At times, their subgenre-flipping can be ungainly--the cheerleading chant "Impossible" is awkwardly glued together, and Hervey's dissonant harmonies sometimes obscure her hooks. More often, though, the cracks in their songwriting and sonics come off as welcome decoration, and their why-the-hell-not bravado is hugely refreshing.

Majid Jordan’s best quality is its intimate feel, sounding like each song is the extension of a conversation and is to be heard by a specific set of ears.

On new album Moth, the follow-up to 2012’s Something, Polachek and Wimberly seem to relish their good luck, layering hooks and beats with a kooky exuberance that was missing last time out.

EVOL doesn’t break any rules or set many new ones, but as the latest in a seemingly never-ending series of wonders Future and his team wield in their creation of druggy, downcast afterparty dispatches, it is a joy.

Debut LP We Are King finally gives the act room to stretch its crushed-velvet sound to its outer edges. The three voices often swirl into one, with lockstep harmonies that make challenging, constantly shifting melodies go down easy.

Their ­second album sharpens their ­instrumental attack, while singer Jehnny Beth exposes her bloody heart.

St. Lucia's splendid synth-pop allure has instant pop catchiness, but Grobler's willingness to wear his lyrics' romantic motivations like a badge of honor gives Matter a thrilling extra jolt.

Its muted mood and tempo may be initially disappointing for an artist who's been at the forefront of pop and, often, innovated it.... A closer listen, though, shows Rihanna harnessing the moody, intimate sounds for a novel purpose: to open up and let us peer into how complicated her adult life has become.

Blue Neighbourhood features soft-touch synths and booming drum machines worthy of the next Lorde or Taylor Swift record.

Blackstar is its own strange, perverse thing, the ­latest move in a boundlessly ­unpredictable career.

Where “Sleep” excels as a quality addition to his catalog’s stellar collection of panty-dropping and baby-making songs (see: “Take You Down,” “No BS”), others fall and lean towards prosaic.

On DBD, he delivers music that can’t be clumped with contemporary hip-hop.

Speedin' is an uncomfortably internal album that's a pleasurable listen. It's not as gleefully nihilistic as Future, but comes across just as revelatory.

When It's Dark Out marks a vast leap forward: His cadences are more agile, his boasts more boastful, his guest list tighter (Too Short, E-40, Kehlani).

More than any previous Coldplay release, A Head Full of Dreams sounds like a pop record; the band has never been catchier.

For all the grief and regret it contains, it's a triumphant debut, encapsulating the grit of life, ­turning it into a hell of a journey.

The set includes virtually every imaginable permutation of the album--a remastered stereo version and a radio-only mono mix that boosts the bass and makes for an overall punchier sound--and two-dozen-odd outtakes, demos, single mixes and “remastered early versions” that are fascinating but have been available for years. Where it gets really interesting is the two concerts.

What makes this collection essential is the cohesion of the band and the setlists: The shows find the Velvets at their absolute peak as a live unit.

And yet: that voice. On 25, the material is occasionally inspired, sometimes dull, but always serviceable--and with Adele, that’s enough.

As first impressions go, Know-It-All is a charismatic balance between dreams and reality that makes its author stick out in the most impressive way.

Heart may be a measured apology, but Green still has a defiant streak.

Despite its countless co-writers and producers, chief among them Bieber’s bestie Jason “Poo Bear” Boyd, the album boasts a consistent palette of lush, low-key electro-dance sounds: sun-warped synths, chipmunk accent vocals, rattling trap hi-hats, and loads of bass.... It’s in this Spotify-age blend of dance, hip-hop, R&B and classic smooth-dude vocalizing that Bieber truly shows his growth.

Ork was a ­scoundrel and eventually a jailbird, but no one chronicled the undercard at CBGB ­better.

With these 13 tracks--nine of which the band had a hand in writing--One Direction does maturity much better than on its last album, 2014's ballad-heavy Four.

Art Angels is a marvel of meticulous, even obsessive home-studio recording, uncompromised by bandmates or collaborators.

At the very least, listening to The Cutting Edge 1965-1966 should send you scurrying back to the official versions of those three classic Bob Dylan albums. It’s his story, and it’s history, reconsidered one more time.

On Storyteller, it’s striking to hear her respond to varied musical textures by expanding her repertoire, toying with inflection and phrasing, and bringing new wrinkles to the characters she’s inhabiting.

You can question its originality, but the music hits hard.

The whole endeavor has a “live and let live” feel that fits in perfectly with Strait’s laid-back, though never sloppy, attitude.

Hamilton’s stage production should be required viewing for every American citizen, but this exhilarating listen is a much more practical, and every bit as enjoyable, stand-in.

It’s evocative and vivid, recalling early Red House Painters, or even The Blue Nile.

