Stelmanis’s voice, as ever, remains the focal point, swooping down hard on notes with a tremor that belies just how sturdy her songs are.

"Dirty Laundry" is brave (and dramatic) stuff. But the track itself, a forgettable slow groove, makes the tune more compelling as confession than music. People should venture further into Talk a Good Game, because a good chunk of the rest of the album--a mix of easy pop, shiny dance tracks, and a dab of retro soul--reflects a better balance of sound and sentiment.

Hopping from house nods to drum-and-bass winks and into spells of bottomlessly deep garage and bass, With Love isn’t so much a trip down memory lane. It’s more like a really wild shortcut.

The flawed set is buoyed by its clear vision and diverse musicality.

The electronic soul band toes the fine line between club cuts and after-hours ballads.

The generic gloom of “Loner” is the only flat spot among the eight songs.

Tomorrow’s Harvest is as strong a return to form as it is stunning an update, with the Scottish duo refining their blend of nostalgic sonics and futuristic sheen.

Few bands are clever enough to make you feel giddy singing a song called “Keep Your Children in a Coma.” Gonson, as usual, is a refreshingly natural singer, bringing heart and soul to songs that would seem to be bereft of such qualities.

While the writing has a tight focus and singer John Baldwin Gourley sounds like he’s whispering his thoughts directly to you, the rest of the record bursts with all manner of sonic color.

You’d be hard-pressed to name another songwriter who sounded so fully formed at such a tender age.

With help from a diverse coterie of peers, fans, and friends, Wrote a Song for Everyone offers fun and fresh takes on well-worn tunes.

Love Is Everything is not his strongest release of recent years, with a few too many generic midtempo cuts and stately ballads. But Strait is the type of consistent artist and singer whose marginal cuts are often better than some folks’ best and that is true here, too.

There’s definitely an epic heft to it, aided by a deep, varied bench of guest talent.

Trouble Will Find Me is the Brooklyn, N.Y., indie-rock band’s sixth and most deft album yet, a haunted and lugubrious meditation on loss and despair.

The crossover “Make It Out This Town” is too obvious a stab at pop psychology and chart topping but that’s a rare misfire. The set is filled with quotable lines and tough but inviting beats.

Produced by Aaron Dessner of the National, the Brooklyn, N.Y., indie rockers who once took Local Natives on the road as the opening act, the album feels like a pronouncement, as if to highlight how much the quartet has grown since its last outing.

Her return to music is a quiet triumph. For the most part she has flown the Chicks’ country coop for this solo debut, which is a well-curated mostly covers affair.

Now there’s an expansiveness in the music, borne out of a confidence that allows the songs to unfurl rather than rebound like pinballs.

The gentle kisses on Silver are preferable to its contemporary teeth; the thumpy, funky aphasia of “You” harks back to days when Bibio could have been mistaken for a Prefuse 73 knockoff--it just sounds dated.

Over the slack strum of guitar, Spaltro tells a spectral tale that feels like a hazy dream until a violent outburst yanks you elsewhere. That’s precisely where Spaltro likes to keep you: on edge.

The group wisely broadens the musical palette here and goes full-bore pop by adding bigger choruses, alluring sonic textures, and electronic rhythms.

Deschanel comes from the tradition of singers not technically impressive but charismatic enough to cast a spell. Ward’s fretwork is excellent throughout, and it’s nice to hear his voice on a spirited duet of “Baby.”

Golden puts some welcome bite back into the proceedings with a more minimalist approach to production and a more substantive approach to the lyrics, which gives the whole album a crisper, more present feeling.

For the album’s driving first half, the messiness is captivating, culminating in “Dream Captain,” reminiscent of T. Rex on “Bang a Gong.” The second half teeters on standard bohemian dissipation, but with a sly and rare self-knowingness.

There are a couple of strutting blues-rock winners, a couple affected synth-rock stinkers, but most of the rest, like the infections “One Girl/One Boy,” flash new-wavy funk moves reminiscent of late Chic, early Prince, and prime Rick James.

The music is patently dirty and rough, but Pop’s subdued moments sound more solo career than Stooge.

Chesney returns to that reflective, often acoustic, place for Life on a Rock and again hits a high-water mark.

Thirty years in, LL still spins taut couplets as often as he licks his lips and delivers them with nimble style.

