Later this month, I’m streaming my final Whatnot vinyl auction show of the year, and the theme is The Best Albums of the 2020s. I’ve been tracking down dozens of records from this decade to put up for grabs, sticking to albums I love enough to recommend.
Naturally, I started with my own favorites. If you asked me today the five I keep coming back to, I’d probably give you:
Alvvays – Blue Rev (2022)
Black Country, New Road – Ants from Up There (2022)
Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us (2024)
Wednesday – Rat Saw God (2023)
Jeff Rosenstock – HELLMODE (2023)
Ask me next week and the list might change, but those five aren’t going anywhere.
As I kept digging through my collection, though, I found plenty of other records that deserved more love. So I started a second list. This list right here in your virtual hands. Twenty albums from the 2020s that I’d happily put up against anything this decade has produced. Consider this my attempt to get a few more of them into your record collection.
20 Modern Classics of the 2020s You May Have Missed
Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music
And because describing music is a poor substitute for actually hearing it, I’ve put together a 20-song companion playlist, one of my favorite tracks from each album, sequenced in the same order you’ll find below.
Rosie Tucker - UTOPIA NOW! (2024)
Get Vinyl: Violet and Evergreen | Cobalt Blue
Genre: Indie Rock
Rosie Tucker opens their fourth album sitting in the dark while a lightbulb installs an update, and two years later our technocapitalist hellscape rolls on unimpeded. UTOPIA NOW! was recorded at home, packed with crunchy guitars, infectious hooks, and some of the sharpest lyrics of the decade.
Mabe Fratti - Sentir Que No Sabes (2024)
Get Vinyl: Black
Genre: Experimental Rock
Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti is undeniably one of the most exciting musicians on the scene right now (she will make my Year End list with her Bill Orcutt collab). She blends avant-rock, dream pop and classical into something that’s somehow approachable and groovy as all hell. Start with the opener, “Kravitz,” and try not to hit repeat.
Being Dead - EELS (2024)
Get Vinyl: Speckled Dragon Egg
Genre: Garage Rock
Austin’s Being Dead teamed up with my boy John Congleton and made a wonderfully unhinged 16-track album that swings from Beach Boys harmonies to Animal Collective experimentation. There’s a ridiculous number of good ideas crammed into these songs, and somehow the band finds room for all of them.
Spoon and Adrian Sherwood - Lucifer on the Moon (2022)
Get Vinyl: Black
Genre: Dub
Spoon’s Lucifer on the Sofa gets its due as one of the decade’s finest rock records, but Adrian Sherwood’s dub remix album is its stranger twin as he sends Britt Daniel and company into orbit with mountains of bass, echo, and reverb.
Sherwood even throws in some new instrumentation, including flute on “My Babe,” harmonica on “On the Radio,” and horns on the title track. I might love this version as much as the original.
Nubya Garcia – SOURCE (2020)
Get Vinyl: Black
Genre: Spiritual Jazz
London saxophonist Nubya Garcia helped introduce a new generation to British jazz with a debut that incorporates reggae, dub, cumbia, and the musical traditions of her Caribbean heritage. The 12-minute title track alone is worth the price of admission, building from a laid-back dub groove into a thrilling saxophone performance.
La Luz – News of the Universe (2024)
Get Vinyl: “Luzer” Orange Crush
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia
Written in the aftermath of singer Shana Cleveland’s breast cancer diagnosis, News of the Universe finds La Luz taking their signature surf-rock harmonies into darker, stranger psychedelic territory. It’s an album about mortality and uncertainty that sounds like a transmission from another planet.
Ana Frango Elétrico – Me Chama de Gato Que Eu Sou Sua (2023)
Get Vinyl: Neon Green | Black
Genre: Brazilian Art Pop / MPB
Fresh off co-producing Bala Desejo’s Latin Grammy-winning Sim Sim Sim (worth seeking out too), Brazilian new wave artist Ana Frango Elétrico’s third album is a ridiculously enjoyable cocktail of disco, jazz-funk, and art pop. Find me a groovier thirty minutes from this decade. You can’t!
Topaz Jones – Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma (2021)
Get Vinyl: Black
Genre: Hip-Hop
New Jersey rapper Topaz Jones paired this funk-and-soul-soaked album with a short film that won Sundance’s jury award for nonfiction shorts: a 26-part update of the old “Black ABCs” teaching cards from the ‘70s. Watch the film, play the record, and you’ll hear one of the decade’s best coming-of-age stories in hip-hop.
For Tracy Hyde – Hotel Insomnia (2022)
Get Vinyl: Blue
Genre: Shoegaze / Dream Pop
Japanese dream-pop outfit For Tracy Hyde turned post-COVID unease into jangly, shimmering shoegaze, then announced they were breaking up three weeks after it came out. Their fifth and final album is the best way into a catalog most English-speaking listeners missed.
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quannnic – Stepdream (2023)
Get Vinyl: Green
Genre: Noise Pop
There’s no shortage of young artists trying to revive 90s shoegaze, but Florida’s quannnic brings something genuinely different to the table. Stepdream combines enormous walls of guitar distortion with emo-tinged, bedroom-pop intimacy, and an unpredictability that earned them a slot on Slowdive’s tour.
