20. Mount Eerie – “Tintin in Tibet”

from Now Only (PW Elverum and Sun)

“Tintin in Tibet” is sung to Phil Elverum’s dead wife Genviève—or, rather, the idea of her, the space where she used to be. “When I address you, who am I talking to?” Elverum sings toward the beginning of the song before launching into a series of vivid remembrances of their 13-year romance. The scenes presented in the early parts of the song are the sort of meet-cute that wouldn’t be out of place in a romantic comedy—beautiful and peaceful enough to lull you into forgetting the devastating truth at the center of the song. By the end, we feel Genviève’s absence too, so vividly has Elverum drawn their relationship. The song makes us understand—and it hurts.- Sam Prickett

19. Kurt Vile – “Bassackwards”

from Bottle It In (Matador)

Boasting an almost-ten-minute running time, “Bassackwards” is more of an experience than a song. One listen is the closest thing to stepping inside Vile’s creative brain, endless twists and turns leading back to the same, addicting opening. When it was released, Vile also announced his world tour, sort of a wink to those who know what’s in store for their night with the infamous KV. With twangy, reversed guitar licks and a swirling swell of Vile’s lyrics, the track feels like a walk down memory lane with Vile as the guide. He swoops into the listener’s brain, distracting from the present with a rush of layered melodies, crashing and announcing themselves like waves. – Virginia Croft

18. Father John Misty – “Mr. Tillman”

from God’s Favorite Customer (Sub Pop)

God’s Favorite Customer, the excellent fourth LP from Father John Misty, is ostensibly a document of a mental breakdown, from manic-self destruction to rock-bottom to mea culpa. “Mr. Tillman” firmly fits into the first category with a narrative both hilarious and tragic—a laundry list of Josh Tillman destroying both a hotel room and his life, delivered by an exhausted hotel employee desperate to maintain some facade of customer service, intercut with Tillman declaring that he’s “feeling good, damn, I’m feelin’ so fine.” This song is mirrored later on the album by the more despondent “The Palace”—but for this upbeat three minutes, “Mr. Tillman” shows us the thrill of riding a roller coaster that’s just about to go off the rails. – Sam Prickett

17. Beach House – “Dive”

from 7 (Sub Pop)

Beach House have become giants in their own right, and 7 was an absolutely gorgeous realization of the sound they’ve been developing over the years. However, they managed to outdo even themselves with “Dive.” The (what we’re obliged to call) dreamy, washed out chords and gentle melody that opens it are all well and good in their prettiness, but then that rippling guitar line kicks in as the arrangement builds and swells around it and you’re left truly stirred to your soul. It immediately serves as tribute to early dream-pop and shoegaze giants the likes of Cocteau Twins and Slowdive, while cementing Beach House as worthy of carrying the flame. – William Lewis

16. Childish Gambino – “This is America”

(RCA)

Let’s not talk about the spine-chilling masterpiece of a music video—this is purely about the track. Let’s also not deny the vehement political and cultural tumult that we find ourselves taking part in everyday in this country. In some fashion, this track defines a vicious juxtaposition between the disenfranchised, especially between communities of color and white America. Moody, abrasive, an exercise in tension through equal parts boundless jubilance and imposing dread, “This is America” never fully decides what it wants to be. It’s constantly torn between two identities sonically, with trimmed, carefree, choir-led verses with plucking guitars and bold, aggressive, bass-drenched choruses with ominous textures. There hasn’t been a better pop music depiction of America’s true identity in some time, ust as torn between our better half and something far more sinister, far more darker. – Brian Roesler

15. Robyn – “Honey”

from Honey (Konichiwa)

The restrained bass throb, ticking high-hats, and synth washes in the title track of Robyn’s new album power a gospel for so many sinful things. The song slides back and forth between warm comfort (“Every breath it whispers your name/It’s like emeralds on the pavement”) and dirty hotness (“Can you open up to pleasure/Suck it up inside like a treasure”), each extreme nevertheless managing to still treat physical intimacy as something valuable. This might be as sonically reserved a hit single as Sweden’s dancing queen has ever released, but boy howdy, will it give the whole damn gender spectrum the vapors. – Adam Blyweiss

14. Iceage – “Pain Killer”

from Beyondless (Matador)

