Thrilling and joyous, fierce and focused, the women sound like they’re having the time of their lives sinking their teeth back into the music together.

Where “good kid” was a perceptive look at Lamar’s adolescence in a small part of Los Angeles, Butterfly is a weary assessment of his adulthood, and a world that’s bigger, more complex, and more flawed that he knew. If the albums share anything, it’s that they’re both cinematic. But the movie Lamar is shooting now puts the current era into a more fitting frame.

For all of the gussy rhythms--which can stop just this side of overly cute--and legit power, there’s real subtlety at work, too, and in unlikely spots.

If there are no obvious radio-ready hits on par with “Adorn,” his massive hit from 2012’s “Kaleidoscope Dream,” there is something more potent in their place: a stone-cold classic not tethered to time, genre, or expectations.

Quieter but equally captivating.

While drummer Mikkey Dee shines on an unexpected cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” That efficient if unspectacular borrowing aside, this potent record ranks among the year’s best.

On Divers, her breathtaking follow-up to 2010’s “Have One on Me,” the singer, songwriter, and harpist affirms her stature as a visionary. It’s the most streamlined of her four albums.

If there are no uptempo blazers on the order of "Rolling in the Deep" or "Rumor Has It," the album doesn’t suffer in quality for the lack.

A sublime, succinct overview of the composer’s sprawling catalog.

The album feels stunningly fresh and cutting edge; expect to see it on some Top Ten lists later this year.

The band’s masterwork to date, IV delivers a listening experience as thrill-packed and invigorating as the loftiest comparisons you can throw at it.

The Hope Six Demolition Project might derive its title from a Housing and Urban Development program designed to “transform public housing,” but the bleak picture Harvey portrays on this stunning album gives that title a second, and more ominous, meaning.

Simply stated, here’s the experimental-listening event of the year.

The album that resulted is Simon’s richest, most instantly appealing collection since “Graceland.”

What results is an album to live with, and to live inside: engrossing and necessary.

His deeply felt meditations on matters of the heart and the soul are matched by the meticulously detailed, gorgeously rendered music that surrounds them.

Time might have pushed along, but it was obvious how much Ocean’s rich, detailed, and urgent storytelling had been missed once it was here again.

A taut display of his dry wit and ability to wring beauty out of even the most harrowing human ideals.

The set list for most of these shows was identical, so you get as many as 20 versions of certain songs. For all that, listening through the whole of this box set is an exhilarating experience.

The album is a 55-minute blitz of thumping beats and head-spinning rhymes that blur by you before you have a chance to process them.

Even now, more than four decades after being recorded, it still catches your ear as one of the most wholly original sounds in pop music.

Decisively unmodern yet not quite retro, The Queen Is Dead sounds every bit as ineffably marvelous now as it must have in 1986, and this reissue is as good an excuse as any to let it charm us all over again.

The Dusk in Us is, then, a 44-minute master class in wielding extreme art toward human ends, using hardcore’s berating heft as a foundation for dirging experimentalism.

Utopia is both resolutely avant-garde and absolutely beautiful, a combination those who associate experimental music with dissonance and ugliness will find utterly paradoxical.

White does pretty much everything except what fans have learned to expect from him. It’s an ambitious, dizzying, and sometimes challenging listen, but overall makes for one of the most maniacally creative albums of the year.

Inevitably, there’s some repetition--no fewer than 12 different attempts at “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” for example. What’s exhilarating is the chance to eavesdrop on the evolution of the songs as Dylan grasps, bit by bit, for the emotional center of each one.

The 1975’s frequently dazzling exploration of life in the iOS era, frontman Matty Healy turns the mic over to--who else?--Siri. Narrating a strangely touching fable about a man in love with the Internet, the bot contributes one of a great many moments on the album.

“Western Stars” finds Springsteen in character study mode with finely detailed storytelling about broken (sometimes literally) men on a quest to find meaning, renewal, or maybe just a bit of love. At their core and stripped of their orchestral flourishes and diverse musical dynamic, most of the songs here would not be out of place on his dark, acoustic efforts, “Nebraska,” “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” or “Devils and Dust.”