is similarly ambitious yet even more deliberate and immersive – not only in stitching together disparate styles that move beyond their original identification as a “post-emo” group, but also in the juxtaposition of catchy hooks and labyrinthine arrangements, deceptively simple song structures and multi-part, polyrhythmic epics. Emotionally and thematically, too, frontperson J. McClendon’s shift toward abstraction allows them to examine the relationship between aggression and tenderness, nostalgia veering into mania, the self through society, in a way doesn’t elude present reality so much as violently point at it. Read our track-by-track interview with glass beach.
“We look at the world once, in childhood,” Louise Glück wrote in her poem ‘Nostos’. “The rest is memory.” The quote springs to mind each time I listen to Adrianne Lenker’s new album, Bright Future, which might, as its title suggests, be looking out on the road ahead, but allows itself the treasure of remembering, the freedom to linger on memories that both fade and harden with the coming of age. Lenker – lead singer of Big Thief and one of today’s most acclaimed songwriters, recording her new album in a forest-hidden studio with frequent collaborator Philip Weinrobe and friends including Nick Hakim, Mat Davidson, and Josefin Runsteen – perhaps has little reason to introduce her new record by dredging up past trauma. But in these fortunate circumstances, she finds the clarity of her senses awakened as they were when running through the woods as a child. Read the full review.
The expansion of Magdalena Bay‘s world isn’t just about meeting the expectations of a rapidly growing fanbase; it’s a way to make space for the LA-based duo’s gnawing existential concerns. Building on the kaleidoscopic vision of their 2021 debut Mercurial World, Imaginal Disk is a sci-fi odyssey as playful and proggy (if not quite as brutal) as the Blood Incantation album on this list, which is really saying something. Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin use this framework to probe questions around personal identity, human consciousness, AI, and more, but you don’t need to digest all the lore to indulge in everything it has to offer on a musical level- swirling song structures, impeccable hooks, impossibly lush pop production. Magdalena Bay certainly retain their knack for balancing disparate styles, heady ideas and sticky songs, but Imaginal Disk widens the group’s scope beyond any fan’s wildest imagination.
Jason Lytle drapes the songs on his first Grandaddy album in seven years – many of them ballads or slow waltzes – in tons of pedal steel (performed by Max Hart), its sweetness balanced by off-kilter electronics, over a foundation of acoustic guitars, piano, and lush vocal harmonies. The sound of Blu Wav feels both old-timey and timeless, if not futuristic, and its warmth is almost as pervasive as the melancholy. If a song title like ‘You’re Going to Be Fine and I’m Going to Hell’ makes it seem like Lytle is treating bouts of heartbreak and depression with a dose of humour, there’s no mistaking the haunting vulnerability of songs like ‘On a Train or Bus’ and ‘Ducky, Boris and Dart’. It’s a ride worth sticking to, all summed up in the first lyrics of early single ‘Cabin in My Mind’: “Well, it’s a long and lonely road/ But there’s a safe and loving glow.” Read our inspirations interview with Grandaddy.
As far as indie and underground music is concerned, Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee is 2024’s biggest success story. Despite not being available on streaming platforms, the album gained traction via word-of-mouth and received Pitchfork’s highest score in four years following its release. Between high-profile releases from Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, it couldn’t be easier to root for Cindy Lee, the stage persona of songwriter and guitarist Patrick Flegel, who has put out several records under the moniker following a stint as the leader of the ’00s post-punk band Women. But when you listen to it on your headphones – it’s the kind of album that keeps you company as you look out the window on a long journey – the ghostly sprawl of the music seems bigger than whatever hype surrounds it: melancholy, arresting, brilliantly executed, and the only 2024 record other than Jessica Pratt’s Here in the Pitch deserving of the term “hypnagogic.”
2020’s Saint Cloud was a stunning balm of a record, one that saw Katie Crutchfield embracing the Americana aesthetic that carries onto the new record; she tried experimenting with more pop-leaning production for “a good six hours,” she estimates, but it didn’t stick. Reuniting with producer Brad Cook to record the album at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas, this time with help from Cook’s brother Phil, Spencer Tweedy, and Wednesday guitarist MJ Lenderman (who plays on every song and provides harmonies on many of them), Tigers Blood leans into and refines its predecessor’s sonic palette in ways that make space for the growth in Crutchfield’s lyrics. If Saint Cloud aspired toward and invited the clarity that comes with getting sober, Tigers Blood settles into it without losing grasp on the melodic and lyrical acuity that makes Crutchfield’s music so impactful. Read the full review.
