The Weeknd, FKA twigs, Bad Bunny, Rosalía, and Thom Yorke. Graphic by Marina Kozak, photos via Getty ImageEvery December, Pitchfork takes stock of the previous 12 months with our lists of the best songs and best albums of the year. For 2022, we've decided to add a new list: a mid-June rundown of our staff's individual favorite albums of the first half of the year. Unlike our December lists, this one is alphabetical and not ranked, and consists of personal picks rather than the results of a vote. The albums here run the gamut from the heights of fame (the Weeknd, Bad Bunny) to beloved left-of-center favorites (Animal Collective, FKA twigs, Earl Sweatshirt) to the depths of the underground (Astrid Sonne, Undeath,Alabaster dePlume). The only criteria for inclusion was that the album was released between late December 2021 and mid-June 2022.best thoughts, thinking about smiling
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4AD
Aldous Harding:Warm Chris
Best Moment: The culmination of “Leathery Whip,” where a chorus of voices sing “Here comes life with his leathery whip”—an essential metaphor in Harding’s particular oeuvre
Best Song: “Staring at the Henry Moore“
RIYL: The Muppets, staring contests, PJ Harvey, grimacing
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Jagjaguwar
Angel Olsen:Big Time
Best Moment: When Olsen belts “I’m dancing, baby/But I feel like dying” on “Go Home,” as waves of piano and voice rise and crash behind her
Best Song: “This Is How It Works“
RIYL: Doo-wop hooks, pedal steel, country longing
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Domino
Animal Collective:Time Skiffs
Best Moment: The ending of “Strung With Everything,” which at first sounds like it will drift and dissolve into ambience but instead explodes into ecstatic, fist-pumping call-and-response
Best Song: “We Go Back“
RIYL: Skittering insects, midafternoon reveries, mild mushroom trips, sweltering summers, pond-surface reflections, old-friend reunions
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Escho
Astrid Sonne:Ephemeral Camera Feed
Best Moment: The arpeggiated synths maneuvering through the crowd’s idle chatter on “Ephemeral V”
Best Song: “Ephemeral II“
RIYL: The expansive sound of Julianna Barwick, the somatic euphoria of being sonically pummeled while standing in a crowded space surrounded by strangers
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Studio Barnhus
Axel Boman:LUZ / Quest for Fire
Best Moment: How the cool, melodious raps on the first half of “BHUKA” build enough momentum to burst over dazzling arpeggiated synths by the end
Best Song: “BHUKA” (LUZ), “Stone Age Jazz” (Quest for Fire)
RIYL: Tender embraces, DJ Koze, wistful summer nights, saturated color displays
LUZ: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp |Spotify | Tidal
Quest for Fire: Amazon | Apple Music |Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Rimas
Bad Bunny: Un Verano Sin Ti
Best Moment: When “Después de la Playa” switches up from a morose trap ballad swirling in synthesizers to a raucous Dominican mambo engineered to flood the dancefloor
Best Song: “Después de la Playa“
RIYL: Trapchata, perreo on the beach
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4AD
Big Thief:Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
Best Moment: The overly muted acoustic guitars that sound like a cartoon character hitting their head on a succession of hanging frying pans on “Time Escaping”
Best Song: “The Only Place“
RIYL: John Prine, trying to describe just how much you love someone, the faint smell of Dave Matthews Band
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Run for Cover
Camp Cope:Running With the Hurricane
Best Moment: When Georgia Maq screams “Look out boys, I’m on fire, and I’m not going out” at the towering eye of the title track
Best Song: “The Screaming Planet“
RIYL: Emo-country with feminist agency, vulnerability as a tool of liberation, songs about women’s desires, double texting, the will to change
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Mexican Summer
Cate Le Bon:Pompeii
Best Moment: The riveting journey Le Bon’s voice takes on “French Boys,” the high notes cascading into her beautifully droll low register as she chews over this line: “French boys are making me wait”
Best Song: “Moderation“
RIYL: Elastic echoing guitars that are nearly inscrutable from elastic echoing synths, the paintings of Tim Presley, taking every fear that you have and sending them to Pompeii
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Atlantic
Charli XCX:Crash
Best Moment: Every time Charli says “baby” in “Baby”
Best Song: “Good Ones“
RIYL: Poppers, the clerb, ugly fashion sneakers, the original Techno Viking, “Bunny Is a Rider"
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DEEWEE
Charlotte Adigéry / Bolis Pupul: Topical Dancer
Best Moment: The endless rollicking laughter that guides the melody through “HAHA”
Best Song: “It Hit Me“
RIYL: Electro-pop bangers, campy winks, sarcastic POC wit
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Merge
Destroyer:Labyrinthitis
Best Moment: When the record ends with a lo-fi acoustic singalong that could have fit on a 1990s Destroyer record, and you realize how much ground Dan Bejar has covered since those days
Best Song: “June“
RIYL: Getting lost in a movie without following the plot, books so long they’re impractical to take on vacation
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Tan Cressida / Warner
Earl Sweatshirt:Sick!
