And we journey into the unknown. But what will they be singing there to greet us?

After listening and watching Over the Garden Wall, it’s still hard to explain. The Cartoon Network mini-series, turned cult classic to straight classic in a few short years, was a longing, autumnal elegy and tapestry of misremembered pasts. Flapper girls giggling along to shape note choirs, beastial operas ringing out over a jukebox, Chris Isaak smirking in the background. And The Blasting Company were our maestros, giddily skipping through time. So listen to our interview with them and see why Over Garden the Wall was the best of the 10s.

Hex is wonderfully wrong.

Through a haze of fake nostalgia, warped tape loops and wayward saxophones, Canadian space cadet Jon McKiel has delivered an album as catchy as it is unnerving. The rhythm slinks and shudders underneath the hooky overtones. The guitar heroics of “String” unspool at impossible angles, “Everlee” sounds like a lost Byrds classic retrofitted with dread and song of the year contender “Hex” is Tom Waits’ “Clap Hands” turned into an R&B track. We talked to McKiel below.

Polyglot, polymath, call Rhys Langston what you want—there’s a lot going on.

Multidisciplined and disciplinary LA mage Rhys Langston released a tightly wound and densely packed EP in Polyglot on Chloroform. It stuffs in as many ideas, scenes and bars as most double albums in a curt runtime. From the sludgy noir of "casino petit bourgeois” or the troubling soul of “still to this day,” Langston matches the fluttering, chameleonic production of Steeltipped Dove with grace. We talked with Rhys below.

I feel like I need to wear a suite while listening to The Fish Factory Sessions.

Luxury oozes from every note, whether it’s being radiated by Gigi Masin’s scrumptious synths or Greg Foat’s effervescent piano. But don’t mistake this for an overly stately affair. Warmth and giddy joy are core components of this album, and all of Foat’s work. The UK pianist has been working at an absurd clip, releasing album after album of mutated jazz and his own blend of ambient and electronic. We talked to him below.

A man catches his reflection in the mirror and sees something wrong.

Storefront Church’s cinematic, maximalist music delights in mixing the surreal and the mundane, creating a pervasive sense of unease. Fitting, considering composer Lukas Frank was in a manic fugue state while writing the sprawling Ink & Oil. A score for an unseen film, Ink & Oil holds some of 2024’s most vibrantly beautiful moments, but there’s always darkness on the edge of town, nibbling at the edges. We talked to Frank below.

The jazz club is slowly filling with laughing gas.

That’s the approximate experience of listening to K. Freund’s newest album Trash Can Lamb. Piano, sax and found sounds mingle with otherworldly noise, beamed in from a parallel dimension. Surreal, yet welcoming, the core of Freund’s work is a sort of Cheshire Cat joy, ever winking and ever fluttering away from reality. We spoke to him below.

Everything is haunted.

Horror movie logic dictates that a death makes the haunting, a blood soaked basement, an insane asylum, take your pick. But the places most filled with death are also the most peaceful—within nature. The peat bog doesn’t exist without the passing of uncounted critters, trees can’t grow without corpses below them. The pact between death and life is stronger than we could imagine, it is only our own discomfort at their entwining reality that makes us uneasy. And that unease and unbreakable pact are at the center of Keeper of the Shepherd. A masterful meditation on grief and passing, Hannah Frances’ newest album is as marvelously beautiful as it is ambitious. We talked to her below.

Ambient and drone do not have to be calm.

In fact, C. Diab would prefer you to be overwhelmed. Not out of any sense of maliciousness, but on his newest album, Imerro, the flooding textures, bursts of horns and hypnotic passages are all created to craft ascension through stimulation. We talked with him below.

I went to two memorials that weekend.

I scattered my grandmother’s ashes in a bluebonnet patch and napped in bluebonnets myself before I consoled my step-brother after his mother passed. It weighed on me through the month—but was briefly lifted and crushed by Frail Body. At SXSW, just before the release of their new album, Artificial Bouquet, Frail Body ripped through the record. An unyielding exploration of grief, lead singer and guitarist Lowell Shaffer relives the loss of his own mother through the single most cathartic album made this year. We talked to them below.

There’s a train waiting for you.

No clue where it’ll take you, how long the journey will be—but the train is there for you. And Minhwi Lee is your guide. The South Korean singer-songwriter reaches into a deep well of beauty and melancholy on her album 미래의 고향 Hometown to Come, reflecting Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. Lee is searching for community, for home, in an ever changing world. We spoke with her below.