Record Store Day 2026: Best Exclusive Vinyl Releases

Sonic Youth haven’t been an active band for a decade and a half, but they’ve kept their fans happy with a steady stream of live archival releases (mostly thanks to the efforts of drummer Steve Shelley). This latest offering is one of the coolest yet. Diamond Seas highlights an underrated aspect of the noise-rock innovators’ legacy by bringing in John Oswald, the guy behind the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” megamix Grayfolded, to work his magic on their 1995 classic “The Diamond Sea.” Oswald wove together 32 vintage live performances of the song into what promises to be a truly epic journey through oceans of feedback, filling both sides of a 12″ on white vinyl (side A is all ’95 shows, side B is all ’96). What better way to celebrate the jammier side of SY? —Simon Vozick-Levinson

In the summer of 2025, Neil Young played a spectacular series of concerts across Europe and North America with his new band, the Chrome Hearts. The shows featured a mixture of classics like “Ohio,” “Harvest Moon,” and “Like a Hurricane,” and fan-favorite deep cuts, including “Looking Forward” and “Name of Love” from latter-day CSNY reunion albums, “Be the Rain” from his 2003 eco-rock album Greendale, and “Big Crime,” a furious screed against the Trump administration that Young wrote on tour. These were intense, fiery shows, some of the best he’s played in years. As always, Young recorded every one, and he cobbled together the best moments on this new collection, As Time Explodes. A follow-up tour was originally booked for this summer, but Young wound up cancelling it. At least we have this live album to remember it. —Andy Greene

What happened after Joni Mitchell made her masterpiece, Blue? Just shy of 30, the songwriter escaped her newfound stardom, relocating from Los Angeles to her home country of Canada. She settled in the remote, serene Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, living in a stone cabin with little electricity. It was there that she created For the Roses, a follow-up that leaned into gritty, all-encompassing nature — while also sarcastically commenting on the music industry. That is mostly evident on the hit single “You Turn Me On I’m a Radio,” but also in the original album artwork, depicting roses coming out of a horse’s behind, and now available for the first time on Record Store Day. Mitchell would return to L.A. excess for 1974’s Court and Spark, making For the Roses her brief respite from the spotlight. More than 50 years on, the record is still severely underappreciated. Hopefully, this release changes that. —Angie Martoccio

There couldn’t be better timing for the vinyl release of this posthumous Jeff Buckley live album. The record begins with an incandescent take on “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” a song that just became a bona fide Hot 100 hit more than three decades after its release. From there, Buckley is in top form throughout this 1995 Paris performance: Along with top renditions of Grace standbys, you can hear his cover of “Kick out the Jams,” his goofy Led Zeppelin “Kashmir” parody, and his location-appropriate cover of “Je ne’en Connais Pas la Fin.” —Jonathan Bernstein

When Bruce Springsteen headlined the Sea.Hear.Now festival in his adopted hometown of Asbury Park, New Jersey, in the summer of 2024, he threw his standard setlist into the shredder and played a nostalgic set of tunes from his earliest days with the E Street Band. “I put that in one of the top five or three shows we’ve ever done,” Springsteen told Rolling Stone the following year. “That’s how special it was for me anyway. And partly because I was in that town when there was no one there, when it was a ghost town. So to be there for its rebirth and when it came back to life, and to see that happen on that beach in front of us on a beautiful September night was one of the loveliest performing experiences of my life.” The show has been available as a download, but it truly deserves this physical release. —A.G.

The music that Weezer made on their 1994 debut has only gotten more popular with time; there’s something about those songs that just keeps resonating with new generations of fans. Now we can go back to the source with the long-lost studio demos for the Blue Album. Recorded in November 1992 and forgotten until now, when former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp came across the reel-to-reel master tape, 1192 features the O.G. lineup of frontman Rivers Cuomo, drummer Pat Wilson, Sharp, and guitarist Jason Cropper running through early takes of “Say It Ain’t So,” “Undone (The Sweater Song),” “No One Else,” “Surf Wax America,” and “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here.” Cropper would be out of the band by the time they finished the Blue Album, and Sharp left after one more LP. Those early days have been endlessly mythologized by Weezer fans since then, and 1192 is something like a holy grail. —S.V.L.

Charli XCX is busy preparing her next checkmate move on the pop chessboard, with early reports indicating that guitars will feature prominently on her eighth LP. (One song evidently features the line, “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music.” Got it!) While we wait for more, revisit the post-Pop 2, pre-Brat moment when she was getting deeper into electro mood music. This 2020 single was a highlight of her How I’m Feeling Now era, and it’s won even more fans since then, reaching its chart peak just last year after a late-breaking TikTok surge. Now it’s on ultra-clear vinyl for the first time, with an etching on side B. —S.V.L.

