Thom Yorke

Updated Aug 20, 2026

Yeah, Thom Yorke is the Radiohead guy — but he’s also quietly built a real catalog in electronic music, and it deserves its own spotlight. Starting with 2006’s The Eraser, released on XL Recordings, Yorke stepped fully into electronica: skittering beats, glitchy production, way less guitar. The album actually charted, hitting number three in the UK and number two on the Billboard 200, proving there was a real audience for Yorke unplugged from rock band mode.

From there he went deeper into dance territory with Atoms for Peace, the project he formed with producer Nigel Godrich, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, drummer Joey Waronker, and percussionist Mauro Refosco. Their 2013 album Amok leaned hard into rhythm-driven, groove-heavy electronic production — a genuine attempt to make music built around the low end and the beat rather than the verse-chorus structure. It’s some of the most dancefloor-adjacent work Yorke has ever put his name on.

He kept pushing further with Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes in 2014, a solo record he self-released via BitTorrent that leaned into electronic beats and textured synth work, and later Anima in 2019, another dive into rhythm and atmosphere. Along the way, Yorke linked up repeatedly with Berlin electronic duo Modeselektor, contributing vocals to tracks like “Shipwreck” and “This,” collaborations that put him squarely in the middle of the German techno and bass scene rather than just adjacent to it. More recently, he teamed up with electronic producer Mark Pritchard for the album Tall Tales, released on Warp Records in 2025 — a label that’s basically the gold standard for serious electronic music.

What’s interesting about Yorke’s electronic output is how unpretentious it is about genre. He’s not chasing festival main stages, but he’s clearly obsessed with rhythm, texture, and the mechanics of dance and electronic production, and he’s made that obsession into a real, ongoing body of work spanning nearly two decades. For anyone who only knows him from Radiohead, the Atoms for Peace and Modeselektor material especially is worth digging into — it’s a genuinely different side of the guy, and a legitimately electronic one.

Thom Yorke

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