If part of the songwriting process is like sleep talking, how can Jessica Pratt’s music sound at once of sleep and outside of it, swimming in the unconscious while also alerting you of all the things you missed when you were lost there? How come she’s both the one talking and waking you? Pratt is so singularly capable of tuning into that hazy space that when she puts out new material after so many years, it’s like realizing you’ve been missing something, been a little lost for a long time. This might sound like an exaggeration, but it’s the only way I can describe diving into Here in the Pitch, her first album since 2019’s Quiet Signs. It might be the most lucid and grounded record of Pratt’s career, but it’s still governed by that uncanny feeling: the ambiguity of time, how it blurs and slips one by, or simply slips, and how a song can suddenly pick it up. Read the full review.
“So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people,” the author Harry Crews, one of the biggest inspirations behind Manning Fireworks, once said. “The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design.” Lenderman has an instinctive way of tapping into this fractured humanity, avoiding both judgment and redemption in his songs – these are scenes, not story arcs. A lot of the time, the tone he ultimately strikes isn’t a sardonic sneer but a kind of empathetic smirk, especially on the more acoustic songs where Karly Hartzman, Wednesday bandleader and Lenderman’s ex-girlfriend, tenderly joins in on vocals, like the opening title track and ‘Rip Torn’. Without the lo-fi charm that marked his earlier work – this is Lenderman’s first studio LP for ANTI- Records – he finds different tools to evoke the brokenness, not water it down so much as give it a particular texture. Read the full review.
Charli XCX‘s BRAT rollout initially hinted at a rather single-minded focus: a return to the singer’s club roots with help from close collaborators well-versed in its language, namely A.G. Cook and EasyFun. In a live setting, CRASH‘s mainstream flirtations also meant embracing her previous eras, whereas BRAT zeroes in on the present and is only interested in recontextualizing old hits that can slot into her set, the word “PARTY” looming behind her. But while it may be a party record, a club record even, Charli treats these spaces with the same nuance afforded by the singer quickly assumed (and confirmed) to be the subject of ‘Girl, so confusing’. It’s perhaps too easy for an artist with Charli’s self-awareness to wink at her place in the pop landscape, gamified as it is. But none of the references on BRAT totally scan as such; even if they become cause for speculation, Charli focuses on the emotion, not the person or the world they belong in. Read the full review.
Self-produced but featuring remarkable guest appearances from Perfume Genius, Julie Byrne, and Jay Som, Fashion Club’s A Love You Cannot Shake finds Los Angeles-based artist Pascal Stevenson tangling in the relationship between experimental and pop music, tenderness and confusion, current and past selves, self-growth and systemic inequality – dialogues that seem beyond language but remain ceaseless and transformative. “I found comfort in the lie,” she sings on ‘Ice Age’, but you’d be forgiven for hearing the word “light” instead – after all, that’s exactly what pours in halfway through many of the album’s songs. The light, Stevenson suggests, is never too far from the darkness. But to get from a lie to the truth – uncomfortable, soothing, radiant, and undeniable – takes one hell of a leap. A Love You Cannot Shake isn’t just the sound of Fashion Club making it and breaking through, but reveling in every facet of its breathless, uncompromising expression. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Fashion Club.
Twin Shadow has dropped a new single, ‘As Soon As You’, which will appear on his upcoming album Georgie. Check it out below.
“This music represents the most thorough history lesson on where I’ve been as an artist, uncle, lover, friend, and human being,” the Dominican-American singer-songwriter said of ‘As Soon As You Can’ on Instagram. “It offers what I believe is the rawest perspective on my life. In a world where so little feels real, I will continue delving into the deeply personal in the hope that it provides a mirror, a scope, or a lens into your own lives.”