The Documentary 2, succeeds by reminding you what made the original so memorable.

Deerhunter isn’t repeating itself: This creatively restless group doesn’t stand still for long.

Her willingness to own every step and misstep, and to show her audience how the rough times helped her become the woman she is, makes Confident a surprisingly compelling listen.

His 18th studio LP, 35 mph Town, bypasses the cliches and tones down his sometimes overbearing bravado.

Unbreakable is the mature album, free of commercial ambition, her all-too-breakable brother never made.

Reference points include Liars and The Fall, but Girl Band is very much its own beast.

He can sound awkward navigating Swift’s vernacular of haters and mad love, but when he plays up his strengths--the fingerpicking and strings on “Blank Space,” or changing the “Style” lyric “James Dean daydream” to “Daydream Nation,” a nod to Sonic Youth--the universality of great songwriting shines through.

Under the cover of midnight, Del Rey has been exploring big ideas about eroticism, drugs, myth, the empty promise of YOLO, what it means to be a woman, and the American soul.

On major-label debut GO:OD AM, his third and best studio album, Miller grapples frankly with fame, addiction, recovery and the struggle to be a decent person over taut, melancholy production that channels both bleary inebriation and hard-fought optimism.

In this age of frivolity, Duran Duran is straight-up thriving.

The music is digital and danceable but with emotional depth--much of it thanks to Mayberry.

On Souls, Maiden mostly hits its target.

Stuff Like That There shows that Yo La Tengo is, remarkably, still effectively the same band it was a quarter-century ago: graceful, centered and eager to play its latest finds.

The younger act strikes a posture of ­winsome self-assurance across these 11 tracks.

The box's liner notes are a bit scant, but it's full of treats even for aficionados.

Amid synth-y disco ­dalliances ("Alive Tonight") and soul-funk workouts ("Your Girl"), she leaves room for snarling riffs on "Look What We've Become" and acoustic boom on "Empty Heart," reminiscent of Sheryl Crow's "Leaving Las Vegas."

The music is spacious, paranoid and sultry; the lyrics are ­suggestive and knotted.

Even in English, even without bachata, Royce hasn't lost what makes him ­special: his ability to emote, to deliver lyrics as though he believes them vehemently and make the listener do the same.

Despite its numerous flaws, Compton is still one of the most engaging listening experiences of the year.

Legend, like Gunplay’s professed diet, is a potent mix of uppers, downers and hallucinogens; it makes for a weird, and weirdly satisfying, trip.

On Yung Rich Nation, the band of brothers shows it’s reliable enough to deliver hits, but ambitious enough to rise to a challenge.

The achingly good Something More Than Free, captures the mix of excitement and fear that comes when the sun rises on a new day.

Produced by a handful of trusted Atlanta trap producers, DS2 is gothic, narcotic and full of overcast skies.

Monroe sings these songs, many of which she co-wrote, with exquisite, bruised sensitivity.

At this point, the Brothers are effectively ­historians, and the album's most thrilling moments are often references to their own past or inspirations.

Behind the dance bump, Communion is confessional synth-pop with a heart full of heavy feelings.

Dreams Worth More Than Money is surprisingly focused, presenting an uncomfortably lucid, non-pensive character study detailing the underside of the American Dream.

She's confident for a new artist, but this promising debut backs up her big words.

Finally, a deluxe version of their 1971 masterpiece Sticky Fingers that includes a bounty of concurrent outtakes and live material, along with a companion DVD/CD release of a live-for-TV performance.... [Sticky Fingers itself] is indisputably one of the greatest albums of 1970s, if not the entire the rock era. The end.

[A] promising, unapologetically dense debut.

Taylor is at his best when he brings his fuddy-duddy charm.

There's nothing on Wildheart to make one lose faith in Miguel's promise as a major creative and popular force of the decade, but neither is there enough to feel like he has satisfied his warring sides. Instead, it's a case of his sense of space still sharpening, and the hope for his full emergence, repping for a generation that won't accept outdated double binds, yet to come.

Deja-Vu is at its best when it sounds like a victory lap, not a labored attempt to keep up.

This is an even better album than her last, with more consistency and variety.

As an ode to nuptial bliss, the album is both ­convincing and surprisingly coquettish.

Lantern is a beautifully restrained--by HudMo standards, that is--concept album that mirrors a full day, yawning awake with palate-clearing drones and ending ecstatically in the wee hours of a club utopia.

The band hasn't lost its sense of wonder--it's just seeing the world through a more realistic lens.

Jamie xx is among other U.K. electronic-dance acts, such as Disclosure and Four Tet, that are tapping the genre's past to forge its future. But no one has nailed it quite like this.

Much of the album is frenetic--full of bodies and larger-than-life. But the muted and downcast moments end up being memorable, tender and affecting.

