Top 20 Indie Alternative & Rock Albums of 2021

From the moment she began writing Jubilee, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner knew that she wanted to call it. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. At the start of a new decade, Japanese Breakfast is ready to fight for happiness, an all-too-scarce resource in our seemingly crumbling world. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Magic Mirror is a looking glass of sorts. Like a modern day Alice in Wonderland, Pearl Charles beckons you to slip and fall into her world. You’ll find yourself drifting with the tide – the ups, downs, and all-arounds of a life well-lived and well- loved. From start to finish you float along a reflective river, dancing in your own private Studio 54 of your living room, decked out in sequins or nothing at all. It’s a feel good album that asks us to actually take the time to feel good. Magic Mirror follows the cartography of a girl, growing into a woman, as she moves through life from singledom, to the expansive space of self-reflection, and the newly appreciated perspective of coming back together again and finding yourself, this time with someone new. A love letter to the self, a dance party for life, and at times as introspective as your best trip, Pearl takes us on a journey that, like life and love, has the tendency to surprise, delight, and leave you breathless. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Front to back, I’ve Got Some Living To Do, the debut album from Jelani Aryeh is filled with nostalgia, warm energy, and a comforting spirit. "This was made out of loneliness," says Aryeh adding, "I just want to make people feel less alone. Like dude it’s ok, I'm here for ya." To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Suave Punk’s EP Heaven is a Night Drive was inspired by the allure that came from the simplicity of movement during a year that was largely stagnant. While the world felt motionless, taking a drive was an escape. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Multi-genre recording artist and songwriter Anaiis’ debut album, This Is No Longer A Dream is a deeply personal project in which Anaiis explores her own emotional state in order to reclaim her narrative and agency. When discussing the project’s theme Anaiis explained, “it’s a sign that healing is never linear. I had to externalise my thoughts and emotions to process and let go of them. Essentially I was spewing out the poison invading my body.” To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

LUMP's (vocalist Laura Marling and producer Mike Lindsay) second album Animal is vivid and psychedelic masterpiece. Animal was a word Laura Marling threw into a lyric simply to meet a rhythm. But it seemed to capture the mood of the new record, and of Lump as a whole. “There’s a little bit of a theme of hedonism on the album, of desires running wild,” she says. “And also it fed into the idea we had from the start of thinking of Lump as a kind of representation of instincts, and the world turned upside down.” To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Things Take Time, Take Time is a breakthrough for Courtney Barnett. This is Barnett at her most relaxed, creative and joyful. An exquisite look at the intimate, private world created by Barnett and drummer/producer Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint, Cate le Bon, Kurt Vile). It's consequently her most beautiful and intimate record to date. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Faye Webster loves the feeling of a first take: writing a song, then heading to the studio with her band to track it live the very next day. When you listen to Webster’s poised and plainspoken albums, you can hear why. She channels emotions that are so aching, they seem to be coming into existence at that very moment. Webster captures the spark before it has a chance to fade; she inks lyrics before they have a chance to seem fleeting. Her signature sound pairs close, whisper-quiet, home-recorded vocals with the unmistakable sound of musicians together in a room. I Know I’m Funny haha is Webster’s most realized manifestation yet of this emotional and musical alchemy. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Following the huge success of her The Baby and The Baby Reimagined albums, Samia's brand new EP Scout (released on July 23, 2021) showcases her diverse musical palate, traversing the plains of gloriously infectious pop and atmospheric indie before serving up a winsome ballad and a cover of When In Rome’s “The Promise” with Jelani Aryeh. This superb release marks an extremely successful year for Samia. Listen to Scout on Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Stand for Myself is the anthemic new album from Yola. Produced by Dan Auerbach, the record is a timeless masterpiece marking an idiosyncratic sonic shift, which will defy all expectations. A sophisticated and diverse sonic mix of symphonic soul and classic pop, tracing an expansive musical thread to Yola's most eclectic musical inspirations. Yola's inimitable vocals share nuanced stories of allyship, black feminine strength through vulnerability, collective awakening and loving connection from the sexual to the social. Yola declares that it is only when we stand for ourselves, and acknowledge our complexity, that we can be truly alive. For Yola, living is more than merely surviving. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Fun House, the project of musician Hand Habits is the most ambitious album to date. Produced by SASAMI and engineered by King Tuff, the record was not intended as a reaction to the pandemic, but it was very much the result of taking a difficult, if much-needed, moment of pause. Emboldened by going into therapy and coaxed by SASAMI to push the songs into unexpected new shapes, the resulting music is more acutely personal and stylistically adventurous than anything you’ve heard from Hand Habits before. The push/pull of styles, paired with songs that move deftly between the present and past, give the record a wildly diverse, hall of mirrors quality that befits its name. Where previous Hand Habits records could be fairly insular affairs, Fun House feels ebullient, lush, a fully-realized conversation. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

