Live music – the full body experience of standing in a throng of people all moving to the same beat – is finally making a return in 2022, with festivals and gigs not only scheduled but looking like they will go ahead as planned. Don't hold us to anything, mind. As such, there's plenty of new music set to make its way into the world in the coming months, whether you choose to seek them out in open fields or enjoy them in private.

The best albums of 2021 were a needed respite from a weird world, with highlights including the quiet contemplation of Cassandra Jenkins's hypnotic album, Olivia Rodrigo and Lorde putting out seismic pop records, and some R&B for the finally replenished dance-floor courtesy of Jazmine Sullivan's Heaux Tales. This year promises exciting debuts, like the eponymous album from Wet Leg, as well as long awaited returns from bands like Alt J and Midland. The rumour mill is also churning that heavyweight solo artists – Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, even Beyoncé – are all back.

Whether you're looking for a new soundtrack to start the day, or something to refresh that tired workout playlist, here's our pick of the best music to listen to and watch out for in 2022.

The Best Albums of 2022

FKA twigs – Caprisongs

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The first fortnight of the year was made a little less bleak by the arrival of a fun mixtape courtesy of FKA twigs, the English musician who has made reinvention and blurring the lines between genres something of a calling card during her career. Caprisongs is a 17-track joyride through a pleasurably chaotic landscape of emotions: lust, jealousy, euphoria; ricocheting from R&B to afrobeat to choral music. The mixtape enlists the help of nine other collaborators, from The Weeknd to Jorja Smith, but it is the chameleonic appearances of the artist herself that bind together this playful yet surreal collection.

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Mitski – Laurel Hell

Be The Cowboy, the indie rock album from the excellent Japanese-American musician Mitski Miyawaki, was a highlight of 2018, with tracks like ‘Nobody’ showcasing her emotive voice and catchy riffs. Now, after a self-imposed hiatus, Mitski's sixth studio album sees her work again with producer Patrick Hyland on an eleven track record, written some years ago but finished during the pandemic. Laurel Hell – a folk term for the thickets of mountain laurel found deep in the southern Appalachians – is darker and more sparse than Miyawaki's previous album, addressing her complicated feelings about fame and fandom, as well as moments of self-reflection. Her voice sways wearily against a thrumming beat in 'Everybody', then turns to melancholy muttering in the gently pulsating 'There's Nothing Left for You'. Then there are tracks which catch you by surprise, like ‘The Only Heartbreaker’, which has an Eighties synth-pop vibe to it, or the ebullient 'Should've Been Me', where her voice explodes into life.

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Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

The Brooklyn group might not have released a record since their simultaneous 2019 albums U.F.O.F and Two Hands, but lead singer Adrianne Lenker has been busy in the meantime with double album songs and instrumentals, a duo which made our best albums of 2020 list. Now, Big Thief's latest expands on their world weary brand of indie rock, with a sprawling 20-track record which continues to showcase Lenker's devastating vocals while still pushing their sound in new directions. Album opener 'Change' keeps things stubbornly down-key with a just-there guitar melody, while the frenetic 'Little Things' is a whirlwind of emotion, the chorus like a set of instructions: 'One step behind you / Following you down / I was inside of you / Kissing your mouth'. One particular highlight, the charmingly named 'Spud Infinity', is a cacophony of zany sounds against folksy country strings which whirrs around your head gleefully like a toy car with the wheels come off. It's a track which feels both familiar and alien in the enticing way that Big Thief's music so often does.

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Alt J - The Dream

The Mercury Prize–winning trio Alt J ventured into weirder territory with their 2017 album, RELAXER, with a more meditative and esoteric record which you had to spend a little time with to understand. After several years away, The Dream is both a departure and a return, featuring catchy hooks as in ‘U&ME’, and pared back guitar tracks like ‘Get Better’, all tied together by lead singer Joe Newman's unmistakable and stirring voice. There's plenty of the trio's signature darkness on display, too, with three of the 12 tracks on The Dream circling around death, perhaps in keeping with the spectral creature drawn on the album's artwork. One modest but evocative moment is track 'Powders', which slowly blooms to life while alternating between crackly recordings of laughter in the studio and crooning vocals. There are nods to the curiosities of Covid and cryptocurrency which crop up occasionally, too, lending The Dream the sense that the last few years are something which we're all slowly, bemusedly waking up from.

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Nilüfer Yanya – Painless

Lightning does strike twice for Nilüfer Yanya, the talented London singer and songwriter who follows her excellent debut, Miss Universe (one of our picks for the best albums of 2019) with another stirring collection of tracks which demonstrate her ability to both capture the zeitgeist and set it. Three years on from her debut, Painless shows that Yanya has the confidence to resist the gimmicks and heavy sarcasm which were threaded through her previous record, now looking more unapologetically and vulnerably towards the abyss of heartbreak and the grief of what is lost between people. It's an expansive and varied alt-rock record: from the robotic march of 'L/R', about putting one foot in front of the other, to the ghostly images of 'try', where Yanya sings: 'Silence leaves and it / Comes in stages but / There's no fruit 'til you / Grow silent on me.' In the surprising breakbeat opener to the album, 'the dealer', snatches of electric guitar wiggle their way into the melody, before Yanya's voice bursts into the chorus with a kind of wild desperation; the closer, 'anotherlife', is chilled reflection on being OK with who you are, this time delivered with no trace of irony.

