11 New Releases You Need to Hear Right Now [September 2024]

Behold: A metric ton of outstanding recent releases.

Hello! 😊👋

Welcome to another installment of the new release rundown column on the Best Music of All Time newsletter.

This post showcases some recent releases (i.e., albums that dropped in the current calendar year) that I’ve enjoyed. This edition is so packed with music recommendations that I don’t have time to waste on a long intro.

If you haven’t already, hit the subscribe button to get all my new music updates delivered to your inbox. You can also check out last month’s new release round-up post for more music recommendations.

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Let’s dive in!

1. “Timeless” by Kaytranada

Genre: Alternative, R&B, Electronic

Label: RCA

Release Date: June 7, 2024

Vibe: 🪩🪩🪩

👉 Stream the album

I’ve been bullish on Kaytranada since the beginning of his career (and not solely because he’s from my hometown). Even in the face of a solo discgraphy that’s certainly not lacking in quality, there’s a good chance that his latest studio effort, Timeless, is the best LP he’s cut to date. The reason is simple: It’s a muscular, hyperfocused collection of banger after club banger.

Featuring a who’s-who of contemporary R&B and pop cameos, including Anderson .Paak, Childish Gambino, and Thundercat, there’s no shortage of memorable moments. However, what may surprise listeners is that the strongest material gives Kaytranada space to fly solo and do his own thing, leaning into his instincts for crafting pitch-perfect dancefloor fillers.

2. “Erbil” by Omar Souleyman

Genre: Dabke, Electronic

Label: Mad Decent

Release Date: March 29, 2024

Vibe: 🫨

👉 Stream the album

For the uninitiated, Omar Souleyman is a living legend. He started off as a wedding singer in Syria, performing what many describe as a modernized, more electronic-oriented style of traditional dabke music. He’s since inked a deal with Diplo’s label, gained a sizeable Western following, and, according to legend, recorded somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 albums. Talk about work ethic.

His 2024 release, Erbil, should satisfy both devoted fans and more casual listeners who may be engaging with Souleyman (and his trademark sound) for the first time. The main reason for that is his adherence to a winning formula: smooth, commanding vocals sung over layered saz playing and some of the most infectious dance music instrumentals you’ll hear this month.

3. “Born in the Wild” by Tems

Genre: Afrobeats, R&B, Neo-Soul

Label: RCA

Release Date: June 7, 2024

Vibe: 💃

👉 Stream the album

I’m probably biased, but it’s been an exceptional 24 months for the Afrobeat and amapiano scenes. Artists like Asake, Uncle Waffles, Amaraae, Tyla, and many more have dropped career-defining albums that assert or reaffirm their considerable talents, not to mention put them on a course for crossover superstardom. With Born in the Wild, you can add Tems to that list.

The Nigerian multi-hyphenate is the latest artist to succeed with a fluid approach to genre assimilation, proving she’s as much as home with R&B arrangements that draw on templates from Lauryn Hill and Jill Scott as she is with traditional African influences. Her vocal performance radiates confidence throughout and enables her to transcend a bloated tracklist that could’ve been trimmed.

4. “Why Lawd?” by NxWorries

Genre: Neo-Soul, R&B, Psychedelic

Label: Stones Throw

Release Date: June 7, 2024

Vibe: 💆

👉 Stream the album

I name-checked him earlier in the post, but Anderson .Paak is quietly having a nice year. He contributed a song for the Paris Olympics, guested on other tracks for the likes of SiR and Fred again …, and is embarking on a new tour with the Free Nationals where they’ll play 2016’s Malibu in full. If those commitments weren’t enough, he managed to drop one of the best R&B records of the year as one half NxWorries.

Titled Why Lawd?, this album sees .Paak teaming once again with producer Knxwledge, whose left-field takes on classic soul and funk grooves give everything a sheen of bubbling psychedelia. Underneath the aesthetic, the duo balance mentions of lustful late-night activities among the jetset sect with paranoid looks inwards at deeply personal insecurities.

Depsite not reinventing any wheels, this record is fresh and exciting in its execution.

5. “Black & Whites” by Big Hit, Hit-Boy & the Alchemist

Genre: Hip-Hop, Gangsta Rap

Label: Surf Club

Release Date: May 30, 2024

Vibe: 💪

👉 Stream the album

Sometimes, the veterans need to take a moment to show the kids how it’s done.

Black & Whites, the collab from veteran emcee Big Hit and two of hip-hop’s most respected producers, his son Hit-Boyand the Alchemist, is an exercise in pure craftsmanship. No single track is going to blow you away with flashy bars, obvious samples, or swampy effects dialed up to an 11. Instead, the trio lean into a quality that’s long been the hallmark of compelling rap music: tough storytelling.

Hit-Boy, who also produced a J-Lo track in 2024, says the album’s multigenerational appeal is being felt in communities nationwide. “I literally see the comments like, ‘Man y’all gelling even more now, Big Hit sounding harder and harder.,’” he explained. “I’m out in Atlanta right now, I ran into a dude, he like ‘Man they rocking with Big Hit out in Atlanta. That n**** rapping way better too.’ I’m really seeing it in real time.”

