The band's third album, Milk Famous, returns to the twitchy dance-rock that made this Brooklyn group such an unstoppable opening act, folding in dashes of Talking Heads' jitter-pop and some blackened post-punk tautness.

The lucid dreamlike hold of Koch carries unparalleled allure, elevating Lee Gamble's already adept soundscapes to quicksand plateaus.

Constructed of parts from Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Comets on Fire, and Howlin Rain, the eponymous San Francisco quartet drowns ethereal folk melodies in a cauldron of distortion and feedback.

Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest's entirely acoustic arrangement harks to a catalog defined by stillness and moments of quiet revelation.

Ratchet gambles at every turn and comes up a major player.

Some Cities builds on the band's propensity for melodic grandeur and achieves pure sonic bliss in the bargain.

The quotidian problems and longings of the title track making up the real heart of the album, a rough and tumble struggle to the top.

The Mountain represents not only a point of no return and a cornerstone for the Heartless Bastards; the album's a personal triumph of desolate determination.

Gentle outlaw Cass McCombs luxuriates in sunlit California landscapes, weaving offbeat tales of carousing and yearning on Big Wheel and Others.

The combination of Roth's deft touch, Hunter's gritty vocals, and the band's skilled musicianship makes Minute by Minute one of the best of the year.

Clark's exacting sensibility makes every song a new experience, finally birthing an album where every shot hits its mark.

Authoritatively illustrating why, the 4-CD Keep an Eye on the Sky might be considered compilation overload on this admittedly obscure Memphis quartet for the newcomer, but cultists and anyone interested in some of the purest guitar pop ever made will find lots and lots to love.

"Lucifer on the Sofa" has enough endearing moments to sit comfortably in the meaty middle of the band's catalog.

Their Laurel Canyon harmonies still beguile, and Stay Gold strikes a wide, thick vein of polish and confidence.

Its debut gets a lot of traction out of being crisp and clean.

Neko Case-sung standout "Champions Of Red Wine" levels the otherwise upbeat 13-track disc, before Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar's "War on the East Coast" returns momentum upward.

Townes is unparalleled in its versions of Van Zandt's songs, Earle bringing all the emotional complexity of their association to bear in tones of both joy and regret.

Devotchka has harnessed a spectrum of emotions and attitudes in each of its albums, from nostalgia and longing to mischief. This has never been more true than with 100 Lovers, the indie-gypsy-mariachi-fusion quartet's sixth full-length.

Arising from largely improvised performances that accompanied a cosmic expedition at San Antonio's Scobee Planetarium, The Spiral Arm ranks not as the Austin ambient trio's spaciest effort – that's 2016 debut Original Soundtrack – but as their most beautiful.

Here's a couple that turns in a strong fifth LP. Kori Gardner (keys, vox) and Jason Hammel (drums, vox) keep their cheery, indie rock, boy-girl harmonies intact while simultaneously exorcising any relationship-related demons that may lurk in their Connecticut home.

The trio's self-titled debut of experimental nightmare folk throbs with a supernatural presence, even if the sounds of commonplace nature--rain, chirping birds, the landscape of Dripping Springs--serve as bedrock for the sound

What makes the seventh Wovenhand LP such a refreshing departure [is] Refractory Obdurate is the unabashed electric rock LP the Colorado fourpiece has hinted at in its last two releases.

Back to basics, Side Effects draws a dynamic through line to White Denim's jittery origins.

Band of Brothers belongs solely to Willie Nelson. This is the sound of rust being ground out, cylinders squeaking back to life, engines and carburetors opening wide on the road again.

At just 35 minutes, she's now produced one of the tightest and most complete albums of 2018, while advancing philosophical wax on contextual freedoms of her black body.

Like That gives new meaning to the word "alive."

What Alpha Mike Foxtrot lacks is equally significant: meandering guitar solos from recent recordings and zero footholds for "dad-rock" puns. Rather, AMF communicates Wilco's career innovation, maintained while increasing popularity--the rarest of feats.

Rosanne Cash caps a trilogy of reflection with poise and insight, a complex cultural legacy moved distinctly forward.

The album's whole second side rises to a bar set mile-high by the band's national breakout.

