Best of 2015? Maybe not, as Cloakroom could do well to add just a bit more variety to their sound. Nonetheless, they’re off to a rather auspicious start, as Further Out refines positive aspects of their debut EP and ups the production value immensely.

For those who are willing to go in without preconceived notions, this album is a masterpiece: a stunning feat of songwriting depth, emotional maturity, and melodic effortlessness that stands as one of the best albums to come out in years.

"Summer Brings You Closer to Satan" would be an fair pick for the album’s best track, except that Runners in the Nerved World hardly falters in quality at any point.

Though not nearly as strong as 2008’s Ganging Up On the Sun, Evermotion is stronger than 2010’s Easy Wonderful and will continue to keep the band relevant in 2015 and beyond.

The palpably effervescent joy of Rae Sremmurd feels untainted by the ills of reality and stands against a backdrop of contemporaries like Shmurda and Chief Keef who use their as a way of combating the grim reality of inner city rot.

An understandable desire to have her traumas understood by everybody inevitably results in a bland mush of melodrama. Despite this, The Pinkprint is Nicki Minaj’s most successful album by a fairly wide margin, as she becomes more empathetic than at any point in the past while Pink Friday’s DMZ between pop and rap becomes little more than a historical footnote in her career.

Her melodies are always on point and her voice is as strong and confident as ever, a very large and noticeable step up from the teenage True Romance.

Very much a step forward from last year’s The Coming Tide, Everlasting Arms is a sterling effort from an artist who fully understands who he is and what he is and is absolutely loving every minute of it.

Quite simply, there hasn’t been a Copeland album as complete as Ixora.

While the record’s bloat does kind of compromise its overall consistency and cohesion, Lost on the River probably still has more of the year’s best songs in one place than almost any other album.

Overall, if you’re going to listen to one seasonal release this year, Los Campesinos! have created an EP which provides that festive hit whilst maintaining exactly what it is that makes them special with their usual work. Another stellar release from one of the most under-rated indie rock bands in the world.

On her debut album, Azealia Banks has established herself as a brash and crude personality both on and off record, and she’s complemented it with a competent execution of a bold artistic vision.

Cadillactica very rarely falls short of its goals, and the few throwaway tracks are unobtrusive enough to not take anything away from the record.

White Noise stands to be one of the most promising and impressive debut album of the year, but more than just deserving that title, it stands to be one of the best albums of the year.

Run The Jewels 2 is the logical follow up to Run The Jewels; it's bigger, bolder, and feels like a punch to the gut that you'll be feeling for weeks.

With this record, the band not only rose up to the bar set by their contemporaries, they raised it to a new level-- which is a good thing, because if this record is the new standard for the metalcore genre, then the future is looking incredibly bright.

The New Sidewalk isn’t their great album, but it’s undoubtedly a stepping stone on the way there.

All told, it’s a solid record with no glaring weak points (a first for the Foo Fighters) and with some of the band’s more rewarding and adventurous songwriting.

It is not deserving of a Hurley-level bashing, and it’s too aware to be Pinkerton. It’s an album they could have made 10 years ago, but it’s also one that feels moderately current.

This is not disposable music--it’s exhausting and exhilarating and desolate and hopeful all at once--and there are layers both musically and lyrically that’ll reveal themselves with each subsequent spin. Pianos Become The Teeth’s third record is the most captivating and rewarding record of 2014--one that will be remembered as a classic within the genre and a gateway to those outside it.

Rice hasn’t changed his sound much, but his writing is still every bit as visceral as it always has been, and his long-awaited third album, called My Favourite Faded Fantasy, absolutely lives up to the legacy of his previous work.

Take the time to listen to this album, front to back. Pick up on the subtleties and metaphors, because you don't hear this kind of poetry from a band every day.

Pleasant Living is anything but a happy album, but that doesn’t mean it can’t point us in the direction of better times.

It's under-produced on essentially all aspects of the musicianship, while Jordan Pundik's hyper-nasally vocals are mixed poorly and too sugar-coated.

Absent Sounds is one of those records where favorite songs change by the hour. And it’s also a record that understands your perceived meaning is the most important one.

Taylor still crams an awful lot of herself into these verses and choruses, to the point where most of these songs hit a new sound, but are still unmistakably her.

Within its contents the album very much feels like the debut record from a solo artist trying to feel things out on his own as a songwriter.

The beauty of a record like I’ll Be The Tornado, which spends so much time in the devastating minutiae of heartbreak and pain, is its realization that the bad can still do lots and lots of good. It’s a fairy tale thought to think that life won’t get in a gut punch or two, and Dads have made a record that revels in failure for truly triumphant results.

There are moments of despair, but on the whole, Lift a Sail rings as an uplifting testament to love and human resilience.

Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness is especially welcoming given that it’s probably his most consistent front-to-back set of songs since Transit.