As on 2009’s “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” the elite pedigree of these bright, well-mannered Frenchmen shows in their impressive aural plumage.

As intended, there’s a little something for everyone.

She wanders back to Nashville for her seventh release, Thorn in My Heart, and doesn’t miss a step.

They all take some liberties with the music, but Drake's lonely outcast vibe is well-preserved.

While outstanding songs ("The Catastrophe") stand on their own, this is a song cycle that demands to be absorbed whole.

It’s the group’s most far-flung album, supporting Karen O’s recent claim that Mosquito offers something for everyone.

The stories may have familiar contours (love affairs, self-reflection, observation) but the details pack the joy of surprise.

It’s comfortable, familiar, expected, and joyful.

Easy listening this is not, but Shaking the Habitual is at least bold and brash, the work of a band hungry to explore strange sonic textures.

Per usual, the writing is sharp and the guitar playing impeccable. Paisley cooks through honky-tonk, country swing, the blues, rockabilly, and weepy ballads with assured command.

At least seven of the 10 tracks score immediately.

If you’ve made your peace with his artistry, the rewards are considerable.

You hear him at the peak of his powers on the title track, whose acoustic soul reels in the band and lets Bradley tell his story, one wounded sentiment at a time.

New elements like keyboards and lap steel guitar are deployed carefully, filling out the sound rather than leading it astray.

The number of guests (including Matthew Dear, Apparat, and Caribou’s Dan Snaith) and the songs’ lengths, depths, and varying textures make it easy to get spun.

Drummer Jean-Paul Gaster keeps things going at a crisp clip while managing subtle shadings. The drummer’s tight control and bassist Dan Maines’s aggressive low-end let guitarist Tim Sult go nuts.

Phosphorescent’s Muchacho is the kind of album that will take two listens to decide you hate it and then another three to realize how much you actually love it.

The Invisible Way is as spare, heavy, and lovely as anything Low’s ever done, but it feels essential; there’s an extra beauty to the bleakness of these songs.

Decade-long hiatus or no decade-long hiatus, Bloodsports finds Suede in exactly its element.

Younge rarely puts a note wrong in his arrangements; his stripped-down approach echoes the Delfonics’ influence on artists like RZA and El Michels Affair without sounding derivative.

For all its detours, this is a record intoxicated by its own grooves--silken, sexy, a little aimless, and a lot of fun.

The Next Day offers many sides of a multifaceted artist and almost all of them mesmerizing, as the songs grow richer with each listen.

As personal as it feels, The Beast in Its Tracks, like the great breakup records before it (Beck’s “Sea Change” comes to mind), is universal in its scope.

The Hendrix estate, along with Newton-based archivist John McDermott and producer Eddie Kramer, have done themselves proud here.

The debut from the once-anonymous LA duo of Rhye--Danish electro-soul producer Robin Hannibal and Canadian vocalist-producer Mike Milosh--floats with ease on this wave [of R&B experiments].

As the age-old debate of what constitutes country music continues in some quarters, Son Volt leader Jay Farrar quietly, and compellingly, makes a case for the classic sounds on the beguiling Honky Tonk.

[A] rich, dark collection of songs.

Sally Shapiro has beguiled fans at the intersection of electronic dance music and twee indie-pop with its near-perfect time capsules of ’80s synth-pop. The format hasn’t strayed much on this third full-length album, although the landscape has.

The Messenger, his second solo album, is a bracing reminder of his talents as a sonic architect.

AMOK is heady dance music, in love with its jittery rhythms but never content to give over to them completely.

This sensual song suite about the ephemeral nature of love and what it takes to sustain happiness should end up among this year’s finest efforts.

With cuts like the melodically nifty “Taking Off” and the high-impact jangle-and-scree “Careless,” Beach Fossils find the right balance often enough.

Those first drawn in by the Stax/Warp hybrid he offered on 2005’s “Multiply” will find the energy of this effort familiar, but he’s added a splash of New Jack, and synth trimmings from ’80s freestyle.

Sometimes his baritone carries lyrics that are blunt and tart, and others opaque and blurry, but never lacking bite.

This album was written collaboratively with the entire band’s input, so there’s a lot of ground covered on these 15 songs, and plenty of room to get lost.

An “anything goes” approach to recording, which included opening up to let his bandmates collaborate on the songwriting, pays off in this captivating collection.

