I know, I know. This list is late. Like, really late. But if we’re being honest, there hasn’t been a whole lot going on in music since the Grammys, and there was way too much of everything going on at the end of last year, so here we are. After what I considered to be a pretty down year for music in 2021, 2022 felt like it bounced back in a big way, with releases from some of my favorite artists, some new discoveries, and even releases from old artists I was always lukewarm on that finally made me a convert. Read on if you want a three months late list of albums to check out and round out your own 2022 playlists.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

20. Cool It Down – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Considering the tremendous disappointment that was 2013’s Mosquito, I got a little wary when “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” the lead single of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ fourth full length album, didn’t immediately strike me as a great song. But repeated listens have revealed it to be much richer than I initially gave it credit for, and Cool It Down, the album it appears on, as a mature, assured, well-rounded late-ish career album from a legendary band. Yeah Yeah Yeahs will never be the hair-on-fire wild children that they were when they burst onto the Manhattan scene in the early 2000s, and their experiments with electronics will never feel as innovative as they did on 2009’s It’s Blitz, but Cool It Down demonstrates that they’re still capable of turning out engaging, expansive indie rock without embarrassing themselves, which is more than can be said for some of theire peers.

Recommended Tracks: “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” feat. Perfume Genius, “Fleez,” “Different Today”

19. Fear of the Dawn – Jack White

Jack White’s embrace of digital technology has been a bit like watching your dad finally figuring out streaming or social media: interesting, but also a little nerve-wracking. 2018’s Boarding House Reach was an entertaining, if ultimately shaky, first foray into this brave new world for Jack, but Fear of the Dawn is a much more complete album. Honing in on White’s, uh, white hot riffs and rapid-fire phrasing, Fear of the Dawn is his heaviest release since at least the last Dead Weather album, and one that sees him rediscover his aggression and passion for hot licks. Even the experiments that don’t work aren’t mere knob-twiddling – they’re the sound of the best rock guitarist of his generation pushing his style to the brink. It may not always be successful, but it is always thrilling.

Recommended Tracks: “Taking Me Back,” “Hi-De-Ho” feat. Q-Tip, “What’s the Trick?”

18. Cruel Country – Wilco

There was about a four album stretch in the late 2000s to the mid-2010s where it seemed like Wilco, the band that reinvented alt-country and indie rock on albums like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, was ready to settle into a sort of late period complacency, focusing less on innovation than on creating simple but still meaningful songs. Well, those notions were disabused on 2019’s stark yet roomy Ode to Joy, and then completely shattered on this year’s Cruel Country. A return to their rootsy roots, Cruel Country is both a throwback and a step forward. There may be more acoustic instruments on this album then on some of Wilco’s recent releases, but the songs are longer and weirder, the lyrics more introspective and universe-pondering, the music quiet but weighty. Wilco’s dad rock period is over, and they’re ready for a whole new era of musical exploration on their own deliberate but no less ambitious terms.

Recommended Tracks: “Tired of Taking It Out On You,” “The Universe”, “Falling Apart (Right Now),” “Story to Tell,” “All Across the World”

17. Hallelujah Hell Yeah – String Machine

In the 2010s, it felt like indie rock was turning inward at an unsustainable rate, as one-man projects and soft-spoken singer/songwriters began to take up the headlines and the Spotify streams, turning out music that was intimate at best but risk averse at worst. Thankfully, that trend began to reverse itself in 2023 thanks to a couple of big swings being taken by groups like Black Country, New Road, Young Jesus and, most impressively, String Machine, a seven-piece group from Pittsburgh that sounds like Arcade Fire if they were raised on Pinegrove (and lacked either of those bands’ troubling baggage). Hallelujah Hell Yeah, their sophomore effort, is refreshingly grand, mixing heart-on-sleeve songwriting with world-conquering strings and horns and a provincial twang. It’s the perfect mix of big dreams and small town problems, the kind of album that reaches for the stars sonically on a song about how much it sucks to tour in the middle of January. The big indie rock of the 2000s sought to transcend, and String Machine does too. But they also know that’s harder to do these days, and work through that struggle one swelling instrumental at a time.

Recommended Tracks: “Places to Hide,” “Touring in January,” “Soft Tyranny”