About two weeks ago, music outlets began their annual tradition of sharing 83,452 “best of” lists with the general public. Then, of course, the streaming services did their thing and turned the general public into music outlets/unwitting marketing tools as everyone shared their “most listened to” stats.
We’ve never been ones to run with the crowd when it comes to this kind of thing, so we were content staying put and waiting for the dust to settle. That gave the 88Nine staff time to plumb the depths of their knowledge and pick their personal top 10 albums for 2024, all of which we threw into a highly scientific scoring system that spit out the definitive 88Nine list of 2024’s best albums.
Being an indie-alternative station, that’s the kind of music you’ll see below. But the beautiful thing is how catch-all “indie alternative” is. You’ll find elements of country, psych, chamber pop, electronic, funk and plenty more in the final list. It isn’t just one thing. It’s many great things.
You no doubt listened to a few of these albums already. This is a reminder to revisit them. You no doubt missed a few of these albums entirely. This is a chance to discover them. Either way, we know you’ll enjoy them.
Best indie albums of 2024
10. Real Estate, ‘Daniel’
Having a release party for your sixth studio album and only letting people in with variations of the name “Daniel” is such a Real Estate thing to do. The jangly-pop vets from New Jersey are as kitschy as they are consistent.
After taking some sonic liberties with their last album, 2020’s The Main Thing, Real Estate returned to deliver their quintessential blend of bittersweet indie perfection. For Daniel, the band brought in the twang, enlisting Grammy-winner producer Daniel Tashian from Nashville and adding pedal steel to five of the record’s 11 tracks. Yet, somehow, their sound remained that reliably crisp, surfy Real Estate vibe we all know and love.
“Water Underground” and “Flowers” are undeniable bangers. “Airdrop” is a faster-paced cut that features a warbly synth-filled bridge and some brooding lyrics from frontman Martin Courtney. He noted that, thematically, the album delves into “universal concerns: being a parent, being a person. It’s all in there.”
My agency, a whisper
Into the wider world
And when I asked a question
The ocean's all I heard
The layers of shiny hooks and memorable melodies Real Estate build on Daniel manufactures a distinctly chill atmosphere only they can occupy. Notably, their cover of Sir Elton John’s “Daniel” didn’t make the album but did gain them a new fan and appearance on the Pinball Wizard’s Rocket Hour podcast.
Daniel marks the band’s first album with new drummer Sammi Niss, who was behind the kit and in the pocket when they passed through Radio Milwaukee for a Studio Milwaukee Session back in April. The Garden State quintet reminded us then that Real Estate is, was and will continue to be an appreciable asset.
– Arya Ahmadi
9. Remi Wolf, ‘Big Ideas’
Remi Wolf is an unstoppable force that boasts a funky pop-meets-indie-rock aesthetic and unmistakable charisma. Big Ideas is a testament to her artistry, standing tall among my favorite projects this year.
The former American Idol contestant, preparing for part two of her headlining tour in 2025, has captivated fans with her electric energy and unapologetic authenticity. Wolf’s music is a vibrant fusion of funk, soul and indie pop, with lyrics that balance humor and emotional depth. Her breakout in 2019 with “Shawty” paved the way for Juno, an album that earned critical acclaim for its fearless experimentation and hits like “Photo ID.”
Known for her IDGAF attitude and magnetic stage presence, Wolf embodies the creativity and boldness that define today’s Gen-Z stars. With challenges like the pandemic derailing many artists, Wolf persevered by creating music that inspires emotional release and self-expression. Big Ideas is no exception, giving listeners a chance to let go and embrace the chaos.
— Kenny Perez
8. Brittany Howard, ‘What Now’
Part of the reason I love Brittany Howard’s second solo record has a lot to do with when it was released. February in Wisconsin can be rough — temps are quite cold, and daylight is sparse. So this beautifully lush and thoughtful album hit me in the right place at the right time.
Recorded during the pandemic, the subject matter of What Now is existential. Howard wrapped her powerful songwriting around concepts of unfulfilled love, wishing for peace but also dealing with future depression. It’s the human experience — topics we can all relate to everyday.
From house music grooves to psychedelia with a bit of soul, blues, funk and jazz, What Now has a vibe for every mood. But maybe most surprising is what happens between tracks. Howard incorporates singing bowls played by sound-bath practitioners to set the album’s spiritual vibe.