Peace Is the Mission soars on the strength of sticky melodies sung by a unique combo of pop divas and West Indian vocalists.

For all of the sonic pleasures, much of At.Long.Last.ASAP’s narrative is hard to swallow with a thinking mind--which makes it hip-hop at its finest, and its worst.

The 19-track album drags a bit in its latter half, but Boosie smartly saves its emotional climax for the devastating closer, "I'm Sorry," on which he ­apologizes one by one to everyone he neglected during his prison bid.

No matter the mood and tempo, though, the Florence & The Machine heard on How Big How Blue How Beautiful is a newly self-aware one. It shows a different kind of mastery by allowing for a different kind of vulnerability, an especially delicate balancing act for a young woman in pop music.

It's an intense, focused exploration of all, or nearly all, the relationships the singer is involved in, both romantic and familial.

Evolution will silence all but the omnivores, and Shamir has the right taste buds. But he also has a great voice, a stunning countertenor that some have mistaken for female.

The album likely won't convince anyone who's already written off Best Coast, but it's a new high for a band many thought had peaked years ago.

Not only does Wilder Mind reintroduce the band members as rock gods worthy of the title, it does so ­without changing what fans cherished most about them in the first place: their songwriting, their sentiment, their gusto.

Globetrotting frontman Damon Albarn then returned to Hong Kong to write lyrics, hoping to recapture the spirit. He has largely succeeded, as The Magic Whip is a fascinating snapshot of a group coming to personal and professional crossroads in a strange city where modern living leads to bewilderment and alienation.

The album is a good-faith effort to match or even outstrip the band's onstage eclecticism, and the musical personality shifts help relieve the group's tendency to blandness, providing cover for Brown's dutifully generic, if personable voice.

Half [of] this EP is a weak gesture in the direction of current radio trends.... But on the other half of this EP, Dream shows an impressive new dimension to his romantic games.

Barter 6 does not have a comparable entry point. Instead, this album offers cohesion and unity, though maybe at the expense of the exciting, what-will-happen next feel of past mixtapes.

What Sound & Color does best is hard to describe any other way: The music chugs, boogies, churns and rolls. Among rock music of its kind, it's one of the most ­muscular collections in some time, yet it accomplishes this by hardly even flexing.

The Album About Nothing is his most personal piece of work to date, and also his best. That hair-trigger sensitivity can be off-putting, but it's also what makes him good at what he does.

It’s the rare major-label debut that trusts the artist’s aesthetic enough to not tamper with it.

A hazy, seductive blend of trap and techno, it feels like the soundtrack to a strip club in Paris' grittiest arrondissement.

To Pimp a Butterfly defies easy listening, but it's deeply rewarding.

There are times you hope for a little more dumb fun--enter Diplo, who turns up on five tracks with his air horn and Caribbean beats and would be welcome on more--and there's at least one moody ballad too many. But then an aqueous bassline bubbles up and a surge of trance-y pulses sweeps you along to Madonnaland, where introspection and abandon engage in erotic acts of self-actualization.

[2012 album, Shrines] was a fun record, like listening to Madonna at half speed with your face in a strobe light. Follow-up Another Eternity does little to expand this aesthetic, but for those who enjoy hearing top 40 pop sounds refracted through a funhouse mirror, that's probably not bad news.

When Clarkson forges a real emotional connection--like on the raw, personal title track, another standout vocal showcase--the album transcends the hammier, more hackneyed moments in between.

With sterling wordplay and a consistent melancholy vibe, the Detroit native took all the tension, the highs and lows, and laid it out on wax, compiling the strongest project of his career.

On the impressive Sour Soul, the Canadian trio that built its profile through Odd Future and Gucci Mane covers bangs out rich blaxploitation-invoking live instrumentals, providing a perfect canvas for the Wu-Tang Clan vet's vivid rhymes about dodging police, jewelry and, oddly enough, yoga.

Whereas 2010's Born Free's presentation of a gentler, more ripened Rock occasionally came across as calculated, here the singer--who also produced most of this album--fits comfortably into a modern country-rock landscape that seems practically tailor-made for him: a God-fearing good old boy with a hard-rock heart and an outlaw-country spirit.

It's big, bold and still stands out next to anything coming from Nashville.

Much like its forebear, the album's 12 tunes are tight, tidy pop-rockers, presented in her characteristic straightforward-yet-slightly-skewed manner.

Of the book, the flick, and the soundtrack, only the music really hits hard enough to leave a lasting mark.

If there's a funnier, stranger and more touchingly bizarre album released this year, it will be a very good year indeed.

Reflection represents a promising first step for a girl group that has long been awaiting stardom and has quickly established itself as a wrecking crew of positive role models.