The Dead released June 1976 as a 15-CD box set in 2020, but they specifically remastered this particular show from 6/11/76 on vinyl. Every Deadhead knows why: It’s an early show from one of their most historic tours, when they returned to the road after they retired their massive Wall of Sound and Mickey Hart rejoined the band after a five-year sabbatical. Back in theaters for the first time in years, they basked in intimate, magical moments like “Looks Like Rain” and “Ship of Fools,” with supreme vocal arrangements that would be discussed for decades. 50 years on, the music never stopped, and the conversation is still going. —A.M.

“Well, the first thing I want to say is, ‘Mandate, my ass!’” That’s actually from the final track on Reflections, the spoken-word Reagan takedown “B’movie,” but if the late poet taught us anything, it’s that his proto-rap genius can hit at any time. The vinyl for Reflections has been hard to come by — until now. The 1981 LP will be available in stunning purple, with original artwork and an obi side spine. Come for the covers of Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands” and Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler),” stay for the sensual jazz of “Morning Thoughts.” —A.M.

Before Tommy, there was “A Quick One, While He’s Away,” Pete Townshend’s quirky dry run at stringing together song-bits into a mini-rock-opera. (It wasn’t quite his first attempt at the form — that was “Rael” from The Who Sell Out.) The nine-minute track is the centerpiece of A Quick One, the 1966 album that’s getting a deluxe Record Store Day release, with bonus outtakes. The album is a fascinating grab-bag look at the Who in their earlier years, from the John Entwistle oddball classic “Boris the Spider” to the preposterous, Keith Moon-let-loose instrumental track “Cobwebs and Strange.” —Brian Hiatt

In September, Olivia Dean brought her luscious vocals to the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge to deliver a soulful rendition of her smash hit “Man I Need,” from her second album, The Art of Loving. Now, fans can get a vinyl pressing of that special live performance for RSD as part of her “BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge” 7″ release. The pressing features the hit single on side A and Dean’s cover of Ravyn Lenae’s “Love Me Not,” which she also performed on BBC 1 Live Lounge, on side B. —Maya Georgi

2026 is the year of the Duffaissance. The actress and singer released her comeback album Luck….Or Something earlier this year, so it only made sense for her to make us go back, back to the beginning, to revisit “Come Clean.” Pressed on silver vinyl, (Mine) features a present-day Hilary re-recording the 2004 classic, as well as the Lizzie McGuire Movie highlight “What Dreams Are Made Of” and five more songs. “Thank you for continuing to love this song all these years,” she said when the “Come Clean” remake hit streaming last week. “It’s been so fun growing up with her.” We have to agree. —A.M.

Peter Gabriel’s solo career can be neatly cleaved into two halves: pre-“Sledgehammer” and post-“Sledgehammer.” Prior to the breakthrough 1986 hit, he was a cult artist still trying to shake off the “ex-Genesis singer” label. After “Sledgehammer,” thanks in large part to its groundbreaking video, he was an MTV superstar playing sold-out arenas and appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone.  “Everyone thinks, ‘Oh, he must have created that to get a hit,’” Gabriel told us in 2012. “And it wasn’t done that way. In fact, [bassist] Tony Levin reminded me that he was packing his bags to go home, and I called him back into the studio, saying ‘I’ve got this one idea that maybe we can fool around with for the next record – but I like the feel.’ That was ‘Sledgehammer.’ It was late in the day and we just fell into the groove, landed a beautiful drum track on it, a great bass line and it all came together.” To celebrate the 40th anniversary, Gabriel is releasing the 12″ version as a zoetrope picture disc with still images from the video stamped onto it.  —A.G.

Will Blur ever play the U.S. again? Damon Albarn offered the tiniest crumb of hope the last time we asked him, but we know to keep our expectations on this subject tempered by now. In the meantime, fans can remember what a brilliant live act they are and were by diving into this recording of a Tokyo date on their 1995 tour for The Great Escape. Originally released 30 years ago in Japan but long out of print in physical formats, it’s a two-LP document of their peak Britpop era, boasting a setlist packed with mid-Nineties hits from “Charmless Man” and “Country House” to “Girls and Boys” and “End of a Century.” It’s a gift for Blur fans who still think these were the best days. —S.V.L.

1984’s Heartbeat City was a pivotal album for the Cars, the one where their sleek new-wave hooks got even sleeker. Singles like “You Might Think,” “Drive,” and “Magic” connected with a new MTV audience, and a band that had been cranking out top-shelf pop-rock for years was suddenly bigger than ever. This live set, originally released last year as part of a 40th anniversary reissue of the album, documents a September 1984 performance at a Houston arena. Turn it up and let the good times roll.—S.V.L.

