A Crash Course in This Year’s Alternative Music Grammy Nominees

The Recording Academy recently revealed its nominees for the 2025 Grammy Awards, and The Best Alternative Music Album category includes first-time nominations for both an alt-rock legend and a newcomer.

Kim Gordon, the co-founder of Sonic Youth, received her first Grammy nomination alongside Clairo, pitting an industrial trap album against indie soft pop. Others up for the award are Brittany Howard, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and St. Vincent. These artists represent a welcome change to the formatted and predictable award season.

Here’s a crash course in some of the best alternative music albums from 2024.

What Now by Brittany Howard

What Now is an apt question for the former Alabama Shakes singer and songwriter Brittany Howard. While she tinkered with home demos, something more profound began to take shape. Howard used a mix of traditional instruments alongside trash bags, PVC piping, and crystal bowls to create a vibrantly experimental album. The title track puts Howard’s self-discovery into clear focus. What Now feels like one giant search, transformation, and release across 12 impressionistic tracks.

Charm by Clairo

Three albums in, Claire Cottrill imagined people probably understand her now. Though Charm has pieces of her first two releases—Immunity and Sling—it feels more like a new chapter. Meanwhile, the austerity in Clairo’s album titles continues with the tidy and careful production on Charm. The standout “Juna” stretches her familiar bedroom pop into a psychedelic soul jam. She sings with a casual detachment, and the songs have a kind of Beach Boys sunny-side-up easiness to them.

The Collective by Kim Gordon

Over a long music career, Kim Gordon has said she sees herself as an artist, not a musician. Her background in visual art predates the pioneering band she co-founded, Sonic Youth. The Collective uses blown-out industrial sounds and trap beats, noise, and dissonance that sounds like music reengineered. This isn’t the work of a muso or one concerned with things like hooks. Her album opens with “Bye Bye,” where she talk-raps through her packing list. The recitation of everyday items mirrors the banality pounded into the splintered brains of anyone scrolling on a phone. The album exists as a response, and Gordon sees it as her “reacting to things going on in the world.”

Wild God by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Nick Cave nearly called Wild God “Joy.” Cave has turned the profound and unthinkable loss of a child into what can follow such devastation. The Australian singer often uses biblical imagery in his songs, but Wild God is the sound of one returning to earth. So, what exactly makes a god wild? It’s the unpredictable force of life, the indifference of nature. Still, Cave does his best to stay above water, above the forceful waves of grief, to avoid the endless abyss of despair. The album is defiant, heartbreaking, gorgeous—with all the grief and joy required for meaningful human connection.

All Born Screaming by St. Vincent

Annie Clark chose to self-produce her seventh album. It’s not exactly a reinvention for St. Vincent, but All Born Screaming feels like a very different world from the ’70s retro vibes of Daddy’s Home. But Clark’s virtuosic guitar playing, though not missing, isn’t the main actor here. Analog synthesizers and drum machines mix with Steve Albini-recorded drums for sparse industrial textures and brooding romanticism. The stirring opener “Hell Is Near” distills the opaque tales that dominate Clark’s writing.

Photo by Katja Ogrin/Redferns