Earlier this year, Iceage vocalist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt said that he was both sick of being compared to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and that he “fucking love(s) the Rolling Stones.” Can’t do much about the first when you’re fronting an impossibly talented, stylish and handsome post-punk group, but in the case of the latter, that sense of swagger and sexuality fed pretty heavily into the band’s fourth and best album, Beyondless. Four years ago, a song like “Pain Killer,” featuring some breathy harmonies from Sky Ferreira, wouldn’t necessarily have been out of the question, but it would have been a stretch. Seven years ago, it would have seemed impossible. But the Danish group hasn’t just grown into some of the best songwriters in rock music, they’ve embraced a level of camp and seduction that their early punk records never suggested they had in them. “Pain Killer” pulls heavily from the Depeche Mode school of drugs and sex as salvation, but it doesn’t feel so dire. With a horn section to back them and an irresistible sense of fun, Iceage seem pretty comfortable easing down the rock-god path. – Jeff Terich

13. The Carters (Beyoncé and Jay-Z) – “APESHIT”

from Everything Is Love (S.C./Roc Nation)

Shit-talking is one of hip-hop’s key components. Not many in the genre have as much room to unreservedly talk their shit as Beyoncé and Jay-Z; in their case, they often do so without saying a word. Thankfully they don’t stay silent, or we wouldn’t have an anthem like “APESHIT:” Is it novel? No. Do Beyonce and Jay casually do it better than almost everyone in rap this year? Absolutely, especially when aided by Pharrell Williams’ future-funk production and Quavo’s hype-man toasting. The renewed vigor in Hov’s flow and verbal ingenuity is inspired, and while Bey has rapped before, her rip-through verse in the second half of “APESHIT” leaves more than a few dextrous MCs in the dust. – Liam Green

12. Nine Inch Nails – “Over and Out”

from Bad Witch (The Null Corporation)

There are moments when “Over and Out” calls back to one of the more troubled releases in the NIN catalog: The Fragile, full as it is of vibraphone-like processing, distant wails of feedback, and ambient melody. Yet it also rests at the center of a Venn diagram that on its face seems strange but gets more believable the longer you look at it. Nine Inch Nails and LCD Soundsystem have crossed paths before, as James Murphy remixed big NIN hit “The Hand That Feeds” in 2005. The groove of “Over and Out” sounds for all the world like Trent Reznor playing the inverse of an LCD song, its funk sad and depressing, the methodical rhythm samples seemingly dropping out at random. But then there’s the skronky and heavily modified saxophone and that voice—THAT voice—that Reznor effects which help draw the last overlapping circle, scaring up his and Murphy’s great inspiration and occasional partner David Bowie in final, skeletal Blackstar form. – Adam Blyweiss

11. Aphex Twin – “T69 Collapse”

from Collapse EP (Warp)

“T69 collapse,” the primary first single of Aphex Twin’s Collapse EP, bears signs of just how long Richard James has been around as one of electronic music’s preeminent composers. Hints of drum ’n’ bass, jungle, industrial, acid house and probably a dozen other long-forgotten subcategories of electronic surface at various points, as they do through the entire EP.

Yet this is no rehash: At first, its tendrils of rhythm dart back and forth like monsters briefly emerging from hidden places underneath minor-key synthesizer melodies, and we’re in a noisy but not unappealing place. Then, the track’s bottom drops out at the two-minute mark and the percussion enters an oppressive place—the monsters don’t feel like hiding anymore. They’re here to fucking kill you. While a variation on the initial melody returns at 3:17 and the track resumes a calmer tempo, we remain scarred by the sonic pill that’s just been shoved down our throats. Intentional or not, that’s as apt a metaphor for these times as one could imagine. – Liam Green

10. Janelle Monáe – “Make Me Feel”

from Dirty Computer (BadBoy)

A woozy, funky number in the middle of a kaleidoscopic pop-funk masterpiece. Monáe channels her inner Prince here, marrying funk to bright synths and avant-garde background textures. A song that celebrates Monáe’s pansexuality, one that lays her impulse bare and unjustified, embracing sex and desire on their own terms in joy. The ghost of Prince is no accident; Monáe and Prince were close friends worked together in the past, and his passing left an indelible mark on Monáe’s heart. She has been touted as a current virtuoso pop songwriter, muttered in the same breath as her legendary collaborator, and songs like “Make Me Feel” explain this reverence. She is in turns Bowie and Prince, Michael and Janet, Madonna and Diana. It is less that Janelle Mon´e makes art-pop with broader pop appeal as much as, like those pop greats before her and current pop greats like Beyoncé, she makes pop that is so undeniably perfected and resplendent that they erupt upward as revered art. – Langdon Hickman

9. The Internet – “La Di Da”

from Hive Mind (Columbia)

The Internet’s Hive Mind is a rich, layered album with a lot of moments that are rewarding not in spite of but because of their subtle complexity. This is not one of those moments. Third single “La Di Da” is just an effortlessly funky track with verses from Syd that sound like hooks and a hook from Steve Lacy that sticks in my head for days at a time. Every group member plays their part here, from Patrick Paige II’s stuttering bass to Steve Lacy’s kitchen-sink percussion to Matt Martians’s Ron Burgundy-“kind of a big deal” spoken interlude. But y’all don’t hear me—y’all just wanna dance. As you should. – Ben Dickerson

8. Iceage – “Catch It”

from Beyondless (Matador)

The first time I saw Iceage live (at Bonnaroo) they were unbelievably drunk at 3 p.m.—to the point that they completely botched “On My Fingers” and just abandoned the song halfway through. For some reason, the audience, including myself, forgave them. Maybe it’s because they’ve built their career on a caricature of rockstar disaffection. Their best songs border on psychopathic disdain for others—and “Catch It” is the prime example of that attitude on their latest album, Beyondless. It’s a song about getting what you want—maybe drugs, maybe sex—no matter the lies you have to tell. And it’s delivered atop a seductively languid guitar riff that feels like a spider inviting a fly into its web. – Sam Prickett

7. Noname – “Blaxploitation”

from Room 25 (Self-released)

Noname’s flow is conversational. Her words surge and spill, giving listeners little time to process the rapper’s poetic truths on politics, heartbreak and adulthood before the next line hits. The Chicago native casually rattles off verses in a tone so matter-of-fact, it’s as if she’s telling us something we already know. On Room 25 highlight “Blaxploitation,” Noname raps prophetic adages in real time, documenting black stereotypes and institutionalized racism. Gripping funk loops of drum and bass begin to patter and thud around whip-smart quips on ceaseless political anxieties, Warner’s own self-awareness and “pissing off the Betty Boop,” a sly but layered jab at white, old-timey traditionalism. “Blaxploitation” is Room 25’s unequivocally political high point, fueled by Noname’s subtly cutting wordplay and candid observations. – Patrick Pilch

6. Low – “Dancing and Blood”

from Double Negative (Sub Pop)

It’s not controversial to say Low’s Double Negative floored pretty much everyone who heard it. Distant, fractured and desperate, it was a record for the times even as it rallied against the disparate world we find ourselves in. This sense was never more apparent than on second track “Dancing and Blood,” one of three connected singles released as emissaries of the apocalypse to come. Sounding as if it were recorded from some ghostly dimension beyond reach, harbored in a deep chasm and seeping up through the depths of the ocean, the steady explosive pound of the kick and stuttering, chilling vocal melody burrow into the consciousness and linger like an apparition of our realized fears. “What could I say? Taken aback. All that you gave wasn’t enough,” Mimi Parker sings, barely legible through the icy winds of its sonic backdrop. That it closes out with almost three minutes of relative stillness—one eerie choral note that fades in and out of focus—only serves to cocoon the hollow sense of loss already created; a dying breath of desperation clinging to its final throes. – William Lewis

5. Kacey Musgraves – “High Horse”

from Golden Hour (MCA Nashville)

It’s easy to read Kacey Musgraves’ “High Horse” as a takedown of the outdated macho attitudes still all-too-prevalent in mainstream country music. In fact, the very first line is, “I bet you think you’re John Wayne/showing up and shooting everybody,” setting up the cowboy hero ideal only to slap it back down. It’s a little more universal than that, though, so while this could have been a clever piece of self-aware critique inside Musgraves’ own bailiwick—and still very much is to an extent—”High Horse” is a cathartic feelgood hit because it’s so much more than that. It hits back at the bullies, claps back at the haters and stands its ground no matter how brazen the offense. And Musgraves pulls it off in fabulous fashion, trading her denim for sequins and feeding her Western twang through Daft Punk-sized filters. Just like in the Westerns, the hero still wins, and she makes the landscape sparkles as she rides off into the sunset. – Jeff Terich