Georgie, the follow-up to Twin Shadow’s 2021 self-titled LP, is set to arrive in early 2025 via his own Cheree Cheree label. Announcing the record in October, he explained:
I’m releasing a new album called Georgie. I’ve ditched traditional labels, agents, management, and drums for this record. Georgie is my most stripped down body of work yet — at this point in my life and career, nothing matters more than my deepest, darkest, and brightest feelings. The album art features my father George’s signature. I had him scrawl it hundreds of times in a notebook, and I ended up choosing the very first one. At the time, I had no idea my father would pass away just a few months later. Aside from the large drawing we once did together, which now hangs on my mother’s dining room wall, this is my favorite collaboration with him. The album is dedicated to his memory.
Pulp have announced they have signed to Rough Trade Records. “Rough Trade have managed Pulp for over 30 years so it feels great to be finally on the label,” the Britpop legends said in a statement. “We did it!”
Pulp reunited in 2022 for a run of shows in England and Ireland. The band wrapped up their North American tour in September, and they had been playing several new songs live. Today’s announcement doesn’t mention any new music, but it certainly looks like there might be a new record on the way.
Plinko is one of those casino games that stands out for its simplicity yet unpredictability. Whether you’re playing in an online casino or using a plinko app, the game offers something that many other games don’t—pure chance wrapped in a fun, suspense-filled package. In this article, I’ll walk you through the mechanics of the plinko game, its rise in popularity, and why players keep returning to the plinko casino. Along the way, I’ll also explore how mobile technology has revolutionized the way we play through the plinko app.
What is Plinko?
At its core, plinko game is simple: a player drops a disk from the top of a peg-filled board. The disk bounces around, hitting various pegs as it makes its way down, eventually landing in one of several slots at the bottom. Each slot has a different payout value, and the goal is to get your disk into the highest-paying slot. While it seems straightforward, the unpredictability of where the disk lands adds a layer of excitement that makes plinko so popular.
The game first gained widespread recognition on “The Price is Right,” where it became an iconic feature of the show. From there, it made its way into various online platforms, including plinko casino games, where it became a fan favorite. It’s a game where luck is the only factor that determines your success, and that randomness is exactly what keeps players engaged.
The Rise of Plinko in Online Casinos
Over the last decade, the plinko casino version of the game has grown significantly in popularity. Unlike traditional casino games like poker or blackjack, plinko is simple and easy to play, making it appealing to a broad audience. Online casinos began incorporating plinko game variants, offering more features like multipliers, bonus rounds, and progressive jackpots that added depth to the experience.
One of the major advantages of the plinko casino games is their accessibility. Players can drop a disk anytime, anywhere, whether they’re on their desktop or mobile device. This level of convenience, coupled with the ease of play, makes plinko an attractive option for those who want a quick, fun game without needing to learn complex rules or strategies.
How Does the Plinko App Change the Game?
The rise of mobile gaming has brought a new dimension to plinko. The plinko app has made the game more accessible, allowing players to enjoy the game wherever they are. Whether you’re on the train, at home, or during a lunch break, the plinko app gives you the ability to play instantly. Many versions of the app come with features like daily bonuses, in-game purchases, and multiplayer modes, enhancing the overall gaming experience.
One of the key benefits of the plinko app is its portability. No longer are players confined to their desktops or traditional casinos. The app allows for quick and easy access to the game, making it more convenient than ever to play.
How to Play Plinko: A Step-by-Step Guide
Despite its simple concept, plinko game does leave players with plenty of room to experiment and explore. Here’s a quick guide on how to get started:
Place your bet: Decide on the amount you’d like to wager before starting the game.
Drop the disk: Once you’ve placed your bet, drop the disk from the top of the board. The disk will bounce off the pegs as it travels downward.
Watch the action: The suspense builds as you watch the disk bounce randomly from peg to peg, before landing in one of the slots at the bottom of the board.
Collect your winnings: Depending on where your disk lands, you’ll win a payout. The value of the payout depends on which slot the disk lands in.
The game is as easy as it sounds, and that’s one of the main reasons it’s so appealing to a wide range of players. There are no complicated rules or strategies—just drop the disk and watch the magic happen.
Why Do Players Love Plinko?
