DiS is often accused of not really covering new music any more, but we do, just not in an unrelenting fashion. We're picky when it comes to sticking our neck out for new music, and we didn't start a site to deluge you.

To prove we're not anti-new, we've compiled our 20 favourite debut albums of the year. In fact, don't go thinking that this is some sort of tokenistic ghetto for fresh-faced upstarts, as you will find many of these career jumper-starters dotted throughout our full albums of the year list, later this week. That's how we like to feature 'new' music, alongside the big names, so that it's about what we recommend the most, rather than what's newest.

Note for Pedants: Yes! A few of these acts feature familiar names such as Sufjan Stevens, and yes, some of them are from bands such as Deftones and Explosions in the Sky, who've previously featured prominently throughout the site, but these are new projects and are 'debut albums'.

20) Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso

"Sylvan Esso was not meant to be band." You’ve got to hand it to the PR, it’s a great pitch: accidental electronic-pop duo emerge – seemingly out of nowhere – brandishing one of the most intriguing debuts of 2014. It’s a story that front woman Amelia Meath corroborates when we speak over the phone. But what also emerges out of that tangled narrative of serendipitous circumstances and moments seized, is a portrait of a determined individual, driven by a love of music and a desire to create. Read our full interview with Amelia, here.

19) Martha - Courting Strong

Paul Brown wrote: “While County Durham’s Martha are yet to have as momentous an impact on popular culture as Arctic Monkeys and Pulp, to me their debut album Courting Strong paints just as vivid a picture of growing up in the pit village of Pity Me as their forebears did with reference to Sheffield. Whether they’re singing about love, gender identity and sexuality or kids getting pissed up outside a cathedral, the four-piece gang exhibit a delicious mastery of the art of balance. Their songs are at once clever but not smart-arsed, fun but completely serious, catchy but lusciously enriching.”

18) Fear of Men - Loom

Brighton trio Fear Of Men have been favourites on the site since their second single 'Mosaic' landed at the tail end of 2012. Back in April, they finally released their eagerly anticipated first long player Loom. DiS’ Dom Gourlay caught up with singer/guitarist Jess Weiss (pictured, above) and fellow guitarist Daniel Falvey prior to the record's release.

17) Ex Hex - Rips

Joe Goggins wrote: “Anybody lucky enough to have caught Wild Flag during their brief time together might have noticed that Brownstein was by no means their sole creative force - assuming, of course, they were able to look past her truly captivating stage moves. That band’s guitar player, Mary Timony, had probably best been known previously for her work with Helium, but her brilliantly melodic contributions to that one and only Wild Flag record - take the fierce riffery of ‘Future Crimes’ for instance, or her jagged playing on lead single ‘Romance’. Timony’s quick-fire formation of a new band then, post-Flag, seemed like the most promising outlet for their fans, with Brownstein having put music on the back burner and Weiss turning her attentions to Quasi and session work. If there were high hopes for Ex Hex’s first record, then Rips proves them to be well-founded; it’s a guitar-pop record that’s both belligerent and catchy, and one that’s utterly devoid of any filler or fat whatsoever.”

16) Sisyphus - Sisyphus

Sammy Maine wrote: “Narrating the hilarity of modern day situations to heart-breaking effect, with each artist (Sufjan Stevens, Serengeti and Son Lux) bringing their strengths to the table, Sisyphus is almost certainly the greatest hip-hop folk-tinged electronica with a deep techno pop groove record you'll ever hear.”

15) Douglas Dare - Whelm

Sam Willis wrote: “Along with the clean cut and muted cover of the album, the poems (nine of them, in a book that comes with the album!) suggest a record with minimalistic approaches and songs that orbit around bringing sentience to their lyrics. The clues are there and Dare doesn’t disappoint with an album that offers nominal piano instrumentation and flitters of electronics – both used to punctuate the melancholic lyrics and vocals which take centre stage within the project.”

14) Thumpers - Galore

Rob Leedham wrote: "Since emerging from the ashes of Pull Tiger Tail, Marcus Pepperell and John Hamson, Jr. have churned out sherbert-coated joy like a pair of alt-pop Willy Wonkas. Combining the pomp and ceremony of Talking Heads with Everything Everything’s rhythmic prowess, their early EPs were as jubilant as they were inventive. In a world where the Radio 1 playlist isn’t run by a gaggle of fuckwits, ‘Sound Of Screams’ and ‘Unkinder (A Tougher Love)’ would only now have begun to tumble out of the Top 40; such is their infinite brilliance. Rather than roll out a further 10 cavalcades of blaring synth and breathless guitar licks on Galore, Thumpers’ debut album is more considered than you’d expect."

