#ambientdream-pop

#ambientdream-pop

I think the dance floor is dead, so now we're making rock music. If I'd made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad.

We're highlighting some of 2026's most outstanding albums to date by rounding up the ones that have earned high scores and Best New Music designations with a quick list of RIYLs.

Earlier this week BoC mailed mysterious VHS tapes to fans while enigmatic posters went up in London, New York, California, and other cities.

The opener "Not Not Not" is almost goofy, its chaotic melodies constantly dancing around each other in a perpetually disorienting way. It lurches forward asymmetrically, grooving like a flat tire.

"It felt jarring and lonely, not exactly the comfort I was hoping for, but one afternoon I made a little voice memo while playing a piano mumbling the phrase....I wanna build a dream for you. That's when this whole thing kind of started. Like a little spark."

Los Thuthanaka sounds like nothing else. It's joyous, jagged, and sounds like it's being blasted out of a broken Bluetooth speaker in your neighbor's backyard - it's glorious.

He didn't know the power of this thing. He just wanted it for its accordion sounds. Still, the instrument fascinated the burgeoning musician, and by the time he was five, he had stumbled on an old VHS concert doc that showed him the real power of analog machinery. I was completely consumed by the mystery of how these things were being made.

Turns out every soul song with a lot of blank space in it just needs to be filled to the brim with Jersey club stomps and squeaks.

Natanya tears genres open and rebuilds them in her own image. Her drums swing loose and jazzy over heavy 808s; synths drift dreamily before snapping into gritty guitar riffs. Writing, producing and arranging all her own work, she weaves together neosoul silk, R&B groove, indie edge, and flashes of grunge, all carried by a buttery falsetto that nods to Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse, Janet Jackson and early Destiny's Child.

Tame Impala is credited as a writer and producer on the track "Merry Go Round." Diplo is listed as a writer and producer on multiple songs, including "Body Body" and "FYA," with JPEGMAFIA joining him on the latter. Mike WiLL Made-It contributed to "2.0" and "Aliens," while additional collaborators include Teezo Touchdown, Flume, and El Guincho.

His first albums under his own name, 1995's Earth & Nightfall and 1996's cult classic Ten Days of Blue, were blissful-sounding ambient techno records that took the melodic sensibilities of the local scene to their cosmic extremes. Every beep and blip was in harmony with a lush string line, the rhythms less like breakbeats or programmed drums than trance-inducing hammered dulcimers.

Pop punk lifers New Found Glory are back with their 12th album, Listen Up!, their first album since guitarist Chad Gilbert began cancer treatment and an album that the band says was shaped by that ongoing experience. "We wanted to make something that really focused on how lucky we are," Chad says. "We've all gone through serious stuff in our lives, and I think the lyrics on this record are more meaningful and purposeful than ever. It's a positive outlet that hopefully keeps people going."

When director Emerald Fennell needed to hire a musician to score her Wuthering Heights adaptation, only one person came to mind: Charli XCX. Not only did the British pop star accept the offer, but she used her soundtrack to capture love in all of its grandiose, moody, and elusive ways. As she described the soundtrack on her Substack, it's a "dive into persona, into a world that felt undeniably raw, wild, sexual, gothic, British, tortured and full of actual real sentences, punctuation and grammar."

Inner Magic is the duo of former Chromatics guitarist Adam Miller and former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder. They met in 2024 and bonded over their love of '80s UK indie legends Felt, krautrock and the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, and then decided they should make music together.

On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we're sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff's favorite new music.