Several factors contribute to the ongoing popularity of plinko casino games. First, the game is easy to understand, which makes it appealing to both new and experienced players. Unlike poker or blackjack, where players need to learn the rules and develop strategies, plinko game is all about luck.
Here are some reasons players keep coming back to plinko:
Simplicity: The game requires no prior experience or knowledge. It’s straightforward and easy for anyone to pick up.
Excitement: The suspense of watching the disk bounce off the pegs and land in a random slot creates a thrilling experience.
High Rewards: Depending on where the disk lands, players can win significant payouts.
Accessibility: With the rise of the plinko app, players can enjoy the game on their mobile devices, making it accessible anytime, anywhere.
Plinko vs. Other Casino Games
Plinko stands out in the world of casino games for its simplicity and unique gameplay. Here’s how it compares to other popular casino games:ЕAs shown in the table above, plinko game is easy to play but has a moderate payout potential compared to slots or blackjack. However, it offers a unique and exciting experience that keeps players coming back.
Plinko’s Integration Into Popular Culture
Beyond the plinko casino scene, the game has found its way into mainstream culture. Most notably, it became a staple of “The Price is Right,” where contestants drop disks for a chance to win big. Its simple yet captivating format made it one of the most memorable segments of the show.
Today, plinko has inspired countless variations, spin-offs, and even television specials, cementing its place as a beloved game both inside and outside of the casino world.
The Future of Plinko
The future of plinko game is likely to involve more advanced technology. Mobile gaming, virtual reality, and augmented reality are likely to play a bigger role in shaping the evolution of the game. Expect to see more interactive versions, where players can control the trajectory of the disk or influence the gameplay in new and exciting ways.
FAQs About Plinko
What is the best strategy for playing Plinko? Since plinko is based entirely on chance, there isn’t a foolproof strategy. It’s all about luck, so the best approach is to have fun and enjoy the experience.
Can I win real money with the Plinko app? Yes, many plinko casino apps offer the opportunity to win real money, though the odds vary depending on the platform.
Is Plinko available in all online casinos? While plinko game is growing in popularity, it’s not available at all online casinos. Be sure to check if your favorite casino offers a version of the game.
How do I increase my chances of winning at Plinko? There’s no guaranteed way to win since the game is random. However, understanding the payout structure and betting within your limits can make for a more enjoyable experience.
Why You Should Try Plinko Today
If you’re looking for a simple, fun, and exciting game that doesn’t require a lot of mental effort, plinko casino games are a great choice. With the addition of the plinko app, you can take the game with you wherever you go, adding even more convenience to an already great experience. So why not give it a try? Drop that disk, watch it bounce, and enjoy the thrill of plinko game today.
Gambling sites offer 1000s of slots. Not every slot machine is worthy of playing for money. The user needs to take into account a lot of restrictions, as well as the rules by which the video slots are selected.
How to understand that the gambling club uses original software?
Developers of slot machines can be divided into two groups. The first includes branded and real ones, and the second fake ones. The latter produce slots with an open program structure. For example, top casino Donbet publishes only branded slots on its storefront.
When an app has an open programming code, the casino operator can do whatever he wants. Usually, representatives of the gambling club set up the emulators in such a way that the user catches a win almost immediately. After that, the gambler credits a large sum and starts playing at high risks. However, at this point the return percentage of the emulator is underestimated and the user faces a major loss.
Branded slot machines meet the following criteria:
The slot has a branded serial number. Manufacturers always label their applications. This number can be seen in one of the corners on the splash screen or in the payout table. It is with the help of this number that you can find the original slot on the manufacturer’s website.
The game is launched from the provider’s server. You can find out from the source code of the web page, where the address of the server is indicated. If the emulator is launched from the site of the casino itself, most likely it is a fake.
The slot machine corresponds to the original design. Today it is much more difficult to counterfeit games. Game studios involve three-dimensional graphics and special effects, which fraudsters, in a short time with minimal investment, are not possible.
The slot machine has a detailed description and a multilingual interface. Exclusively English-language slots are almost nonexistent. Today, every second game has a translation into dozens of other languages.
Assessing the competence can also be assessed by the set of providers. The presence of some brands automatically removes doubts about the honesty and competence of the gambling platform.