6. “Riley” by Riley Mulherkar

Genre: Jazz, R&B

Label: Westerlies

Release Date: February 16, 2024

Vibe: 🌃

👉 Stream the album

Recorded in the last gasps of 2020 across two sessions in New York, Riley Mulherkar’s solo debut straddles the line (however thin) that separates improvisational jazz, contemporary classical, and avant-garde experimentalism. The trumpeter, best known for his work as part of the Westerlies, this record is both a love letter to his past and a look ahead to jazz’s future.

Even if you’re not a jazz fiend like me, there’s likely something on the tracklist that will pull you in. The groove behind “Ride or Die” may remind some listeners of the Purple One, while his interpretation of “King Porter Stomp” turns the trumpet into a percussion instrument. But, by far, my favorite cut was the most traditional-sounding—a breathtaking cover of “Stardust.”

7. “At the Drolma Wesel-Ling Monastery” by Howie Lee

Genre: Electronic, Experimental

Label: Mais Um Discos

Release Date: April 26, 2024

Vibe:

👉 Stream the album

I almost don’t want to talk about this record too much, because I think it’s best if you go into the listening experience completely cold. I say that not to obsfucate or give in to my inherent laziness as a writer, but because there’s so much going on here that I’m not sure I could do it justice. Instead, I’ll let Howie Lee’s Bandcamp listing for this albumsummarize for you:

Recorded over two weeks at Drolma Wesel-Ling Monastery in the mountains of north-eastern Tibet, Beijing-based multi-disciplinary artist/producer, Howie Lee combines Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist singing with mutating bass/footwork science, glitched-out hyper-rhythms and sampled Chinese-Tibetan instrumentation for his latest album […] Lee connects parallels in electronic music, deep meditation and devotional chanting to present eight reconstructed, IDM-warped Vajrayana mantras, journaling the beginnings of his journey into buddhism […].”

That’s it. No more spoilers from me.

8. “Here in the Pitch” by Jessica Pratt

Genre: Folk, Singer/Songwriter

Label: Mexican Summer

Release Date: May 3, 2024

Vibe: 😳

👉 Stream the album

Some artists turn distance into a hallmark. Their songs pull you in despite staying frustratingly out of your reach, like a memory etched in an out-of-focus Polaroid. Jessica Pratt’s Here in the Pitch is a collection of songs that prize this effect, keeping you both engrossed and off-balance, invested emotionally yet unable to escape the feeling that she hasn’t quite let you in.

Despite how impenetrable that sounds, this record is actually quite pop-friendly. The production choices, which have the same lush quality of 60s records from the Becah Boys and Astrud Gilberto, frame Pratt’s melancholic vocals with ironic sunshine. It leaves you with the distinct impression that you’re looking at an inescapably gorgeous reflection in a broken mirror.

9. “Death Jokes” by Amen Dunes

Genre: Art Rock, Experimental

Label: Sub Pop

Release Date: May 10, 2024

Vibe:

👉 Stream the album

Of all the new releases recommended this month, Death Jokes will undoubtedly be the most challenging for most listeners. It’s not like ADamon McMahon, the creative force behind Amen Dunes, would have it any other way. His debut under that title, DIA, is as antagonistic as experimental noise-rock albums get. Somehow, this release may be even denser.

But don’t mistake “dense” for “confusing” or “incomprehensible.” Death Jokes doesn’t necessarily deliver overt narrative themes or any closure in that regard, but it does make you think about the current state of American culture and its increasing obsession with forcing everyone living in it to pick sides.

“Getting stoned/On their phones/They’re so lonely and don’t know why,” he says of kids today. How we got there, and what it means for our future, is up to you to decide.

10. “Bando Stone and New World” by Childish Gambino

Genre: Pop, Hip-Hop, Experimental

Label: RCA

Release Date: July 19, 2024

Vibe: 🪨

👉 Stream the album

When it was announced that Donald Glover would be gracing this universe with another album, I was catiously optimistic. His Atavista revamp of 2020’s rough-around-the-edges 3.15.20 gave me hope that he’d once again approach the greatness he’d tasted with Awaken, My Love! While not quite in that league, Bando Stone is worth the listen for its fearlessness alone.

You know you’re in for a wild ride when the second track, “Lithonia,” functions as Glover’s ode to grunge music. Or is it Weezer? Or maybe Lenny Kravitz? Or maybe it’s none of those at all and exists purely as a vehicle for the startling music video that blew up comment threads earlier this year. As a whole, the album is equal parts soulful and tormented, inviting and off-putting.

In other words, a fitting send-off for Glover’s beloved, shapeshifting character.

11. “Starface” by Lava La Rue

Genre: Alternative, Pop, Psychedelia

Label: Dirty Hit

Release Date: July 19, 2024

Vibe: 🌠

👉 Stream the album

Let’s wrap on a nice synthy palette cleanser.

Starface is the latest LP from West London’s Lava La Rue, an artist who’s clearly pushing their creative boundaries alongside their audience’s expectations of what her music can be. Across 17 tracks, this is less a sci-fi concept album and more an exercise in spacy style, blending funk, ska, dance, pop, and a half-dozen other genres to extraterrestrial effect.

To their credit, there are far more hit and misses. Tracks like “Manifestation Manifesto” and “Aerial Head” are expansive grooves that are equally adept at calming you down or getting you up for a night out. “FLUORESCENT / Beyond Space” is as cinematic a rap-pop hybrid as you’ll find, while “Push N Shuv” is one of my favorite singles of the year so far.

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What’s a recent release you’ve been playing on repeat? Share titles and links in the comments.