Best Albums of 2024

Here are December Hotel’s Best Albums of 2024. With so many releases to explore, a few deserving records may have slipped through the cracks. Still, these eleven albums offer plenty worth discovering, each great in its own way. Browse the list, revisit a favorite, or take a chance on something new. Enjoy!

Braden Drake - The Picture You Painted album cover

Best of 2024 • No. 11

11. Braden Drake - The Picture You Painted

Braden Drake’s The Picture You Painted is a warm and personal collection that finds hope without ignoring the difficult seasons that make hope necessary. Drake writes with an inviting directness, allowing themes of faith, love, doubt and perseverance to emerge naturally instead of turning the songs into simple answers. The arrangements remain intimate, giving his melodies and thoughtful lyrics plenty of room to breathe. Songs such as "Keep Your Eyes on Jesus," "Take Me to My Heart" and "Even in the Darkest Night" reveal an artist determined to hold onto light when life becomes uncertain. It is an honest and quietly encouraging album whose emotional strength grows with every listen.

Best of 2024 • No. 10

10. Moon Bride - Insomnie

Moon Bride turns sleeplessness into its own strange nighttime world on Insomnie. The album follows a restless mind as it moves through questions about adulthood, identity, faith and the pressure to have life figured out. Its adventurous arrangements pull from indie pop, blues, alternative rock, cinematic music and glowing synthesizers without losing the thread of the story. "Why Are You Sleeping?," "Keep Calm and Carry On" and "In Your Thirties" balance wit with real anxiety, while quieter passages make the record feel like a private conversation taking place at three in the morning. Imaginative, melodic and emotionally open, Insomnie finds beauty inside the thoughts that refuse to let us rest.

Best of 2024 • No. 9

9. Zane Vickery - Interloper

Interloper is an enormous, deeply personal album that refuses to hurry through grief, survival or healing. Across its seventeen songs, Zane Vickery wrestles with shame, forgiveness, family, faith and the aftermath of a near-death experience. The record moves between intimate piano passages, folk-rooted songwriting and sweeping rock arrangements, giving it the feeling of a confession gradually becoming a testimony. Its length asks for patience, but that patience is rewarded as earlier ideas return with greater emotional meaning. Interloper is heavy, vulnerable and ultimately hopeful: the work of an artist trying to understand why he survived and what he should do with the life still in front of him.

Occasional Dreams - To The City album cover

Best of 2024 • No. 8

8. Occasional Dreams - To The City

Occasional Dreams’ To The City feels like a long drive through fading memories, open roads and places that no longer look quite the way you remember them. Rooted in indie rock but colored by shoegaze, ambient textures and the wide-open atmosphere of heartland rock, the album turns nostalgia and restlessness into something expansive and cinematic. "Moving On" introduces the tension between leaving and holding on, while "Shimmer In Your Eye" carries that uncertainty into a breezy guitar melody built for the open road. The title track stretches the band’s sound into a yearning centerpiece, and "Going Home" searches for comfort in the places and memories left behind. Guitars shimmer rather than overwhelm, synthesizers drift around the edges and Oskar Christensen’s understated vocals give the songs a reflective, late-night quality. To The City is nostalgic without becoming trapped in the past - a beautifully patient record about movement, distance and the complicated feeling of trying to find your way home.

The Fuzzy Robes - Midday Prayers album cover

Best of 2024 • No. 7

7. The Fuzzy Robes - Midday Prayers

On Midday Prayers, The Fuzzy Robes transform traditional prayers and Biblical language into colorful psychedelic pop. The record is brief, but it feels complete, moving from its opening invocation through "Kyrie Eleison," "The Lord’s Prayer" and the closing blessing with a calm sense of purpose. Beach Boys-inspired harmonies, gentle experimentation and flashes of progressive rock keep the music from sounding overly formal. Instead, the album presents prayer as something alive, communal and capable of speaking directly to a troubled world. Its call to move from fear toward trust and from war toward peace gives the record unusual emotional weight. Midday Prayers is reverent without being predictable and creative without losing its spiritual center.