Which slot manufacturers are considered top?
At the top of the rating is, without a doubt, the company Microgaming. This manufacturer has been on the market for more than 30 years. It was Microgaming that launched the first online casino and released the first online slot.
If among the partners of the gambling club there is this company, the user can count on large payouts. Today, Microgaming puts an emphasis on progressive emulators. In these slots, prize money can include seven-figure sums.
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Saint Etienne have returned with their twelfth studio album, 
Röyksopp have surprise-released a new album, 
Roc Marciano and the Alchemist have joined forces for a new collaborative album, 
Damon McMahon is putting an end to his 
Having scored a viral hit early this year with ‘Get In With Me’, Florida rapper Bossman Dlow has dropped his debut studio album, 
Fabiano do Nascimento is a Brazilian guitarist who has gained popularity in Japan; Shin Sasakubo is a guitarist from Chichibu, Japan. Today, they’ve issued a new album titled Harmônicos, which they recorded during a three-day period four days after playing their first concert together in the country. “Sharing the same space and time, the two guitarists, with their different styles and origins, explored sounds, let them resonate and repel, and engaged in a dialogue and exchange of ideas that shaped this music,” the LP’s Bandcamp description reads.
Fine
“This is supposed to be fun,” Eva Hendricks recalls her brother saying during the making of 
The title of 
Nandi Rose made her latest 
Though steeped in abstraction, there is a stark physicality to Julia Holter’s Something in the Room She Moves, which stands as one of the most sensual and somatic works in her career. While the music glides in different directions, she never strays from the central goal of “evoking the body’s internal sound world.” Whether breezy, dizzying, soothing, or bombastic, Holter’s output has always been immersive, and her latest is, too; yet she also eliminates any distance from the people, spaces, and ideas with which she interacts. “In the past my records were more focused on the past or the future, about love from afar, as maybe more of an ethereal thing,” Holter 
Crumb
Katy Kirby
Gathering guests that include Meg Duffy, Anjimile, SG Goodman, Phil and Brad Cook, and Conor Oberst, The Past Is Still Alive finds 
Merce Lemon admits she didn’t learn to play a chord on guitar until she was 17, when she moved to Seattle to live with her uncle for a few years. The decision was partly a response to losing her best friend when she was 15, a subject Lemon explores with bracing intimacy on ‘Backyard Lover’, a highlight from her spectacular new LP Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild. Leaning more firmly on alt-country than any of her previous releases, the record is alternately, and often simultaneously, warm and wild, raw and rapturous, lonely and open-hearted. Lemon’s songs are uniquely capable of squaring hardened emotion with gentle curiosity – toward the natural world, which is to say, the wonder of staying alive – making aimlessness sound beautiful, and home a thing like heaven. 
One of the most surprising moments on 
The transition from 
Hovvdy
Written, recorded, and produced by Nate Amos (of Water from Your Eyes and My Idea) in the summer of 2022, 
Frog in Boiling Water lifts its title from the “Boiling Frog” in Daniel Quinn’s 1996 novel The Story of B. The premise is well-known and self-evident – if you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will instinctively jump out; but if you place it into lukewarm water and gradually raise the temperature, it will be lulled into comfort and boil to death. The results are neither entirely bleak nor hopeful, and Frog is less of an explicitly political album than a politically outward-facing one, following a series of albums centered around addiction and mental illness. As much it curdles with anxiety and existential dread, the record is alternately haunting, soothing, sour, and enthralling, a culmination of 
In contrast to its predecessor, Chloë and the Next 20th Century, the latest from Josh Tillman feels extremely aware of itself, even if as a writer he’s still struggling to find a way out or towards transcendence. In classic FJM fashion, Mahashmashana is maximalist in both its self-indulgence and musical structure, its lyrics mixing wry humour, imagination, and longing that’s deep-seated and well-hidden. At the same time, it’s touching and selfless – or at least luxuriating in a space where, in Tillman’s own words, “the self is receding” – in ways Tillman’s songwriting has rarely been. It accumulates every facet of his persona – sardonic, romantic, even optimistic – and justifies every sprawling gesture through sharpened lyrics and genuine uncertainty. 