It makes for a mixed bag of an album--occasionally the band sticks to their wheelhouse and sounds great, occasionally their normal stuff gets a bit stale; sometimes they experiment and it goes well, sometimes not.

Full of tenderness and vulnerability yet also razor-sharp and raucous moments, it makes the record even more charming due to the relatable nature of the constant battle with internal monologues.

If you’re already a fan of the band, Hold On Pain Ends delivers in every way.

It's a record full of beauty and heartache, confidence and fear, and these ends pull at each other for one of the most captivating records to come out this year.

I Don't Dance is a sprawling, thought provoking work from an artist who is just now hitting his stride.

Easily their most consistent release yet, it’s unquestionably one of the best albums of the year.

Foundations of Burden is the sound of an already excellent band reaching their potential, and in the process setting a new standard for the genre.

El Pintor is a well-produced album that proves Interpol are still a quality band, even without the extreme hype to back them.

Songs of Innocence is a great record. Not a perfect one, mind you: for one thing, Danger Mouse, the record’s primary producer, uses a few too many of his tired stock tricks along the way, making the record sound more generic than it would with Brian Eno behind the boards.

While Ryan Adams doesn’t take as many chances as some of the other records that Adams has made in the past decade, it’s also as cohesive and consistent an album as any he has ever made.

For a producer who had such a big hand in one of the best records of the year, though, 10 Summers is just too by-the-numbers to excite anyone.

On They Want My Soul, Spoon’s most wide-ranging and eclectic album of its career, this isn’t a band who are settling in to their collective stride, but searching for new places entirely.

Unfortunately, Rustie’s seemingly inherent need to zig when expected to zag has resulted in an awkwardly stitched together ragdoll of otherwise intriguing and successful pieces.

A shake up in the lyric department would be nice to see next time around, but on this outing Lana Del Rey is able to sell it with striking vocal performances and breathtaking compositions.

Nearly every song on this record is misogynistic in some regard, from the obvious predatory ramblings of “Animals” to the Robin Thicke-level douchebaggery of “Feelings.”

Branan is a supremely confident songwriter who is not too proud to poke fun at both his craft and his profession. That sense of levity makes The No-Hit Wonder worth many repeated listens. Easily one of the best country albums of 2014.

In between, we get plenty of striking melodies, at least a dozen quotable lyrics (“Tomorrow’s the name we changed from yesterday to blame when the train just don’t stop here anymore” is an instant Duritz classic), and an arrangement that shows off the Crows at their loosest and most vibrant.

Lese Majesty is an entirely different beast than Black Up, and the group manages to continue sticking out in the hip-hop world for their incomparable creativity.

It’s all well and good to deal with tough topics through music, but My Everything puts on a breezy pop face that severely hinders the potential poignancy of Grande’s words, morphing them into a more disquieting figure.

You Will Eventually Be Forgotten is easily one of the best albums of the year.

Prawn have shaped themselves into a band who offer more than lyrics, but counseling. And Kingfisher is catharsis created not through grit, but melody.

A tangle of influences and contemporaries; yet she manages to keep space in which her frail breath of a singing voice can survive.

It’s disheartening that the album isn’t the game-changing record Fallon promised, and it’s too bad that it doesn’t have the thesis-statement cohesion of albums like The 59 Sound and American Slang. But the songs are still great, the production is still excellent, and the performances of the band members have rarely been in finer form.

Coming in at 11 tracks, Gemini, Her Majesty doesn't contain a single song that you'll want to skip.

The band has continued to expand and refine their ADD-riddle pop-punk into something more substantial and LP3 chronicles the growth in songwriting while maintaining the spastic charm of the band's earlier releases.

Self-production is no small feat, but with years of experience, they made an impeccable sounding record.

What Antonoff has accomplished with Bleachers that he hasn’t yet with fun. or never did with Steel Train is create an album that inspires as much as it transports. It’s so sure and precise in its vision that it almost feels like a concept album without a concept.

There are absolutely stunning passages on here to be sure, but as a whole the record fails to really take your breath away like one would hope.

FreeBase may not find 2 Chainz making any big leaps forward, but what it does offer is a refinement of some of the things people love from 2 Chainz. The beats are top shelf, his flow is versatile but never overly complex, and his lyrics are humorous, if a little unremarkable.

Lowborn is a fairly strong record on a song-for-song basis, and the added emotional heft of it being a swansong helps to elevate it above the weaker entries in the band’s catalog--even despite its numerous issues.

The EP is five songs of huge, intricate, explosive guitar work, thumping drums that refuse to take a rest, Day and O'Connor's signature call-and-return vocals, the occasional necessary breakdown and gang vocal portion, and the catchiest choruses FYS has ever penned.

Nikki-Nack is an outstanding successor to W h o k i l l and the year’s most memorable pop album yet.

Fullbright’s first record, From the Ground Up, scored a surprise Grammy nomination in the Americana category two years ago, but don’t be surprised when Songs starts topping EOTY lists in December.