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Rosalía – MOTOMAMI

The third album from Rosalía Vila Tobella sees the Spanish singer-songwriter, who has made her first name known the world over, thanks to her catchy modern updates on flamenco music, dial up the theatrics for a record which riffs on reggaeton music. One dancefloor-ready crowd pleaser, 'LA FAMA', featuring The Weekend and mourning the perils of fame, feels ironically primed to attract the most attention. Hearing their voices tango together you just know it's set to be remixed, re-rubbed and released onto wild dance-floors this summer. Other highlights include the deceptive 'HENTAI', named after a pornographic manga, in which a mournful piano ballad descends into gunfire amongst its unashamedly erotic lyircs; and rousing flamenco track 'BULERÍAS', where men's voices chant in the background like charging bulls.

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Father John Misty – Chloë and the Next 20th Century

Joshua Michael Tillman, the man known as Father John Misty, has the kind of commanding Mid-Atlantic accent that makes you sit up and listen when he sings. Four years on from his band's last album, Pure Comedy, their next chapter is another soaring collection of love and loss stories that give life the cinematic feel of gazing out the window on a long drive. Or as we imagine that actually feels like. Chloë and the Next 20th Century is named after the first of the romantic heroines we encounter on the 11-track record, as she laments her lovers and their untimely deaths; it's also named for its sense of old world glamour and longing for a bygone era, with nostalgia threaded through Tillman's world-weary vocals and sweeping melodies. With its Hepburn-evoking title, "Funny Girl" especially captures the theatricality of the record, opening with a waltzing Broadway piano ballad before Tillman's tenor comes centre stage, building to a crescendo of strings that rise and fall like a lilting carousel.

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Wet Leg – Wet Leg

The eponymous debut from Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, Wet Leg follows the Isle of Wight duo's 2021 single, "Chaise Longue", whose sardonic Mean Girls references and musings about worrying mothers took the world by surprise. Wet Leg arrive fully formed and ready to have fun (miserable fun, that is) with their infinitely Tweet-able lyrics: "I tried to meditate / but I just medicate"; "Sometimes life gets hard to deal / I like you, you've got sex appeal"; "You’re so woke/Diet Coke", to name a few, and wryly named tracks like "Ur Mum" and "Piece of Shit". Still, the duo's debut is more than just a smorgasbord of sarcasm: with their infectious indie rock they have made a sound that both gets in your head and perhaps changes your mind about the pair, who, just a little eye-rollingly, decided to start their band while atop a ferris wheel. On "Angelica", the fable of a bad party descends into a chaotic thrum of chords and reverberating vocals, while the spaced-out "I Dont Wanna Go Out" is another dour anthem for staying in, with lyrics such as "almost 28 still getting off my face" nodding to that sinking feeling that the party's over.

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Orville Peck – Bronco

The highly mysterious Orville Peck, whose face has never been seen without a mask but whom Wikipedia has thankfully narrowed down is somewhere between 20 and 40, returns with Bronco, his first record since the similarly equestrian 2019 album, Pony. Bronco, aptly, shows a wilder side of Peck, and a looser, more adventurous kind of country music; from the catering pace of the opener, "Daytona Sand", with its John Wayne-esque voiceover, to the wistful prairie folk of "Iris Rose" and "City of Gold", or elsewhere the brooding and filmic ballad "Kalahari Down", Bronco gallops out of grasp as soon as you think you've got a handle on it.

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Albums rumoured this year

Cardi B

los angeles, california   june 23 cardi b c performs onstage at the 2019 bet awards at microsoft theater on june 23, 2019 in los angeles, california photo by frederick m browngetty images for bet
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It could be a big year for Cardi B, who, in addition to her first film appearance hopes to release the long-awaited follow-up to her mammoth 2018 debut album, Invasion of Privacy. The New York rapper, who had planned to release her sophomore record in 2021, but was discouraged by the lingering pandemic, announced on her Instagram that her next dose of music would hit the world this year.

Arctic Monkeys

santiago, chile   march 31 arctic monkeys perform onstage during day 3 of lollapalooza chile 2019 at parque ohiggins on march 31, 2019 in santiago, chile photo by dragomir yankovicgetty images
Stringer//Getty Images

The prospect of a new album from Alex Turner's English rock outfit might not cause the same stir it once did, but there was still plenty of excited speculation that Arctic Monkeys featuring at the top of the line-up for Reading and Leeds confirmed new music was on the way in 2022, and the group were seen recording last year. What that might sound like remains to be seen as any concrete details are yet to emerge.

Megan Thee Stallion

morrison, colorado   september 02 megan thee stallion performs onstage during day 2 of red rocks unpaused 3 day music festival presented by visible at red rocks amphitheatre on september 02, 2020 in morrison, colorado photo by rich furygetty images for visible
Rich Fury//Getty Images

When dropping her 2021 mixtape, Something For Thee Hotties: From Thee Archives, the Texas rapper teased that her second studio album would be landing in 2022. Speaking on Radio One last year the singer revealed that she had been slowly and carefully recording the follow-up to her 2020 debut, Good News, and that her mixtape was the introduction to a new sound in her next record. Intriguing.