Like every 
Kim Gordon
As if to make up for the gap between albums, 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City and Father of the Bride were both stylistic swerves: one darker and strangely haunted, the other sprawling and casually vibrant. But Only God Was Above Us is 
Imagine, for a moment, a world where GNX arrived with no industry-shaking feud in its rearview. 
Endlessness offers a striking fusion of ambient, electronic, and orchestral jazz music, but the language of genre can hardly do justice to 
Beth Gibbons
EELS, the follow-up to 
The opening track on 
The most marvelous thing about Absolute Elsewhere, the third LP by Denver death metal band 
The build-up to Chromakopia primed us for a new era of 
Just days after 
Dubbing their style – an uncompromising mix of hardcore, noise punk, and no-wave – “mascara mosh pit” music, the Washington, DC-based outfit’s debut album, produced by Pure Adult’s Jeremy Snyder, is by turns galvanizing, raucous, and uneasy, but never totally dispiriting – confronting a world of suffering and disillusionment not only by pointing to it, but ceaselessly invoking and subverting what it feels like to inhabit it. Jael Holzman’s lyrics are as hyper-referential as they are exacting, as riveting as the music that drives them forward. “I can see you shifting in your seat,” she intones at the very beginning, but Ekko Astral ensure you remain strapped in. 
The follow-up to 2022’s Skinty Fia is framed as the now London-based band’s least Irish, most 
“I can feel there’s something in the between,” Claire Cottrill sings on ‘Glory of the Snow’, the penultimate track of her third album Charm. The song itself is a rather inconspicuous moment on a record that begins with two memorable singles before loosening up a bit, nestling into a kind of freewheeling whimsy. It doesn’t have the most distinct melody or lyrical ideas, but Cottrill has a gift for making the things that might slip through your fingers feel vivid, inescapable, and uniquely hers. “I pull on the string that binds me/ To memories of the way I loved you,” she goes on, as if describing the very act of songwriting; in her hands, restless and tender, gorgeous yet unshowy, hushed but never quite distant. It’s how we’ve come to know 
The Thief Next to Jesus came out in the last month of his life; the Brooklyn rapper and firefighter passed away unexpectedly in October, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most singular and consistent voices in hip-hop. With brilliantly deployed gospel samples and typically understated precision, his last album explores the relationship between Black Americans and Christianity, a framework that allowed him to continue his meditation on themes of mortality, religion, and generational trauma. His lyricism, like his delivery, is subdued and weighted as ever, but paired with some of the most strangely minimal instrumentals of his career. And while there’s something about every new Ka release that strikes you as haunting, you can’t deny this one’s eerie resonance. “I hope it’s borrowed time when my time come,” goes a line on ‘Borrowed Time’. It’s hard to believe, still. But these are words you can hang onto.
Eight solo albums into 
On the chorus of ‘Gratitude’, a blistering highlight from 
Even as a more robust, crowd-pleasing effort from Jamie xx, In Waves keeps the pulse going in ways both surprising and enveloping. The meditative sprawl of ‘Breathe’ turns out to be one of the weirder and more fractured stretches of the whole LP; the life-affirming directness of ‘Treat Each Other Right’ bleeds into ‘Waited All Night’, which benefits from the very distinct intimacy harnessed by the xx members, flirting with that hazy territory while delivering one of the album’s most immediate choruses. And ‘Dafodil’, its biggest oddity and standout, comes right after the particularly in-your-face ‘Baddy on the Floor’, a song that delights in its repetitiveness as much as the tinier interplay between the bass and horn sample. The more crowded it becomes, the more In Waves distinguishes itself from the insular (however collaborative still) process behind In Colour. 
