Empathetic and hopeful, By the Way rivals breakout The Story as Carlile's best.

While the title track's big-hearted buildup channels the crew's establishing alt-pop buoyancy, new ideas stagger the 11 tracks. Monolithic "MetaGoth" and smoky ballad "Walking With a Killer" work through internal frustrations, eloquently tracking out a new era for the Breeders.

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.

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

Hynes creates a jazzy respite for the marginalized by brimming Negro Swan with horns, synth, and guitar even if only for an hour.

Hooks sparse and structure loose, Iridescence redefines future pop.

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.

The sun-kissed Laurel Canyon pop of "Dangerous Place" tackles the push and pull of creative collaboration, neatly summarizing Burch's modus operandi: wide-open sonic aesthetics with a pointed and poignant message behind it.

The Crossing proves another way forward for our one-man Johnny Thunders, Joey Ramone, and Neal Cassady.

Even with all the jazz, jams, and wonky improvisations, the nine tracks of musicians' music remain fun, unpretentious.

For all of her antipathy toward the current state of affairs, Willis' collection of original songs and covers feels effortlessly of the moment.

Lifted soundtracks the scaling of mountains, both geographic and internal.

The Texas warbler meets the California ripper and results in a barnstorming burner.

A perfect union, Mien proves the sum of its grimmest parts.

Sprawling with gentle lamentations, ethereal timbres, and stringed instrumentation, both the song ["We Were Worn"] and sophomore album Argonauta expand upon her 2013 debut Life in the Midwater.

Aside from the delightfully twee absurdity of that Eighties pop, the chorus of "Don't Move Back to L.A.," a Seventies folk-country plea to a lover not to abandon New York City (where Sheff now lives) for the temperate climate and friendlier rental market of Los Angeles, almost takes on an R&B tone in its earnestness. Sheff, however, still lends his compositions heft.

Nine tracks drip, bubble, and bristle in love, shaken up with an emotionally invasive immediacy.

Willie Nelson, 85, keeps going from strength-to-strength, and Last Man Standing is the strongest yet.

Throughout, stories curdle grim and scary, violence always hovering on the periphery.

Fitting trajectory, Felt loosens up on the seriousness gripping Suuns' last three albums into kaleidoscopic microcosms of Krautrock pulses, guitar ambience, and post-punk eruptions.

It plays like frantically turning the FM dial in the car, the neon strangeness of L.A. looming ahead.

Hailing from southern Algeria, this Tuareg desert blues troupe twists Tinariwen's template with their second full-length.

Trill but fatalistic ("Part of the Math"), rock-tronic and soundscapish, Homies crams a mixtape on 12 inches of wax.

Warbly vocalisms, impenetrably fuzz-encrusted guitar work, and boppin' elf grooves delightfully set the man apart from like-minded neo-hippies--alongside reverb avoidance and the occasional horns.

Throughout, the 29-year-old Lone Star ambassador tucks the hallmarks of her roots--winsome steel guitar, rambling banjo, acoustic guitar--into genre-hopping, the elements present and persistent enough to make the album, at its core, country. Purists will disagree, but if anyone insists on calling this Musgraves' crossover, they must admit this: Golden Hour is a crossover done right.

Third proper full-length Can't Wake Up now completes his metamorphosis into an exceptional songwriter whose songs manifest into cinematic novellas. Characters living therein and their actions come to life in dreamy detail. Delivering them all, the singer's voice floats like a passing cloud along blooming stretches of reverberated chords.

John Lee Hooker meets the Pixies on "Bloodhound Rock" and opening chug "Desperate Love," with the payoff resembling an alternate universe Top 10 from 1962 as informed by musique concrète as by Del Shannon and Phil Spector.

The Boston foursome's anxiously blissful take on apocalyptic concerns bends toward chamber pop after past Americana leanings, the 12 tracks grounded in plucky instrumentation and energetic harmony.