The return of clubs and festivals this year meant that dance music finally felt like it was back to normal—not 2021’s “new normal” of tours on tenterhooks and will-they-won’t-they headliners, but the good-old normal-normal of closing down the joint at 6 a.m. with a floor-filling piano-house anthem. There was no shortage of supersized crowdpleasers to suit the mood, from Eliza Rose’s throwback garage to Two Shell’s chipmunk mischief to Nick León’s jugular-lunging spin on Venezuelan raptor house. On the margins, meanwhile, it really felt like all bets were off: Hagop Tchaparian found rave release in Armenian folk instruments; Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon returned from a long hiatus to strike yacht-rock gold with Panda Bear; and Ezmeralda and DJ Python dissolved the rhythms of cumbia and reggaeton into experimentally atmospheric new forms. The Soft Pink Truth winkingly titled his house epic Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?; day after day, his peers responded in the affirmative.
Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist.
Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2022 wrap-up coverage here.
(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)