13) Woman’s Hour - Conversations

Rob Leedham wrote:l “Athough Conversations demands a lot, it’s plenty unsparing in return. Burgess’ lyrics are relentlessly intimate, ruminating over the aftermath of ill-fated relationships. “I’ve got nothing to say to her ghost, hoping she fades away,” she simpers on ‘Her Ghost’, although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. This album seems to be centred on a slim cast of characters, dabbling with only the most fleeting of happy memories in its title track, “Awkward moments of strange affection that could have been shared with anyone else.” Despite this Woman’s Hour are a real joy to behold. To have held back from the hype machine and pursued their own vision of success is admirable. To have achieved this at the first time of asking, that’s damned well remarkable.”

12) Broken Twin - May

Tom Fenwick wrote: It could be quite easy to overlook Majke Voss Romme as just one more in an increasing line of austere Scandinavians. And while it's true that much of her debut does gaze unflinchingly toward an infinite darkness, what makes her stand out from the crowd is the ability to imbue the most claustrophobic of tracks with a distant optimism. It's a gift that sees self-produced debut May occupy a delicate hinterland between monochrome sadness and mercurial hope, making it one of the most exquisite and haunting albums you'll hear all year.

11) Perfect Pussy - Say Yes To Love

Rob Leedham wrote: “Perfect Pussy represent one glittering first for Captured Tracks, namely that the Brooklyn label has finally signed a band to inspire some wilder act than falling asleep on a beanbag. Indeed if the Syracuse punks are, as seems inevitable, to be responsible for invigorating and radicalising our (moderately) alternative youth, then all the better. Singer Meredith Graves possesses such coiled menace that lyrics like “I have a history of surrender” sound less like admissions of vulnerability than crushingly violent taunts.”

10) Annie Eve - Sunday ‘91

Sean Adams wrote: “Sunday '91 will appeal to fans of Daughter's menacing dark cloud or the acoustic thrumming of Laura Marling / Bon Iver / Keaton Henson that mangles the anguish of grunge with the spun yarns of folk. It's music that's both timeless and clearly post-Neil Young. Like her peers and heroes, you can hear the hurt lurking in the shadows and sense the glimmers of hope that her wonderfully sad-yet-optimistic songs flutter toward.”

9) Young Fathers - DEAD

Sam Moore wrote: “The mish-mash of styles on Dead makes for a globalised texture, an eclecticism that appears to know no bounds. For some, it may all be a little too much to handle. But if you’re looking for a thoroughly twenty-first-century record that’ll challenge your preconceptions and bombard the senses, then Dead is something that’s definitely worth your while. Massaquoi, when asked for his personal take on the record, tersely opined that 'it means everything and nothing.' Such polarities may very well determine the overall response to Dead, but the good news for Young Fathers is that it’s a work that inescapably demands a response, a reaction. And that’s a fine achievement for any debut album to rack up in this age of multimedia passivity.”

8) Inventions - Inventions

Sean Adams wrote: “Mark T. Smith from Explosions in the Sky and Matthew Cooper of Eluvium have come together as Inventions to construct something that leans on the ingredients of their day-jobs but is simultaneously exactly what a combination of both acts should sound like and somehow greater than the sum. It's as uplifting and unfurling as EITS's big sky post-rock and takes you through that gasp-exhale process of relaxation that comes from Eluvium's vortex of textures. It's warm but it's chilled. It's flying and falling and floating and undulating and drifting and rushing. It's your mind staring at a far off deer through the blur of trees from a train window, losing yourself in a vivid daydream of swimming in an ocean, on Neptune…”

7) Kiasmos - Kiasmos

Josh Suntharasivam wrote: “The culmination of seven years part-time collaboration between revered classical componser Ólafur Arnalds and Bloodgroup keyboard player and vocalist Janus Rasmussen, Kiasmos’ debut LP might not be much in the way of a surprise for those who’ve listened to ‘Thrown’ or ‘Looped’, but working from divergent influences is rarely simple. Kiasmos iterates on the ideas explored in these earlier tunes with serious skill, electronic and traditional influences so tightly woven together that the LP maintains a very definite sense of identity throughout, and is pretty much impossible to poke holes in. Eschewing the visceral edge of their earliest releases, Kiasmos embraces a longer, slower-burning modus operandi. At one extreme are moments of utter stillness similar to those in Arnalds’ wonderfully spare solo work – when all the machinations of a track halt, as if overcome by their own gorgeousness, and only – say – a stray piano line creeps onward…”

6) Ought - More Than Any Other Day

Jazz Monroe wrote: “Ought hail from a tiny Montreal scene based in Brasserie Beaubien, an ailing bar colonised by politically wired musicians. ‘The Bras’, now abuzz with amateur jazz and socialist noise rock, hosts graduates from the city’s illegal loft party circuit (not unlike the one Grimes, Doldrums and their introvert clan popularised), among whom Ought, hip postpunks and freshly minted Constellation-signees, are but one twinkly-eyed specimen. Yet their debut album is a deeply earnest cry of moral anxiety, a brain-rattling melodic force, and a more or less ‘life-changing’ primer on how to stay sane in sticky times. What happened here?”