Recasting not only prolongs a song’s life, but renews it – reinvents it, revitalizes it. Airing out lifetimes locked in a closet of emotional gravity, Echo Dancing rechannels these selections’ romantic existentialism and magical realism into a techno meditation.

Swirling strings and thudding guitars compare more than they contrast, brilliantly revealing that the band's "normal" music – a prowling, rhythmic churn that moves like sludge metal but strikes with blackened ferocity – is actually pretty avant. ... You'll marvel at how scrubbed of obvious influences they've become.

May to December, Waylon & Willie ride again.

Known for their self-mythologizing irreverence, Being Dead uses fairy tales as a heartfelt escape on When Horses Would Run.

Nelson swings looser and more comfortably here, more barroom stage than backroad sage. Self-produced, Nelson noted that he wanted songs that could move a crowd, which Sticks and Stones delivers in sound and ethos.

Post 9/11 sessions for The Rising yield early continuity ("American Skin [41 Shots]"), but once Springsteen goes Stax with full-on gospel rock ("Heaven's Wall"), High Hopes reveals its soft brown underbelly.

The urgency is still there, as guitars and pianos take turns screaming during the breakdown, but the violence is replaced with a sense of frivolity and playfulness that lingers throughout the group's fifth release.

Carried to Dust feels like a precise parsing of Calexico's best elements, a lingering, understated beauty.

Its admirable honesty and unswerving beauty proves that she's retained her ability as a vocalist to enthrall us.

Her unmistakable voice--a trembling, expressive contralto--remains a make-or-break feature, but she's learned when to reel it in on follow-up Heart of My Own.

His genius is on bold display in the way he intertwines the raw beauty of tunes like "The Ladder," a ballad for Christoff, and "Evita's Lullaby," about his mother's love for his deceased father, with the urgent, Velvets-esque drone of "Break This Time" and the ferocious pounding and vivid imagery of attempted suicide on "Sacramento & Polk."

Flexing the same contextual muscle that helped make Atmosphere's Slug an MC for the downtrodden, Macklemore utilizes second album The Heist as a vehicle for dissection, pulling back the layers of skin that cover addiction, the music industry, materialism, and homosexuality.

About a Boy is that rarest of bewildering beasties, the soundtrack that stands by itself.

While the third and final act charges toward resolution with supreme fury, 21st Century Breakdown ultimately gets caught between panic and fledging promise.

Ultimately, this is Weiss' album, with nearly every song showcasing her ability to play the master technician, the muscular soloist, and the mother of all timekeepers.

Produced by Chris "Frenchie" Smith, Scorpion Child keeps jeans on its hips and stars on its brow.

An oddly compelling record that demands repeat listening.

Most of the album could pass as solo recordings, like the slow-motion slumber of "Earthquake!" and the girl group gauze of "Basement Scene," but that's balanced with more concise, full band selections that sound like half-remembered 1960s pop songs.

Road records have been done so often they've become cliche. Leave it to Earle to stand that notion on its head by revealing the gravel in his veins.

The band threatens to be as precious as a teddy bear, especially during ballads, and often feels too eager to show off its many mastered styles, but consistency and sincerity keep Minus the Bear from descending into showboating dilettantism.

Finding her voice keeps King coming back sharper, more song and sound savvy, a commercially androgynous rockist back-and-forthing between guitar enchantment.

An excellent, bracing, work from Jason Molina and company.

While not expressly political, American Utopia can't help playing as a reaction piece.

It's as thrilling an opening as all 2009 clattered, and Invisible Violence rarely lets up.

While still supremely self-important, he probes his emotions like a narcissist at the mirror. The difficulty/trick comes in wondering whether Tillman goes out of his way to trip himself up.

Not as big and bright as 2003's It Still Moves, yet with the early-career sprawl edited out, Z's as lovingly worn as a vintage clothing score.

They borrow from Cheap Trick, the Beach Boys, Big Star, Roxy Music, Buzzcocks, and Robyn Hitchcock, and concoct a dizzying potion that sounds remarkably fresh and unlike anything that's come before it.

A lesson in less is more.

It's a vital addition.

With her explosively satisfying fourth solo album, Annie Lennox delivers her best recording since her Eurythmics' heyday, eclipsing even 2003's marvelous "Bare."