For a record that trades heavily in production experiments foreign to both parties, Royksopp and Robyn by and large succeed at creating what they set out to--a monument.

Just Be Free is a wonderfully functional album, displaying Queen Freedia at her very best.

With From Parts Unknown, Every Time I Die have hit the Ultimate Splash on its competition, absolutely cementing its legacy as one of the greatest heavy bands of our generation.

As long as they keep crafting albums as fresh, loose and fun as Remedy, chances are they’ll keep this truck roaring for another two decades.

This record is guaranteed to indiscriminately piss off both kinds of Black Keys fans: the diehard purists yearning for the blues rock halcyon days and the recent devotees primed for another round of hooky singles.

With A U R O R A, Ben Frost has crafted an unimpeachable story of weathering the most abrasive elements of existence and emerging stronger for the trials endured.

Once More 'Round the Sun is the band's most accessible record yet in a lot of ways. The choruses are catchier, the guitar solos are flashier, and the production, while not too overdone, isn't too raw to leave any recognizable barrier to entry.

One man’s suffering becomes our communal celebration, so to speak. It's a fine role for one of the year's best albums to play.

All of this makes for an interesting listen, even if the record can tend to drag on a little bit toward the end.

At the end of the day, Rise of The Lion was the record that Miss May I needed to make in order to continue as a band.02

Hebrews isn't the return to form listeners may have been expecting from Say Anything; instead it's something entirely better.

It’s been too long since we’ve heard a great acoustic album where the vocals, lyrics, and guitar work all work to complement the other parts perfectly. On Clouded, This Wild Life achieve just that, resulting in what will end up being one of the most impressive debut albums of the year.

There's no real logical conclusion as to what it all means, and The Roots understand that. That's part of why they made the album so short; so that you can put the time in and come to a conclusion yourself.

Its not as bare bones as NLDW, but it's every bit as in-your-face and aggressive as you would expect from a Death Grips record.

It has all of the right things going for it to make anyone even slightly interested in metal sit up and take notice.

The album is 55 minutes of simplistic storytelling, Oberst’s ever recognizable vocals and a whole lot of heart. If you’ve been an Oberst fan at any point of his career before 2009, it’s a record that’s easy to fall in love with.

Some will deplore the record for its relative lack of pop appeal, but for a massively popular band that has so often been derailed by its own lofty ambitions, there is a huge pleasure in hearing something that succeeds on such a small, modest, and humanized scale.

His propensity for pushing boundaries is carried over onto an album that devotes more than a third of its runtime to previously released songs. Terje took the remainder of that time and expended it on bold, successful new iterations of his aesthetic.

Not only does Flies In All Directions combine the best elements of American Art and The Cosmic Drama, it exceeds them, resulting in what's bound to a genre-defining staple for years to come.

Loom is just the band's first full-length, even though it sounds like a band's third or fourth album--a testament to the band's ambition and skill, which will ultimately place Frameworks in the same room with genre-pillars Touché Amoré, Pianos Become The Teeth, and La Dispute.

It’s cheeky, groovy, and it always sounds as though it’s teetering on the edge of being a genuine irritant.

There's nothing to really chew on here, nothing to keep you coming back.

While there’s a healthy dose of filler on Sheezus, there’s still plenty of charmers.

Those who soak up the sex-addled, beer-swilling rockstar lifestyle will find plenty of kinship with Most Messed Up, but don’t for a second call it their best work though, it’s far too narrow to be given that glory.

From front to back, Holy Vacants is a visceral, fist-pumping cornucopia of rage, terror, disappointment and instability.

Even though this isn't peak Chiodos (yet), Devil has the band on the right path to reclaiming the the top spot of the scene food chain sooner rather than later.

Easily digestible, wholeheartedly inoffensive and very much DIY, this is an album that makes the forty minutes more than worth the investment. If only every disc could be this much fun.

The album is, on face value, yet another rap record about the artists success in overcoming the hobbling obstacles of the drug industry. Stale as the concept is, Future breathes life into it by twisting it into his own image and owning it fully.

To call it a triumph is putting it mildly. Lucky is a clarion call to contemporary country music, a beacon of hope that proves just how much can be accomplished with just a voice and a vision.

Easily his best album to date, Till Midnight is a beacon of a record that will be looked at fondly come year’s end.

While Rented World may not offer the thematic comforts that fans of Impossible Past will be searching for, the album is stacked from top to bottom with can’t-miss tracks.

Happiness Is showcases how much each member of Taking Back Sunday has grown as an individual and a musician.

Lights Out is a more-than-satisfactory entry in the singer's solid discography, and easily one of the best pop albums of the year so far.

One of the most unique, reflective, darkly humorous, and brilliant records to grace ears in a while.

Seahaven lost themselves at sea (figuratively) and emerged with the most surprising and refreshing album of 2014.