If you’re one of those people whose music is also their church — and somehow you missed this record — make sure you put What Now into rotation.
— Dori Zori
7. The Cure, ‘Songs Of a Lost World’
This is the end of every song that we sing … where did it go?
The eternal goodbye of “Alone” introduced Songs Of a Lost World, The Cure’s first new studio recording in over a decade and a half. It wasn’t a leap from Robert Smith’s trademark emotional head-on collisions, yet hearing “Alone” felt like an extra potent emotional release, specific to a post-pandemic world (brought on further by the tide of mortality).
The 65-year-old Smith’s poetry in the song is captivating: “The fire burned out to ash and the stars grown dim with tears, cold and afraid, the ghosts of all that we’ve been we toast with bitter dregs to our emptiness.” Although bleak in a sands-of-the-hourglass kinda way, his words hit their mark elegantly in their significance.
As the first single, “Alone” was the opening salvo from the record I looked forward to most in 2024 and proved instantly enveloping — a massive iceberg of a song, floating sumptuously in a twinkly pool of despair as elements of the world as we know it continue to crash and burn around it. My first full listen took me even further into that world, and I’m not sure I’ve actually come out of it. Once aboard that iceberg, it becomes the default mode of transport.
While sprawling and slow-moving at times, Songs Of a Lost World is a bare-faced but beautiful look at the chill of mortality that’s necessary to accept, eventually. This record is a lot (a whole lot), and you’ll have to be open to it to speak to you. But once it does, the messages are ones you’ll keep forever.
— Erin Wolf
6. Waxahatchee, ‘Tigers Blood’
When I was younger, I would adamantly say, “I like all music but country.” Over the years, I realized how misguided that was while spotting how much my beloved singer-songwriter sound, with its harmonies and guitars, was indebted to country music.
Alt-country, Americana, indie folk — whatever you want to call it, I’m there for tight harmonies, slide guitar and smart lyrics, especially from women with whom I can sing along. Waxahatchee’s sixth studio album, Tigers Blood, has all that, delivered with an undertone of wistfulness and longing.
I had high expectations for this album — heck, I was recommending it to people before I even listened to it all the way through — and Waxahatchee delivered with sweet guitars and just the right amount of grit. The top-notch support she received didn’t hurt, either, with contributions from MJ Lenderman, Spencer Tweedy, and Brad and Phil Cook.
Tigers Blood is nominated for a Grammy award for Best Americana Album, Waxahatchee’s first nomination. On Feb. 2, we’ll find out if the members of the Recording Academy liked it as much as I did.
— Doris Wessels
5. Khruangbin, ‘A La Sala’
I’m a busy person. Don’t worry! I’m okay with it, and it’s my preferred way of living. Although lately, my brain has confronted me with a nagging realization I can’t shake: Life happens too quickly. We’ve got endless entertainment to scroll at the end of our fingertips and shorter attention spans, and it doesn’t help that TikTok produces video gold every five seconds.
Knowing all of this had me searching for something that could let me take a breath, pause and sit in my existence — even just for a few moments.
The instant A La Sala starts, you’re transported to a warm summer night, lying in the long grass staring up at an impossibly starry sky, with the only thing measuring how much time has passed being the sultry licks of Mark Speer's electric guitar and Laura Lee’s bass, deep in passionate conversation.
As you listen to track after track, you can’t help but get lost in a series of daydreams that morph into one another and shift just as suddenly as they begin. It’s no coincidence that the cover features a window on a wall looking out upon the possibilities of a single cloud in an invitingly blue sky.
I love this album because it’s 40 minutes of obligatory self-care. When I listen to it, I’m overcome with stillness — transported to a place where I can think about everything or nothing or anything between. It’s a spa day for the musical mind.
— Britt Gottschalk
4. Justice, ‘Hyperdrama’
My most listened to album of 2024 comes from my SECOND fave French electronic music duo (shout out to Daft Punk for holding down the No. 1 spot). Justice released Hyperdrama this April, their fourth studio album and first new record in seven years. You know I love a good dance party, and Justice just keeps groovin’ with every single track.
Alternating between funk and electronic to soul and disco, Hyperdrama has everything you need to feel great vibes, including songs with Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, which is the collaboration I never knew I needed but now I just always want.