Production rings crisp as the title track jolts at the outset with a speakeasy strut that turns to jumping jive on "Wanna Be Your Man," while chugging percussion and horns drive "Underground."

He's a thief, a con, a 60-year-old with nothing to say. And he continues saying it.

Heathen's swirling production, courtesy of Heroes/Low/Scary Monsters producer Tony Visconti, is so much more of a piece that it hangs together like a Thin White Spider concept album instead of an old dog/new tricks effort.

Though ballad-heavy, The River in Reverse rocks.

They may not be the loudest or fastest, but it's rare to find such a potent, low-end distillation of all that's alluring about angry noise.

The SideOneDummies channel their angst into breathlessly muscular hooks and moments of chilling, claustrophobic self-reflection, often within the same song.

Higher! details every ounce of Stone's genius, while cropping just enough to avoid the lengthy, late-Seventies tailspin continuing on today.

Read: wall-battering grunge, post-final battle atmospherics, and enough emotional gristle to feed a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Spiral Shadow assimilates both paradigms as if Jane's Addiction and Kyuss shared leathers.

In the end, Honky Tonk is a slow burn, Farrar musing on life as scenery flashes past the van window, and the redemptive power of music.

The Walkmen have something the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs are lacking: passion.

Graveyard's third slab bristles with all the burly muscle its North American adoptees have come to expect from these Nordic metal longhairs.

Ultimately, Circuital charts My Morning Jacket's return home with success now firmly under their belts, proving they've lost none of their Southern-jammed charm while perched atop the second act of an already sky-high career.

Two new originals from this ageless giant conclude a beautifully contemplative set that shines like a polished mirror.

No analysis, no interpretation, nothing to feel uncomfortable about here, just beautiful desolation. Mazzy Star was always a band to hide away with, and nothing's changed in 2013.

Jardín proves spring's arrived for Gabriel Garzón-Montano.

With Ndegeocello, Ruthie Foster finds her rhythm, and more importantly, an album steeped in purpose both personal and political.

The surprise isn't that their eponymous debut LP turned out terrific, but that it got made at all.

The Old Believer exploits a unique balance of tuneful and brutal.

All 11 tracks hold tight musically through a lackadaisical charisma, capturing the sonic telepathy of six longtime buds in their early 20s.

There are no horns, skits, or muskets on Local Business, a flagrant, fists-first rock & roll jaunt.

Superchunk's 10th studio LP delivers a perfect strike at the heart of mature-stage alienation.

Goldsmith's melodies continue to be instantly familiar, and Dawes remains one of the premier country rock bands of the day.

Consider With Teeth a return to form that substitutes the depthless noir of Reznor's past material with thunder gray, a night shade that allows for more texture and atmosphere.

This is what the new Coldplay album should have been.

Japandroids is bloated, angry, and absolute proof that the heart of rock & roll is still beating.

Lvl Up never made guitars feel more relevant than they do on their third album and Sub Pop debut Return to Love.

This sophomore effort sheds off the fat and pins down his point: clout, capital, and dedication bubbling over into a synth-pop opus so deliciously evil and devastatingly singular it deserves its own cult.

While the backside wavers, the band has never sounded better or more self-assured, but its ambition suggests they've outgrown simple song collections.

Marrying Foley's brittle poetry to Hubbard's muddy grooves, Morlix creates a sense of foreboding far removed from any singer-songwriter platitudes.

Melancholy pervades the dreamy "Fire Walker" and "Returning," while creeping darkness duels with a dramatic chorus on "Funny Games."

Jarring juxtapositions are precisely what make this a unique article.

Corsicana Lemonade captures White Denim at the peak of its technical prowess, yet still only scratches its surface potential.

A smart debut that's fun to get lost in.

The spaciousness of James' yearning borders on the mystical, imbuing It Still Moves with its contemplative nature.

Reaffirms the iconoclastic duo's ability to be novel without succumbing to novelty.

These are tunes that would've fit perfectly on Top 40 radio in the Seventies.

Written and recorded in 10 days, this debut collaboration is a testament to just how deeply these two songwriters sympathize with each other's work, revealing a shared penchant for evocatively detailed images that blossom into visceral narratives.

Mechanical Bull kicks up a tightly controlled disc that still leaves enough roots unpolished.