The marvelous thing about Prelude to Ecstasy isn’t the audience it’s reached as a debut album, but the commitment to craft and world-building that’s apparent as soon as you press play. The whole thing starts with an orchestral overture, signaling the sort of theatrical bombast and ambition that bands – especially “post-punk” bands that grow weary of the descriptor – don’t embrace until much later in their discography. As a group that formed just before the pandemic, 
On My Light, My Destroyer, Cassandra Jenkins’ curiosity becomes a vessel through which to deepen her own emotions and understanding of self, playing with words and perspectives as if the subtlest twist might heal or surprise us. She immerses us in the sound of her environment as much as she observes and pulls us out of it, seeing poetry in this kind of translation, and translation as poetry. There’s so much to run through her filter that My Light, My Destroyer becomes endlessly rich, comforting, and vivifying, even as many of Jenkins’ confessions seem achingly solitary. “How long will this pain in my chest last?” she asks a stick-figure drawing of Sisyphus himself. Her wonder does not need an answer to persist, gentle in the knowledge that, surely, it won’t be longer than all this stuff that keeps us reveling. 
How much do you need to know about Phil Elverum to gain something from Night Palace, his first album as Mount Eerie in five years? I’ve been listening to his records for around a decade, yet I feel like I’ve understood on a more elemental level the noisy, turbulent atmosphere of his music just by spending a bit of time in the Pacific Northwest this year. Across 26 tracks, many of them knotty and expansive in their own right, the new record is often self-referential, yes, but also self-effacing, looking for – or through – something bigger than the self. “Can I abandon this position?/ See beyond my little life,” he wonders on ‘Empty Paper Towel Roll’, already in the process of bridging past and present, autobiography and poetry, meaning and void. The astonishing thing, then, isn’t how much you need to know about Phil Elverum going into Night Palace, but how much of everything that’s followed him his entire life – how much of you, maybe – is nestled inside.
the first glass beach album was audaciously maximalist and wildly inventive in the way it both fused and revitalized elements of pop-punk, bedroom pop, and art rock; the effect was by turns playfully cartoonish, bizarre, haunting, and hyperreal. Its long-awaited follow-up, plastic death, is similarly ambitious yet even more deliberate and immersive – not only in stitching together disparate styles that move beyond their original identification as a “post-emo” group, but also in the juxtaposition of catchy hooks and labyrinthine arrangements, deceptively simple song structures and multi-part, polyrhythmic epics. Emotionally and thematically, too, frontperson J. McClendon’s shift toward abstraction allows them to examine the relationship between aggression and tenderness, nostalgia veering into mania, the self through society, in a way doesn’t elude present reality so much as violently point at it. Read our 
“We look at the world once, in childhood,” Louise Glück wrote in her poem ‘Nostos’. “The rest is memory.” The quote springs to mind each time I listen to 
The expansion of 
Jason Lytle drapes the songs on his first 
As far as indie and underground music is concerned, Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee is 2024’s biggest success story. Despite not being available on streaming platforms, the album gained traction via word-of-mouth and received Pitchfork’s highest score in four years following its release. Between high-profile releases from Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, it couldn’t be easier to root for Cindy Lee, the stage persona of songwriter and guitarist Patrick Flegel, who has put out several records under the moniker following a stint as the leader of the ’00s post-punk band Women. But when you listen to it on your headphones – it’s the kind of album that keeps you company as you look out the window on a long journey – the ghostly sprawl of the music seems bigger than whatever hype surrounds it: melancholy, arresting, brilliantly executed, and the only 2024 record other than Jessica Pratt’s Here in the Pitch deserving of the term “hypnagogic.”
2020’s Saint Cloud was a stunning balm of a record, one that saw 
If part of the songwriting process is like sleep talking, how can 
“So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people,” the author Harry Crews, one of the biggest inspirations behind Manning Fireworks, once said. “The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design.” Lenderman has an instinctive way of tapping into this fractured humanity, avoiding both judgment and redemption in his songs – these are scenes, not story arcs. A lot of the time, the tone he ultimately strikes isn’t a sardonic sneer but a kind of empathetic smirk, especially on the more acoustic songs where Karly Hartzman, Wednesday bandleader and Lenderman’s ex-girlfriend, tenderly joins in on vocals, like the opening title track and ‘Rip Torn’. Without the lo-fi charm that marked his earlier work – this is Lenderman’s first studio LP for ANTI- Records – he finds different tools to evoke the brokenness, not water it down so much as give it a particular texture. 
Charli XCX
Self-produced but featuring remarkable guest appearances from Perfume Genius, Julie Byrne, and Jay Som, 