Lost Animal is the project of Australian musician Jarrod Quarrell, whose hypnotic songs sound utterly suspended in time and free of genre.

Unlike their previous overdubbed recordings, the album has the nicely ramshackle clomp of a live band, and Dawn loosens up accordingly.

While the sound of mbv is reassuringly familiar--openers “she found now” and “only tomorrow” tread melodic paths that seem strangely familiar even as they wander--its newness is remarkable.

Kristofferson’s voice, which is front and center and unvarnished, is something to behold here: craggy but beautiful and forged with wisdom that comes to a lion in winter.

While there is a handful of tracks that will pass airplay muster--the inane but catchy “Truck Yeah,” the breezy Swift and Keith Urban-assisted “Highway Don’t Care”--it’s more interesting when McGraw goes either a little sideways or steps back into contemplative mode.

Their charms are distinctly vintage here, from pop standards to country tearjerkers to 1970s funk.

The songs are less oblique than their last couple of albums, almost to a fault.... But their lyrical theme of being embattled with themselves remains.

The album is a beguiling mix of acoustic and electric blues, with harmonica legend Musselwhite weaving in and out like a roadhouse virtuoso.

He may offer less of an alternative than he once did, but that old-school concern and a wider sonic palette keep Allan just this side of the mainstream.

At first it sounds like scratchy old vinyl, but actually it's the crackle of fire that leads off the warm and sumptuous new album from Brooklyn's Widowspeak.

Bad Religion shaves its anti-establishment messages down to bare essentials and sounds practically feral.

What sets this collection of doo-wop and early rock era tunes apart from the jaded pack is Neville's peerless voice and crystal clear passion for the material.

Lysandre, his solo debut, is a slip of an album, 11 songs under 30 minutes, and it's a fascinating curveball.

Just about every note and lyric on Erin McKeown's Manifestra is a step away from the norm. Yet the songs are so beguiling you can't help but follow.

Fade isn't a dramatic reinvention, or even necessarily any progression at all, just Yo La Tengo not needing to be anyone else.

While each movement works on its own, Elements is best experienced in one long pass.

Sometimes things sound more Jimmy ("I Lost My Job of Loving You"), sometimes more Buddy ("It Hurts Me," a searing ballad written by Miller's wife, Julie), but as with every good duets record, their combined voices have produced something greater than the sum of its parts.

The Boston-accented mash-up of Irish folk and punk is still infectious.

This isn't pop music in her sister's obvious, melismatic, and melodramatic mold; rather it's pop music for people who didn't know they were looking for pop music.

Berberian Sound Studio is like a notebook filled with a lost love's handwriting.

It's an acquired taste, but is undeniably calming with its softly vibrating, reverb-rich piano and synth improvisations, enhanced by exotic Moog guitar from Leo Abrahams and treated violin-viola textures from Neil Catchpole.

This is among his most overtly jazz-tinged work, produced by Morrison and recorded in his native Belfast.

The sophomore LP from Virginia dream-pop project Wild Nothing, bandleader Jack Tatum at times seems fixated on darkness. But that doesn't stop the songs from glistening with a melancholy polish.

Sounds like Bruno Mars is trying to rough up his image a bit on his strong, if sometimes oddly lyrically aggressive, second album.

Green Day still sounds best when it's confused, angry, and playing with abandon.

Big Boi goes a long way in carving out an individual identity while still waving the Outkast flag.

Grace/Confusion goes above and beyond the call of pop, and signals grander adventures to come.

The songs are uniformly good and produced with restraint to allow the singer room to breathe life into the first-person narratives. Unfortunately, there are two requisite MC cameos, which threaten to sink strong songs.

Ben Bridwell's voice remains a beguiling instrument in both high and low registers, and there are moments of stark beauty.

It's not just that it's larded with harsh dissonance; the compositions, arrangements, poesy, and performances come at the listener in discrete shards.

Too many cooks in the kitchen notwithstanding, it amounts to 12 songs here with some 40 perfectly crafted hooks.

While it's naive to think PE will ever have the same impact it did back then, there's still too many strong moments on Evil Empire to dismiss it.

While the album is uniformly sleek and upbeat, a few tunes hew too closely to the generic template; but as boy bands go, fans--and their wary parents--could do much worse.

The results might qualify Live From Alabama as something more than a way station between Isbell's last studio record and his next one.