BAD WITH PHONES is a south east London based artist, songwriter, producer & designer who has been making music out of his bedroom since the 2020 pandemic. Inspired by films like Mad Max, Pulp Fiction and The Fifth Element, BWP is a cross contamination of electronic beats, guitars and R&B. BWP’s debut album Marinade is a result of that experimentation. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

“Everything has to be said.” This is the conviction guiding Indigo De Souza’s sophomore album, Any Shape You Take. This dynamic record successfully creates a container for the full spectrum—pushing through and against every emotion, “I wanted this album to give a feeling of shifting with and embracing change. These songs came from a turbulent time when I was coming to self-love through many existential crises and shifts in perspective.” This sonic range is unified by Indigo’s strikingly confessional and effortless approach to songwriting. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Lucy Dacus third album, Home Video was built on an interrogation of her coming-of-age years in Richmond, VA. Many songs start the way a memoir might—"In the summer of ‘07 I was sure I’d go to heaven, but I was hedging my bets at VBS”—and all of them have the compassion, humor, and honesty of the best autobiographical writing. Most importantly and mysteriously, this album displays Dacus’ ability to use the personal as a portal into the universal. “I can’t hide behind generalizations or fiction anymore,” Dacus says, though talking about these songs, she admits, makes her ache. That Home Video arrives at the end of this locked down, fearful era seems as preordained as the messages within. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Little Oblivions is the third studio album by Julien Baker. Recorded in Memphis, TN, the record weaves together an unflinching autobiography with assimilated experience and hard-won observations from the past few years, taking Baker’s capacity for storytelling to new heights. It also marks a sonic shift, with the songwriter's intimate piano and guitar arrangements newly enriched by bass, drums, keyboards, banjo, and mandolin with nearly all of the instruments performed by Baker. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Mood Valiant has been in the making for six years, but that interval reflects the hustle of Hiatus Kaiyote. The result is an album that relaxes into a groove: sunlit, sublime, masterful. By the fall of 2018, backing tracks had largely been laid, ready for Nai’s vocals. Then, during a brief swing through the U.S., Hiatus’ frontwoman was diagnosed with breast cancer. “That was a massive scare,” recalls Nai. Her mother’s death from the same disease was never far from her mind. Nai rushed back to Australia and into the hospital, where she underwent a life-saving mastectomy. As Nai recovered, the band turned back to their work with altered perspectives. Her lyrics, even those written before her illness, took on a prescient quality. It wasn't until a trip to Rio de Janeiro in late-2019 to work with legendary Brazilian arranger Arthur Verocai on "Get Sun" that the vibe of the entire album shifted. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Every now and then an artist comes along who makes you remember why you started listening to albums in the first place: Aaron Lee Tasjan and Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! is that artist and that is the album. With his wrecked cool, off-center charm, and restless creative dazzle, he makes music with conviction that has its roots in rock’s murky past, armed with an arsenal of songs that spill over with humor, intelligence, irony, personal vision and at times prophecy. An obsessive creative, Tasjan writes pop songs with a twist, a little overdriven, far too honest at times. He updates the idea of androgyny but dispels the emotional and social ambiguity with lyrics that reflect his own geographic and artistic wanderings. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

TORRES’ fifth album Thirstier pumps the miraculous into the mundane. It is in open revolt against the gray drag of time, a searing and life-affirming eruption of an album that wonders what could happen if we found a way to make our fantasies inexhaustible. What if we got whatever we wanted and still wanted it, endlessly, with no threat of boredom and no danger of depletion? What could we become if we let ourselves grow incandescent with eternally renewing desire? Recorded in the fall of 2020 at Middle Farm Studios in Devon, UK, Thirstier marks a turn towards a bigger, more bombastic sound for TORRES. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

You Only Call When You Want... is the debut project for alternative recording artist Remy released in partnership with Hopeless Records. On the 12 track project, Remy proves why he is one of the rising stars of the genre. With a mixture of strong vocals and impressive instrumentation, keep your ears open for Remy. To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.

Over the course of two EPs, two singles and a stripped-back live album, Puma Blue has established himself as one of the UK’s most vital new talents. Now comes the long awaited debut album In Praise of Shadows is a delirious dreamland of soulful vocals, D’Angelo-ish guitars and muted electronic beats. Its fourteen tracks are a contemplation on “the balance of light and dark, the painful things you have to heal from or accept, that bring you through to a better place” says the 25-year-old Puma Blue, real name Jacob Allen “It’s about finding light in darkness - and realising that it’s what got me here today.” To stream the album visit Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal.