We're a hair past halfway through 2026, so the TND staff wanted to check in with you all and let you know some of our favorites of the year so far. These albums will likely end up on our personal year-end lists, but for now, we're just trying to shout out the records we have been coming back to over the first seven months of the year, that have meant the most to us, that have kept us hooked.

Enjoy the list, and hopefully you find something you love!

Note: As you (hopefully) already know, this list has nothing to do with Anthony's own (which you can check out here) or his opinions. The writers have opinions, too!

Beth Orton – The Ground Above [Partisan]

If you have been following Beth Orton’s career since the beginning, you’ve seen her go from folktronica queen, then to rustic folk singer, then to electronic rock-pop side-quester. And then, in recent years, a sort of settling in to a new wavelength. On 2022’s superb Weather Alive, Orton took her music down a much more patient path, with languorous, widescreen compositions making full use of her ace band, crafting intoxicating spells of jazz- and folk-influenced blends, full of pianos and steady beats and horns and woodwinds and guitars. And it was such a good fit that Orton and co. are back with a second helping in The Ground Above. If you liked one, you’ll like the other — which is not to say nothing has evolved. This is a possibly even more luxurious and immersive album, with some truly striking soundscapes and production, which is somehow both airy and earthen (perhaps as the title suggests), and the same band playing with an elemental, soft dynamism. And at the center is Orton’s weathered croon, always threatening to break but never quite crumbling, like a sheet of clouds with shafts of sun piercing through. Her style of songwriting and composition and even singing may have shifted over the years, but her ability to skirt right alongside the sublime has only strengthened. – Jeremy J. Fisette

Bladee - Sulfur Surfer [Trash Island]

Bladee has been refining his hazy, dense cloud rap sound for over a decade now, but new record Sulfur Surfer, which exclusively features production from fellow Swede Whitearmor, ups the ante a significant amount, delivering a record that embraces Bladee as a concept, a medium for exploring esotericism under the impenetrable cover of (semi) self-awareness. Lyrics include “I had ate so many nights, I’m becoming skinny fat,” which opens the track “Durins Bane,” although Bladee’s delivery, atop bitcrushed percussion and warbly synths, while he lists some of his favorite snacks, accompanied by gunshot samples, reveals he’s deadly serious. His mumbled, trembling flow stumbles from these self-ironic refrains to evocations of mysticism; it’s never clear where Bladee stands spiritually, and he’s more than happy to maintain that mystery, merely requesting the listener dig into his numerous references to Christianity, pop culture, and occultism over EDM soundscapes open-minded. Whitearmor’s production is lush and vivid; it flows downstream unencumbered by typical song structures, in line with Bladee’s lyrical forays refraining from the standard verse-chorus dynamic. With a feature from influential neofolk group Current 93 on “Fox & Birch”, we’re given a glimpse into a digital world gazing backward, as keys and synths chime before an almost Baroque string-led beat switch about halfway through ushers in vocals from David Tibet. Maybe Bladee actually is an acolyte of Aleister Crowley, spreading his ideology through catchy trap-infused EDM tracks, or he’s realized how effective this embrace of spiritual influences can be at cultivating an atmosphere that matches the sonic layers of the production, but the end result is a strong addition to his discography. – Shaye Frenkel

Bruiser Wolf & Sheefy McFly – Push & Paint [Fake Shore Drive]

Just when you think you know what he’s all about, Bruiser Wolf is already onto something new. Fellow Detroiter Sheefy McFly provides production for Wolf’s most air-tight record to date with a runtime that leaves no time to waste and a flow that makes you forget you’re listening to it all the way through again. One track after another is full of seedy basslines, and like every Bruiser Wolf record, it’s pointless to quote any standout one-liners, because there’s too many to list here. The sheer singularity of Push & Paint inspires awe and laughter, often at the same time. – Thomas Stremfel

By Storm – My Ghosts Go Ghost [deadAir]

By Storm’s debut album feels like a long time coming. The former Injury Reserve duo, composed of RiTchie and Parker Corey, makes a statement that is equal parts abstract and deeply emotional, digging up the grief they’ve dealt with around losing their third member and longtime collaborator, Stepa J. Groggs. In some ways, this new effort sounds more disjointed and experimental than By the Time I Get to Phoenix, but still manages to hold similar DNA. At points on the record, RiTchie is stuck between facing his grief head-on and moving his way around the devastation. The trajectory that My Ghosts Go Ghost takes is an unpredictable one; a cathartic journey that sometimes feels lyrically unstable, but rawly passionate all around. The left-field approaches the duo takes to death and depression are all over the place, but they manage to tie the range of emotions and sounds together by the time the album closes. – Jordan Goodman

Deafkids – Cicatrizes do Futuro [Neurot Recordings]

The scars of Deafkids' Cicatrizes do Futuro (or "scars of the future") are deep and visible. Whether in the glitched effects that abruptly disrupt a track or the guttural, distorted vocals that seem to, at the same time, scream for help and cast a spell on you, the Volta Redonda duo's signature sound is more adventurous than ever. Without losing their punk edge, Douglas Leal and Marian Sarine's incorporation of danceable percussion and electronic elements into their heavy sound achieves a whole new sonic texture. How often can you say that about a record in 2026? It's a very specific alchemy – one that gets even more powerful onstage. If you get a chance to catch them on their tour through the UK and Europe this fall, don't miss it. – Amanda Cavalcanti

galen tipton – tidal pool bath [self-released]

Has life got you down? Is the rat race of clocking in and clocking out weighing on your weary brain? Do you long for a simpler time when we sat in the shade of trees and picked roots and berries to survive? No? You want to go even further back? Before our foolish fishy ancestors thought to give land a try, forever dooming us to a life of obligations and responsibilities? If you’ve ever loaded up a game of Agar.io, or Spore for the PC, and thought, “that could be me,” welcome to galen tipton’s vision of the primordial soup made sound: tide pool bath. Drain away the heaviness in your life and let cytoplasm fill your veins and ear canals with 90 minutes of squishy-synths, gelatinous soundscapes, and the rushing cascade of bubbles spewing from geothermal vents of stereophonic ooze. It’s as if you could pull a seashell out of Minecraft and put it to your ear to hear the swishing sway of starburst anemones, the dancing and darting of digital anchovies, and the tendrilous binary tide as it ripples up the beach. Escapism has never felt so pre-Cambrian. – Anthony Le Calvez 

James Blake – Trying Times [Good Boy Records]

James Blake has gone through many iterations over the years: from a faceless post-dubstep pioneer, to a minimal synth-pop producer, to an R&B crooner, to a piano balladeer, and of course, to a frequent Travis Scott collaborator. His newest album, Trying Times, feels like a culmination of every phase of his career, offering something for fans of each version of James Blake. Opening track “Walk Out Music” is a haunting, synth- and hi-hat-driven piece built around minimal lyricism, sounding like a track that would have fit in comfortably on 2013’s Overgrown. It features plenty of vocal manipulation, unrelenting synth lines, and one of Blake's signature moves: a sustained wail that arrives during the song's climax. From there, the album settles into a mostly calm, sedated journey through feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and betrayal, with Blake showcasing both his remarkable vocal talent and his ever-evolving production abilities. Trying Times doesn’t reinvent James Blake. Instead, it refines the many sides of his artistry into his most complete and cohesive record to date. – Drew P. Simmons

My New Band Believe – My New Band Believe [Rough Trade]

The lone guitarist sits in a chair and rattles the strings until his fingers fall off. He then gets up, moves to a different room – somewhere where the wind and humidity allow the wooden body of the guitar to breathe — and repeats the process, somehow discovering a new sound. In new environments, he’s able to force the classical guitar to whistle like a woodwind, rumble like a rain stick, or chatter like a syncopated, synth dance beat. Such is the theater of the ambitious self-titled debut of My New Band Believe, ex-black midi’er Cameron Picton’s shadow puppet theater show that transforms progressive folk rock to a highly stylized, dramatic, and whimsical portrayal of anger, heat, love, excitement, and violence. Whether you’re listening to the explosion of sound from densely-layered tracks like “Target Practice,” the ever-switching movements of “Heart of Darkness” and “Opposite Teacher,” or the tenderness and warmth vibrating through the sweet centerpiece of “Love Story” (or, conversely, the seething meditation of “One Night”), you’ll see the many faces of the leading man’s guitar collection contort into whatever the mood calls. My New Band Believe is a fever dream embodied. – Victoria Borlando

Nine Inch Noize – Nine Inch Noize [Null Corporation and Interscope Records]

We haven’t had a real Nine Inch Nails LP in many years now, but you’re a fool if you think Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have been taking their traditional route lately, padding their stats with scores for the screen and nothing else besides. Late last year, the pair shook things up a bit with their music for Tron: Ares. Besides having a first-ever Nine Inch Nails credit for one of the duo’s cinematic accompaniments, the album featured four vocal tracks, which fans devoured as new NIN songs. A few months ago, they kept up momentum with Nine Inch Noize, a half-live, half-studio collab with German DJ Boys Noize. Consider it the crown jewel of the 2025-26 Peel It Back shows, a critically-acclaimed run blending intimate, subdued performances and techno grooving alike — emphasis on the latter for this LP. Outside of a Soft Cell cover and a revamping of “Parasite,” a song by tertiary Reznor/Ross project How to Destroy Angels, it consists of new takes on selections from the NIN archives, from classic “Closer” to Ares single “As Alive As You Need Me to Be.” Reznor says the efforts have pumped him up for some truly new Nails in the near future. Bring it. – Tyler Roland

Olivia Rodrigo – you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love [Geffen]

On what she describes as her first "adult" album, pop singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo chronicles her first serious, multi-year relationship in lucid detail. From the soaring synths soundtracking euphoria of a perfect first date on "drop dead" to the dejected acoustic balladry of closer "cigarette smoke," Rodrigo reaches new artistic heights with a new set of influences. In addition to being joined by Robert Smith on the revelatory duet "what's wrong with me," Rodrigo taps into the dreamy soundscapes of '80s new wave, evoking acts like New Order and Depeche Mode between gut-punch ballads about the anxieties born out of deep romantic connection. – Leah Bess

Roc Marciano – 656 [PIMPIRE RECORDS / MARCI ENTERPRISES]

Like Lil Wayne before him, this former Flipmode Squad soldier came into his own in such a big way he changed the entire genre itself, ushering boom-bap into a ghostly, mature phase in the 2010s with staticky, drumless samples and free-associative rhyming that paved the way for Ka, Action Bronson, and Griselda alike. And as a singular stylist, you can bet Roc Marciano’s albums get samey, which is why it takes months of gradually glomming onto something like this before you realize it’s maybe his absolute best. Roc’s self-production is simultaneously cinematic and claustrophobic; he’d suffocate the beat if there was one, instead rambling hypnotically over disjointed sounds you can’t stop listening to, like the single horn note that blows through “Yves St. Moron.” He disses rivals so creatively that “after your spirit sent to the hereafter / you hear the cheers from the rafters,” and of course that rhymes with “rappers looking like maggot dinner on Fear Factor.” He also pokes fun at himself over the queasily detuning “Childish Games”: “I’ve been eating horribly — Arby’s.” Which in turn rhymes with “‘90s R&B / Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.” – Daniel Aaron

Slayyyter – WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA [Columbia]

What does it mean to be the worst in Slayyyter’s America? Is it a good thing? Does it mean you’re the baddest, fiercest girl in the half-empty, sticky-floored dive bar? Does it mean you’re the most “kinda” famous person from your small town high school’s graduating class? Does it mean you’re the least shameful? Chainsmoking cigs in your raggedy overworn Chanel boots? Or is it a nasty insult? Is it something you call someone who’s all talk? Who flaunts their swagger and sucks dick in the hotel elevator only to mask the incessant insecurity eating them alive? On Slayyyter’s third album, being the worst means all of the above. She wails harder, screams louder, belts higher, earning the album title’s superlative. Its guitars are dirty, its synths fuzzy, its breakdowns airbag-inducing. Being the worst never felt so good. – Andy Steiner 

Tori Amos – In Times of Dragons [Fontana]

I had a dozen or so albums to consider for this list, but at the risk of stating the everloving obvious, Tori Amos at her best is pretty much untouchable, so in the end it was kind of a no-brainer. Writers these days love to throw around the phrase “generational artist,” sometimes in quite inexplicable directions, but Amos is the living, breathing, still-crushing-it embodiment of what that really means. And while In Times of Dragons doesn’t necessarily stack up to the towering heights of her ‘90s classics (I will stan Boys for Pele until my dying breath), it is, hands down, for me, her most artfully composed and creatively rewarding LP in more than 20 years. It may come wrapped up in a heroically unhinged concept that I don’t have the word count to explain here, but from the first low-end piano strikes of “Shush” through to the potent, swirling closer “23 Peaks,” In Times of Dragons delivers more than I could have dared to hope for from an artist on their 18th LP, with a handful of Amos all-timers (“Tempest,” “Blue Lotus,” “St. Teresa”) that shine among the best of her whole canon. – Alan Pedder

underscores – U [Mom+Pop]

underscores beautifully demonstrates how messy infatuation can become on U. It's meant to be listened to in liminal spaces: hotel rooms, train stations, airport check-ins. Her fascination with them, exemplified with the album’s cover being an empty Stonestown Galleria mall, helps her tell the story of a lover that she just cannot see eye to eye with. Throughout the whole cycle of love at first sight, testing intimacy, and finally bidding adieu, she bounces off the electric beats with grace. For an album meant to waft through mall loudspeakers, U’s nitty gritty production is anything but something to be ignored. The chopped-up “We should break up” on “The Peace,” smooth RnB bridge on “Do It,” and the robotic (yet sensual) interjections on “Innuendo (I Get U),” color this record – and those are just a fraction of the standout moments in here. Taking electropop with her on a journey, underscores fills her beloved liminal spaces with an aching feeling that will be long-remembered after the last note. – Dana Badii