5) East India Youth - Total Strife Forever

Tom Fenwick wrote: “Total Strife Forever is that scarcest of things; a masterly record which walks a unpredictable line musically yet remains entirely consistent in quality. A startling album - the best thing you'll hear in these tempestuous January days, and one that will continue to burn brightly long after the embers of 2014 have burnt out.”

4) FKA twigs - LP1

J.R. Moores wrote: “Kylie Minogue’s instructions to “slow down and dance with me, yeah, slow”come to mind, yet despite rocking mounds of rich, deep, funky, booming grooves,LP1’s music is too slow to dance to really. Try slo-mo boogying to this and you’ll risk looking like an aqua aerobics class that lost its swimming pool. Its disorientating, unsettling and claustrophobic ambience would be better suited to soundtracking a Netflix reboot of Nineties yuppie drama This Life. But don’t let that put you off. It may be slow but Twigs’ music is constantly swerving, shifting and splicing. While its glitchy beats, swathes of bass and woozy synths may soothe, they never bore. Its production is slick, professional and precise, but fortunately LP1 remains too out-there to put on at a dreaded dinner party (unless, perhaps, it’s one of those mythically kinky dinner parties where you all put your car keys in a bowl and then make ((excruciatingly slow)) love to someone else’s hubby).”

3) Alvvays - Alvvays

Christopher McBride wrote: “At its heart Alvvays is as indie-pop as it comes. ‘Archie, Marrie Me’ owes more than a fair amount of inspiration from Teenage Fanclub’s ‘Neil Jung’, whilst other songs like the wonderful opener ‘Adult Diversion’ and ‘Atop a Cake’ are very much in the guitar-pop mould, with their guitars set straight to fuzzy/jangly, and with dreamy vocals courtesy of their lead singer Molly Rankin. Yet what sets Alvvays apart from their peers is the sense of darkness and melancholy that hides behind the somewhat sprightly tunes on offer. This is seen on tracks such as the budget Beach House-like ‘Dives’, the yearnings on ‘The Agency Group’, and ‘Next of Kin’, which is surely a contender for the jauntiest, most infectious song of 2014 about a riverside drowning. In a genre which has a reputation, whether fairly or otherwise, for being relatively fluffy and innocent, it is nice to see an album that isn’t afraid to tackle the less pleasant aspects of life head on.”

2) Eagulls - Eagulls

Dom Gourlay wrote: “Comparisons with The Cribs may have been bandied around from their earlier days - largely due to logistics and singer George Mitchell's vocal stylings - yet here was a band whose sound had undergone a distinctive transformation. While still undoubtedly in thrall to all things DIY and punk rock, they'd clearly been listening to what came next. Most notably Killing Joke. If further proof were required then last year's 'Nerve Endings' was the icing on the cake. Its buzzsaw guitars and colossal backbeat - redolent of Killing Joke's classic What's This For long player - complete with Mitchell's disturbingly frantic vocal combined to make it one of 2013's best 45s.”

1) ††† - Crosses

Sean Adams wrote: “This is not a pornolized 60 Shades of Drive soundtrack (but it could be), but it’s kinda hard to not hear that Chino [Moreno, from Deftones] had an Arab Strap phase at some point. The hints of the Scotsmen’s sodden filth are there - beneath the glitter and Prince nods - rising up the record's moist walls... With Deftones the magic of Chino can get lost anongst the rock and awe, but with ††† you’re hard pressed to really notice anything else. The slithery synths soundtrack his writhing calls into the darkness, and you can't help coming back for more.”

The List

1) ††† - Crosses
2) Eagulls - Eagulls
3) Alvvays - Alvvays
4) FKA twigs - LP1
5) East India Youth - Total Strife Forever
6) Ought - More Than Any Other Day
7) Kiasmos - Kiasmos
8) Inventions - Inventions
9) Young Fathers - DEAD
10) Annie Eve - Sunday ‘91
11) Perfect Pussy - Say Yes To Love
12) Broken Twin - May
13) Woman’s Hour - Conversations
14) Thumpers - Galore
15) Douglas Dare - Whelm
16) Sisyphus - Sisyphus
17) Ex Hex - Rips
18) Fear of Men - Loom
19) Martha - Courting Strong
20) Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso

Playlists

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Related Reading

1) DiS' albums of the year lists 2000-2013
2) The page to bookmark for our 2014 year-end coverage (we've added some of our favourite features of the year to get things started)
3) Follow us on Twitter as @drownedinsound or on Facebook for updates.
4) Alternatively, please join our new-ish mailing list to get updates when the list is live.