Blackwater Holylight - Not Here Not Gone (2026)
Get Vinyl: Red | Splatter
Genre: Doomgaze
Don’t let the bloodbath on the cover scare you off: Portland’s Blackwater Holylight balances crushing doom-metal riffs with dreamy shoegaze and Sunny Faris’ gorgeous vocals. The first half is dark and heavy, while the second opens up into something more spacious and psychedelic. As drummer Eliese Dorsay describes it, “some songs we’re the predator, and some songs we’re the prey.” This will likely end up in my top 10 this year. An instant classic.
Modern Color – From the Leaves of Your Garden (2020)
Get Vinyl: Black/Yellow
Genre: Alternative Rock
On their third album, Redondo Beach’s Modern Color moved from post-hardcore toward dream pop and arrived early at the woozy heavy-gaze sound that’s everywhere now. If you love Militarie Gun’s fantastic Life Under the Gun, start here, since drummer-vocalist Vince Nguyen also plays drums on that record.
RVG - Brain Worms (2023)
Get Vinyl: Deep Red | Blue
Genre: Post-Punk
Here we have ten songs in 34 minutes with zero filler, and if you were to ask ten listeners for their favorite track, you’d get ten different answers. Romy Vager’s darkly funny scenes from our current hell world have only gotten more relatable, like watching a friend’s funeral through a laggy Chrome tab.
Fust - Big Ugly (2025)
Get Vinyl: Beer | Black
Genre: Alt-Country
Fust’s seven-piece band, with guests Merce Lemon and Dave Hartley of The War on Drugs, wraps Wild Pink-style storytelling in pedal steel swells and cosmic Americana. Give this a spin and you’ll be dreaming of misty Blue Ridge mornings.
Empty Country – Empty Country (2020) and Empty Country II (2023)
Get Empty Country Vinyl: Clear/Translucent Green
Get Empty Country II Vinyl: Seafoam/Cream
Genre: Indie Rock
After Cymbals Eat Guitars called it quits, frontman Joseph D’Agostino made this record with David Berman as his confidant. Then D’Agostino’s manager and booking agent dropped him a day after hearing it, and a few months later, in August 2019, Berman was gone.
When it finally came out in March 2020, just as the world shut down, these haunted heartland character studies sounded like the kind of songs Berman spent his life writing. D’Agostino honored him on sequel Empty Country II with “David,” a tribute to his late friend that doubles as a reflection on the act of songwriting.
Friendship - Caveman Wakes Up (2025)
Get Vinyl: Autographed | Black
Genre: Alt-Country
If you’re still missing Berman after that, Philly’s Friendship is the closest thing we’ve got to his deadpan wit, with Dan Wriggins delivering surreal, sorrowful dispatches barely above a whisper. Caveman Wakes Up is the band’s finest work yet, a set of cracked Americana that splits the difference between Berman’s one-liners and Jason Molina’s ache.
Emma-Jean Thackray – Yellow (2021)
Get Vinyl: Black
Genre: Jazz-Funk
Yorkshire-born trumpeter and producer Emma-Jean Thackray takes us on one long psychedelic trip through P-Funk, spiritual jazz, gospel and dub, with a tuba holding down the low end. Think Alice Coltrane meets Roy Ayers, a life-affirming debut that has as much business at a dance party as it does in a jazz collection.
Jump Source - Fold (2026)
Get Vinyl: Black
Genre: Tech House
One of my favorite electronic albums of the decade came out just a few months ago courtesy of Francis Latreille and Patrick Holland’s Jump Source. They pack Fold with killer grooves, moving between dreamy headphone music, coffee-shop electronics, and full-on dancefloor bangers. Helena Deland on “Shattered” is my most-played song of the year, and cameos from CFCF, Loukeman and even billy woods keep the surprises coming.
Oliver Sim – Hideous Bastard (2022)
Get Vinyl: Blood Red | Black
Genre: Art Pop
Oliver Sim teamed up with bandmate Jamie xx for a solo debut inspired by his love of horror movies, using the genre’s imagery to explore shame, fear, and his experience living with HIV since he was 17. It’s a deeply personal, often unsettling record that reveals a side of Sim we rarely heard with The xx.
What pulled me back into this record was Jamie xx’s nearly ten-minute remix of “GMT,” which has become a highlight of The xx’s current tour, with Oliver singing it from down in the crowd pit.
That’s my 20. If I just made your Discogs wantlist a little more expensive, I’ll take that as a compliment. Let me know what record deserves more love in the comments.
I’ll have more details on my final Whatnot vinyl show of the year coming soon, where I’ll be putting dozens of my favorite records from this decade up for grabs.
In the meantime, I’ll be back Friday with The Weekender, my weekly roundup of what I’m listening to, watching, and reading. If you enjoyed this list, consider becoming a paid subscriber to receive a fresh batch of recs every Friday.
See you Friday,
Jared
Empty Country is so so slept on. Marian is one of the best songs of the decade.