Best Moment: The burp at the beginning of “Lye”
Best Song: “Fire in the Hole“
RIYL: Thoughtful vibes, spiritual absolution, MF Doom, Luck
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Young
FKA twigs:Caprisongs
Best Moment: The 13 seconds of screwed, slowed-down vocals in the breakdown on “oh my love” that sound like monsters making love
Best Song: “lightbeamers“
RIYL: Feelings of desire, angelic incantations, (happy) tears in the club
–Clover Hope
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GC
Hook: From, Hook
Best Moment: Hook laughing maniacally over a menacing melody and distorted kick drums on “LMAO”
Best Song: “LAnd“
RIYL: Skits on ’90s rap albums, riding the line between sincerity and irony, moshing in your car in traffic, dunking on people on and offline
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Incienso
Huerco S.:Plonk
Best Moment: Any time the Kansas City producer takes a cool stream of ambient sound, freezes it, and chops it into tiny ice cubes, which then rain down like a dub-techno hailstorm
Best Song: “Plonk III“
RIYL: Basic Channel played back in a walk-in cooler in zero gravity
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4AD
Jenny Hval:Classic Objects
Best Moment: The glorious sophistipop of “American Coffee”—who else in pop music can make us groove to lyrics about watching The Passion of Joan of Arc while “having a UTI”?
Best Song: “American Coffee“
RIYL: Female genius in pop music, subtly epic songwriting
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New West
Joshua Hedley: Neon Blue
Best Moment: The little steely wiggle right after Hedley sings “bluer than the sound of a steel guitar crying” at the end of “Neon Blue”
Best Song: “Broke Again“
RIYL: The yeehaw agenda, Telecasters, last call, neon moons
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Self-released
Junglepussy:JP5000
Best Moment: When Junglepussy rhymes “cost” and “nervous” on “Movie Screen”
Best Song: “Mystical“
RIYL: Bars, dollar pizza, meeting the love of your life at a Foreign Exchange show
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Sony UK / RCA
Koffee: Gifted
Best Moment: The way Koffee lilts “I wanna just party” on the breezy “West Indies,” turning a common phrase into a rallying cry for good times
Best Song: “Lonely“
RIYL: Stress-relieving beach strolls, lovers rock, eschewing loneliness, general uplift
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Hardcover / RCA
Leikeli47:Shape Up
Best Moment: The slow build of the beat throughout “Zoom”
Best Song: “Secret Service“
RIYL: House beats, undisputable hooks
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Dear Life
MJ Lenderman:Boat Songs
Best Moment: When Lenderman expresses solidarity with a supposedly flu-stricken Michael Jordan on “Hangover Game”: “Yeah, I love drinking too.”
Best Song: “You Are Every Girl to Me“
RIYL: Sports, indie rock memes, icy brews, fuzzy guitars
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ATO
Nilüfer Yanya:Painless
Best Moment: he storm front of guitar distortion that thickens around “Midnight Sun,” out of which Yanya’s falsetto beams: “always I did it for ya!”
Best Song: “Midnight Sun“
RIYL: The xx, Radiohead’s The Bends,alternating waves of euphoria and dysphoria
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G.O.O.D. Music / Def Jam
Pusha T: It’s Almost Dry
Best Moment: When Malice arrives to close the album with a brief but triumphant Clipse reunion, and opens his verse by asking “Tell me what I missed”
Best Song: “Call My Bluff“
RIYL: Icy luxury, playful threats, the old adage that Inuit people have 50 words for snow, except in this case by snow we mean cocaine
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Atlantic
Ravyn Lenae:Hypnos
Best Moment: The bridge of “Light Me Up,” where Lenae’s falsetto reaches an exquisite, seemingly impossible upper register
Best Song: “Light Me Up“
RIYL: Steve Lacy’s warped guitar melodies, flirting on the dancefloor, ’90s R&B
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Columbia
Rosalía:MOTOMAMI
Best Moment: The sonorous, semi-nonsense raps of “Chicken Teriyaki” and “Saoko,” where she sculpts her voice like a glinting blade and emerges as one of the stealthiest pop threats of the present day
Best Song: “Saoko“
RIYL: Reggaetón turned inside out
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Forever Living Originals
Sault: Air
Best Moment: When the brass first crashes into the choir on “Reality”
Best Song: “June 55“
RIYL: High drama choral music, epic film scores, Basil Poledouris
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Jagjaguwar
Sharon Van Etten: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong
Best Moment: The buildup in “Darkness Fades” at about 1:24, when the drums and keys kick in
Best Song: “Home to Me”
RIYL: Cat Power, Mazzy Star, watching your memories in slow motion through an old film projector
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