Starflyer 59 - Lust for Gold album cover

Best of 2024 • No. 6

6. Starflyer 59 - Lust for Gold

Lust for Gold reconnects Starflyer 59 with the enormous guitars of the band’s earliest records while viewing that sound through the eyes of someone who has lived an entire life since then. Jason Martin writes about memory, ambition, aging and the realization that the prizes we chase can disappear before we know it. The dense guitars and deep vocals recall the classic Silver and Gold period, but this is more than an exercise in nostalgia. "909," "1995" and the title track use the past to measure what has been gained, lost and misunderstood. Heavy, melancholy and beautifully restrained, Lust for Gold is one of Starflyer 59’s strongest late-career albums and proof that the band’s original sound can still reveal something new.

Best of 2024 • No. 5

5. Nada Surf - Moon Mirror

Nada Surf have always understood how a bright melody can carry complicated emotions, and Moon Mirror is one of the clearest examples of that gift. Jangling guitars, propulsive drums and Matthew Caws’ reassuring voice give the album an immediate warmth, but beneath the surface are thoughtful songs about time, gratitude, love and learning to remain present. "In Front of Me Now," "New Propeller" and the title track sound unmistakably like Nada Surf while avoiding the feeling of repetition. The choruses still rise with the emotional force of the band’s best work, yet the perspective is calmer and wiser. Moon Mirror is a graceful record from a band that continues to discover new meaning inside the familiar sound it has spent decades perfecting.

Best of 2024 • No. 4

4. Luxury - Like Unto Lambs

Luxury’s Like Unto Lambs is elegant, literate rock filled with spiritual questions, unusual imagery and melodies that reveal themselves slowly. The band’s early noise has matured into something more measured, but Lee Bozeman’s unmistakable voice still gives every song a sense of mystery and tension. "Maker (Wheel Within a Wheel)," "The Wilderness (The Color of Gold)" and "Oakleigh Woods (The Ghosts at Night)" move between beauty, uncertainty and belief without reducing any of those subjects to easy answers. Piano, guitar and carefully layered vocals make the record feel polished while preserving its human imperfections. Thoughtful and quietly adventurous, Like Unto Lambs is an album that continues to open up long after the first listen.

Best of 2024 • No. 3

3. Pearl Jam - Dark Matter

Dark Matter captures Pearl Jam playing with the urgency of a band that still has something to prove. Producer Andrew Watt brings the musicians together in a direct, energetic setting, placing Matt Cameron’s powerful drumming and Mike McCready’s explosive guitar work near the center of the record. "Scared of Fear," "React, Respond" and the title track hit with immediate force, while "Wreckage," "Upper Hand" and "Setting Sun" show the reflective side that has always given Pearl Jam’s music its lasting emotional depth. The album does not attempt to reinvent the band; instead, it reminds listeners how moving Pearl Jam can be when all five members push in the same direction. It is a passionate, resilient and surprisingly revitalized late-career record.

Best of 2024 • No. 2

2. My Epic - Loriella

My Epic’s Loriella balances the band’s atmospheric rock with some of its most personal and approachable songwriting. "Late Bloomer" begins quietly and gradually expands through layered voices and carefully placed guitars, establishing an album concerned with growth, doubt and the slow work of becoming whole. "Heavy Heart" and "Northstar" bring greater weight and scale, while the more restrained moments allow Aaron Stone’s questions about faith and identity to remain unresolved. Electronic textures and post-rock crescendos give the record a wide emotional range without overwhelming its melodies. Loriella is vulnerable, ambitious and deeply human: a record about continuing to believe even when belief no longer feels simple.

Best of 2024 • No. 1

1. Wunderhorse - Midas

Wunderhorse’s Midas sounds like a great rock band captured at the exact moment everything threatens to fall apart. Recorded with an intentionally raw approach, the album leaves in the rough edges, overloaded guitars and moments of instability that many modern records would polish away. "July" and "Rain" charge forward with frightening momentum, while "Emily," "Superman" and "Aeroplane" expose the vulnerability underneath Jacob Slater’s ragged voice. The band’s chemistry gives every performance the danger and spontaneity of a live show, yet the songs remain strong enough to survive all that noise. Midas is loud, bruised, honest and completely alive. In a year filled with carefully constructed records, Wunderhorse made the one that felt the most immediate, earning its place as December Hotel’s best album of 2024.