Taking my love of this album to the next level, I was lucky enough to see Justice at Coachella. Dancing with my pals at a big festival with lit-up palm trees under the desert’s starry night sky was pretty special. But this album is just as enjoyable on your own, listening through a great set of headphones while out on a pleasant walk.
— Dori Zori
3. Father John Misty, ‘Mahashmashana’
Father John Misty told us what he was about to do when he shared the title of his sixth studio album: Mahashmashana, a Sanskrit word for cremation ground — the burning wasteland before the next life. In it, the prog crooner transcends futile ideas of life and death, abandoning the standard of a 3-minute song and surrendering to the apocalyptic future he has always hinted at.
Going back to the humble beginnings of 2012’s Fear Fun, FJM displayed a playful nature accompanied by self-deprecating inner monologues. The optimism was alive and well. Three years later, I Love You, Honeybear marked an era of Joshua Tillman at his most hopeful. Things start to get darker with 2017’s Pure Comedy, and that road ultimately leads to Mahashmashana, in which the only hope lies in another life.
This is how we came to receive the 8-1/2-minute epic, “I Guess Time Just Makes a Fool of Us All.” Yet the album balances those long ballads with poppy nods to The Velvet Underground in tracks like “She Cleans Up,” giving it that ever-necessary grasp at playful songwriting that redeems the nihilism of FJM.
Mahashmashana details the “burning wasteland” of now. I can only imagine by the arrival of his subsequent record, Tillman will have arrived in this next life to tell us in unrestrained sarcasm how thrilled he is to be there.
— Carolann Grzybowski
2. Jessica Pratt, ‘Here In the Pitch’
Listening to Jessica Pratt’s latest (and fourth) album Here In the Pitch is a total trip — and maybe that’s where my mind wanted to be this year.
This beautifully disorienting journey originates in Cali, where the sounds that blossomed in the ‘60s maintain their far-reaching roots. Here In the Pitch offers reinvigorated and recombobulated particles of folk music initially set in motion decades ago.
Though vintage-dusted, Pratt’s newly minted psych folk resonates in the modern world as it reflects on the most basic of basics, like life not happening the way you thought it might or wondering if relationships will pan out. Through her lens, Pratt offers a disarming snapshot of human nature’s unceasing waves and timeless pitfalls — observation over resolution.
Chatting with her before the record released in May, Pratt described growing up with a “music head” mom who homeschooled her in “the Napster era” in northern California, which informed Pratt’s more expansive lifestyle and worldview, eventually nudging her into the life of storyteller and musician. Crack open a song, and her wider worldview peeks out: psych, bossa nova and pop brush shoulders languidly.
Pratt’s worldly wizardry (joined by producer Al Carlson) lies in her ability to alchemize space and technique to her liking, cradling her songs in a mood that’s as much of a sigh and a settling in as it is a feeling of complete unease of the unknown. In this album, she’s distilled what it feels like to grow.
– Erin Wolf
1. MJ Lenderman, ‘Manning Fireworks’
Not everyone can romanticize the home of the Big Mac in heart-wrenching admissions of guilt. But MJ Lenderman isn’t most guys.
His fourth studio album pokes fun at an era of celebrated melodrama — “We sat under a half-mast McDonalds flag” — with an honest confession of his most authentic self. It came at a time when Lenderman and Wednesday bandmate Karly Hartzmen ended their years-long relationship, and what remains amongst the rubble is a painfully catchy, guitar-driven break-up album in which he finds himself at the scene of the crime.
If Jason Molina learned to laugh at himself, he’d start sounding a lot like this. The joke is on Lenderman — and Lenderman is in on the joke — as he comes to realize the indicators of his material success are the indicators of his downfall. To put it another way, the “himbo dome” is always greener on the other side.
Clever lyricism coincides with a consistent priority to make every track an undeniable headbanger. Lenderman and his guitar compete for the title of leading role until it's clear the star quality of one of them couldn’t exist without the other. He carefully works alongside his defense mechanisms, the 2008 Fender Jazzmaster and a sarcastic script, to guide him rather than hide him.
The record lends itself to the warped phenomenon of connection through disconnecting. Lenderman is the brush, and this is his canvas of avoiding confrontation while giving vulnerable realizations of, “It's not you. It's me.” Manning Fireworks is the “deleted scene of Lightning McQueen,” and Lenderman is ready to accept he’s behind the wheel, “Blacked out at full speed.”
— Carolann Grzybowski