Nü Sensae are one of the most formidable punk outfits working right now and Sundowning is the work of a band whittling themselves down to occupy the very tip of fury.

God Save the Animals’ production approaches are understated compared to those employed in previous work yet still precisely rendered. What stand out – prominently and unabashedly – are Alex’s impeccably crafted and irresistibly delivered songs.

It's rare that an artist finds a voice in the unsaid. You could call her loss our gain.

The effort put into creating the dark atmosphere is gratuitous, but in the context of the album it works perfectly. Add to this the fact that every song carries a killer hook and you have one of the must-hear albums of the year.

Allelujah! seems more immediate and more organic, but instead of feeling blown away by it's unreachable drama and grandeur, with a decade of age behind us and the band, it feels inhabitable in a way Godspeed never has before.

Sigur Rós have already proven themselves across their lengthy career, and now, they’re peaking their heads out yet again and making clear they shouldn’t be counted out.

With additional help from fellow musician and frequent collaborator Justin Vernon (whose vocals are the only overdubbed aspect of the music), the songs on To See More Light are as devastatingly personal as they are emphatically otherworldly--inhuman sounding even. This stark dichotomy of sound and intent throws Stetson’s music into austere relief.

Fans of the harsher tone and aesthetic may grumble at him leaving the sound of NEGRO behind, but it couldn’t be clearer that his nearly manic, uncontainable sense of creativity is not only still present, but is grasping further, sounding more expansive and less controlled than ever here. For those in a rut over the seemingly endless absence of Kendrick Lamar, you need look no further for boundlessly creative and irresistibly unique hip hop than GUMBO’!.

With true, human conflict between happiness and sadness on full display, Man Alive! is unequivocally King Krule’s, or better yet, Archy Marshall’s most sobering work yet.

He achieves a lot with a little. He never gives us filler. He continues to innovate. He has provided us with a great album, one that is a sure sign his velocity has not been slowed.

The dead air that seemed to sometimes crop up previously has been filled or chopped out completely, creating a record with taut and purposeful momentum.

Life is Good the most exciting Nas album to come around since It Was Written.

The album may be a little homogenous for some listeners, but this is a narratively and emotionally precise set of songs, set to sneakily indelible melodies. Nastasia has never written with such vivid truthfulness, such earthen brutality.

2 finds Mac DeMarco growing as an artist, settling into a workman-like rhythm and puttering through some of the catchiest tracks of the year.

This resilience against the facts of life wavers from song to song, giving us a divine spectrum of her fragile existence at the time of their creation. ... It’s in the final three tracks of songs where the membrane between songwriter and broken-hearted woman is at its thinnest, where Lenker renders her deep, soulful ache in the most poignant of ways.

Yeah Right’s dual interests in songwriting and guitar explorations end up being its greatest strength.

It has the potential to sidle next to records like Movements and We Are Monster as a genre classic, but it's just as assured to find a broader audience as well.

For all its horror trappings and flat-out aggression (the album-closing title track even ends with one last fakeout jump-scare blast to the face), We Are Always Alone is a deeply emotional record. It is catharsis writ large; a writhing, wailing, violent resistance against the injustice of a cruel world full of self-serving people.

So much talk of tempo and expectation must not overshadow the greatest triumph that 4 has to offer: progression.

Shrines functions just fine as a collection of Purity Ring's work thus far, but it also functions as a singular, cohesive artistic statement, a capital-a Album, and that's much more rewarding.

Unpredictable it is not, but taken as a study of sound and mood, it’s kind of perfect.

An essential and enlivening record from start to finish.

Tramp is simply her most fully-realized album yet, and that's all there is to it.

Labyrinthitis is Bejar’s best work since Kaputt. At this point, Bejar has several classics under his belt, so there’s no desperation here to create another one, but he manages to do it with ease.

It is an unmistakably raw first album of ripe potential, and one of the more memorable releases of the early weeks of this year.

Possibly the most intelligent album about love this decade, Water Made Us gently and disarmingly humanizes Woods while maintaining a me-positive stance.

Hopefully Slave Ambient will do for The War On Drugs what Smoke Ring For My Halo did for Kurt Vile and place Adam Granduciel as one of the musicians with serious talent and songwriting acumen in modern indie rock.

YTILAER finds Callahan at his most personally enigmatic, taking inspiration from his own life and filtering those experiences through a prism of modern folktales. He offers us all the most enticing details but manages to keep it wonderfully vague at the same time, a treasure trove of musical obscurantism.