The first of a few corridos tumbados to kick off this year’s list, Cano released Nata Montana in 2023, but spent all of 2024 releasing singles and getting featured on other tracks. By my count, he was on 14 other tracks after this one was released. Man’s got a work ethic, but this single was his best of the year.

I’m a fair-weather fan of Kid Cudi, but Pusha T is in the pantheon of music (and Arby’s commercials). Hearing him pop in on this track when going through Cudi’s new album this year put it on repeat immediately. It’s not the best poetry from either of them ever, but still DRIES SWEATS IN MY ROD LAVERS.

As in “bust out the Dom.” Doble P is my guy. He’s been hit after hit, and he’s getting rewarded for it, already cracking the Top 60 global artists of all-time on Spotify.

I slept on Blue Lips for way too long, but this single was an immediate add to the rotation in March. The whole record, though, is getting a lot of critical love across the board as the year hits its end.

So Exodó came out this year, Peso Pluma’s double-album that beat Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion Extended Cab to the air but features just as many features (only four of 24 tracks is Peso solo). AND SO WHAT. Put the album on from the top, grab the Tecate, and start the party.

Rogers has previously said it’s her favorite song she’s written. It’s also not a sad song: “I think remembering someone can be the greatest form of loving because when we remember, the love lives on.”

My only regret is that I have but one vocal range and it is not for this song.

You thought writing “Red Red Wine” and covering “Falling In Love With You” was all they had?? How about dropping this chill-ass single 41 years later.

I always know when Cigarettes After Sex releases a new album because this is the first of their entries this year.

Brand new artist, first music coming out last year, got the TikTok virality to make it a career. I don’t think a lot of people heard this one, especially compared to his break out hits “La Diabla” and “La Victima,” but the melody on this one will still randomly pop up in my head.

I think (spoiler alert) Silent Planet, Reflections, Knocked Loose, and Disembodied Tyrant might be making some of the best heavy music on the planet right now, but Frontierer is right there with all of them. Certainly more noisy, which I love as a throwback to the ’00s. The noise assault alongside Chad Kapper’s vocals is a beacon in a world of those that claim the middle finger.

Like Cigarettes After Sex, I always know what my list will include when a new Post Malone album comes out.

Disembodied Tyrant has really hit their stride since 2022 when the band — (?) it was two dudes, but they now have live actors — seemed to finalize the makeup they’d use to release The Divine Stigmata. This year, though, they dropped The Poetic Edda EP and they pull off the strings and breakdowns genre (symphonic deathcore?) so aggressively, so technically, and so beautifully. It’s tough to separate yourself in the waterfall of reductive Lorna Shore acts since their rise, but Disembodied Tyrant is a keeper.