The enormous success of their 1969 debut LP as a trio turned David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash into superstars. The following year, after their buddy Neil joined and the whole thing imploded, the original three all headed into the studio to cut solo albums. Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name, Stills’ Stephen Stills, and Nash’s Songs for Beginners are all extraordinary albums; in the decades that followed, none of them ever quite managed to top them on their own. For the first time ever, all three of them are packaged together in this four-LP box set, which also features a full record of demos, live tracks and stray songs from that era. In some ways, this is the 1971 CSN album that never happened. —A.G.

Taylor Swift’s megastar power has played a role in Record Store Day, and the overall vinyl business, for a long time now. Last year, her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, and its many variants helped U.S. vinyl sales surpass $1 billion in revenue for the first time since 1983. Now, Swift is releasing an exclusive, galactic purple-and-blue pressing of Showgirl single “Elizabeth Taylor” as part of RSD 2026. If you ever asked yourself, what could you possibly get for the girl who has everything and nothing all at once? Well, it’s this record. Officially titled the “Cry My Eyes Violet Glitter” edition, it includes the original album version of the song on side A and the stripped back, “So Glamorous Cabaret Version” on the B-side. The record also features a black-and-white collectible artwork cover of Swift embodying the movie star she writes about. —M.G.

When Slipknot were recording All Hope Is Gone in 2008, four out of the nine members took off their masks and formed an experimental alt-rock quartet called Look Outside Your Window. They’ve sat on releasing their self-titled debut for nearly two decades so that it could get the attention it deserves, and it does deserve attention. The music recalls Radiohead and Q Lazzarus, though with a slightly heavier edge, which may surprise the musicians’ longtime fans and likely win over new ones who aren’t into Slipknot’s metal or theatrics. —Kory Grow

Fans of the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris-driven period of the late Nineties are going to feast on this compilation of performances they did for a Dutch television show. Recordings from 1997 and 2000 show the band at its best on songs like “Mr. Wilson” and “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.” Even more unique are the acoustic versions of Sound of Lies standouts like “Big Star.” This recording is a long-overdue documentation of an overlooked period from these Minnesota legends. —J.B.

The first-ever vinyl pressing of Big Thief singer Adrianne Lenker’s innovatively tracked live album is a must-have. Over a whopping 43 tracks (or, in this case, six sides), Lenker performs signature Big Thief tunes (“Little Things,” “Spud Infinity”) and devastating solo selections (“Sadness Is a Gift”) in a mix of fidelities: Some songs are pristine documents that make you feel like you’re onstage next to her; others feel more like field recordings. At one point, Lenker even teases “I Will Always Love You.” It’s the perfect recording for any fan of Big Thief. —J.B.

When art-punk firebrands Wire re-emerged from a hiatus that lasted most of the Nineties, they returned with a series of EPs. Read & Burn 03, which came out in 2007, featured four highly textured, urgent-sounding songs, including the nearly 10-minute “23 Years Too Late,” whose surrealistic lyrics complemented the group’s mixture of avant-garde ambience and Cockney punk. It was the last new music recorded by the band’s original lineup. This reissue expands the track list with two versions of “Desert Driving,” a song that’s an echo of their Chairs Missing track “Heartbeat”; the original mix of “Our Time”; and “Dip Flash,” which presaged “23 Years Too Late.” —K.G.

Cass Elliot’s solo debut is a must-have this Record Store Day, pressed on violet vinyl and including two bonus covers: John Sebastian’s “Darling Be Home Soon” and Joni Mitchell’s “Sisotowbell Lane.” The rest of the album features A-list personnel, including Sebastian, Stephen Stills, and Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine. As Elliot told Rolling Stone in 1968, “David Crosby said about a dozen times it took him further than he’d meant to go, which I thought was such a groovy compliment.” Ditto what Croz said. —A.M.

Love was a cottage industry for John Lennon. There was “All You Need Is Love,” “Real Love,” “Oh, My Love,” and, of course, the Plastic Ono Band song “Love.” Lennon’s son, Sean, continues the family business by turning that last song into meditations on this release, which features three LPs containing radical, ambient re-workings of “Love.” Some are slower, some are extended, and some feature new instrumentation by Sean, John, and Yoko Ono. There’s even one LP side filled with mantras like “real,” “knowing,” “free,” and “wanting.” It’s a lot to consider, and that’s the point. —K.G.

A year after gutting the blues and flipping them inside out, the good Captain and his Magic Band returned with Lick My Decals Off, Baby, a (very) slightly more accessible collection of never-serious avant-garde rock that later inspired Tom Waits, Magazine (who covered the track “I Love You, Big Dummy”), PJ Harvey, and the Black Keys. This deluxe edition of the album contains a second LP with instrumental versions of the album (including an harp version of “Big Dummy”) and alternate versions of three songs. —K.G.