4. Yves Tumor – “Noid”

from Safe in the Hands of Love (Warp)

Yves Tumor’s latest collection of stunning experimentalism, Safe in the Hands of Love, certainly came as a surprise, and a pleasant one at that. On “Noid,” its standout first single and a sharp stylistic turn, Sean Bowie explores racial tensions and a distrust for the very system of which Bowie exists in: “I’m scared for my life / They don’t trust us / I’m not part of the killing spree / A symptom, born loser, statistic.” This all happens over perturbed, sample-heavy arrangements channeling disco and drum and bass. “Noid” is a scattered mess of a political anthem, catchy and effective at once. – Timothy Michalik

3. Emma Ruth Rundle – “Darkhorse”

from On Dark Horses (Sargent House)

Over her past three solo albums, Emma Ruth Rundle has developed her heavy, shoegazing rock into a sound both airy and surreal. Her effected guitar at times resembles the cries of wild horses and in others the gentle swoon of old country tunes, all dripped melting across a steamy odd-time psychedelic haze of a track. It’s a shoegaze that feels more influenced by post-metal a la ISIS than the British scene that celebrated itself, paring down that punishingly heavy emotional intensity into something both more approachable and more darkly beautiful. “Darkhorse”, the functional title track of her record On Dark Horses, is not only the high-point of the record but perhaps the best song she’s written in her career. It features not only a chorus riff heavy and emotional enough to fit snugly in a track by former tourmates Deafheaven but an instrumental bridge that wouldn’t feel out of place in the hands of a group like MONO or Envy. Her guitar, of which there is a beautiful abundance, sparkles and glitters over the surface, simmering and gleaming. There is a heft and gentle swing, like a bar-blues song, appended to a sound more associated with art rock and cerebralism, providing a tangible sonic link between body music, mind music, and music of the heart. A masterwork of contemporary guitar and rock music from one of its greatest current talents. – Langdon Hickman

2. Mitski – “Nobody”

from Be the Cowboy (Dead Oceans)

This song’s chugging guitar and flitting drum line surely sound destined for someone’s party playlist, yet from her opening declaration “My God, I’m so lonely,” Mitski instead references the despairing indie-dance roots of St. Etienne, Broadcast, and Camera Obscura. She skillfully ties together three failed and concerning quests for connection: a trip to her old home of Malaysia, a constant struggle with body image, and so many romantic misfires and absences. Mitski’s discography is quickly filling up with paeans to the dilemma of being a jack of all origins, master of none, and this might be one of her most deceptively complex constructions. – Adam Blyweis

1. Pusha T – “If You Know You Know”

from DAYTONA (Def Jam)

When I said almost in reference to “APESHIT” not quite being 2018’s best shit-talk session, “If You Know You Know” is the exception to which I was referring. Pusha T knew no rivals in this year’s hip-hop universe, with the one-day’s-notice release of DAYTONA carrying all the immediacy and impact of an executioner’s blade. From the opening hi-hat ticks and vocal chops of “If You Know You Know,” instantly matched in urgency with Pusha’s hyper-confidence—“Wrist on that boy rock star like Pink Floyd … You could never do what I do, boy/I’m still duckin shit that I did, boy”—the listener is sucked into a world characterized by wealth and opulence but full of reminders about how hard-earned such fineries were.

The Kanye West-produced track fully lets rip after Pusha’s first invocation of its title and doesn’t slow down: West cuts the guitar and keyboard licks of Air’s “Twelve O’Clock Santanial” to the bone and deploys them like air-raid sirens the same way Hank Shocklee turned James Brown’s oeuvre into sonic death machines for Public Enemy. It perfectly suits the unapologetic swagger of Terrence Thornton, a survivor of Virginia Beach dope-trade violence, record-label fuckery of the highest order and the dissolution of Clipse, who now stands among his genre’s greatest artists. In a nation and time when Black Americans are mocked and murdered by avowed advocates of the president, Push’s celebration of the luxury he now enjoys via acknowledgment of his criminal past is, in its way, just as necessary as the more direct activism he explores on songs like “Sunshine” and has practiced in his personal life. If you know, you know. – Liam Green