Full of feel-good, sonically textured Americana jams about peace and love, Nash’s latest batch of songs make for a satisfying, if somewhat one-note, late addition to your summer vibes playlist.

The wisdom she imparts across the songs that follow is profound in its simplicity, but it still needs to be heard: McKenna’s omniscient narrators are simultaneously understanding toward their subjects and interrogating toward themselves, a generosity of spirit that, when paired with Cobb’s thoughtful, subtle arrangements, is a quiet yet welcome tonic to the current landscape.

Punch Brothers have crafted a deeply meaningful and downright gorgeous record that takes the world for what it is, but doesn’t use that as an excuse to give up.

“Dirty Projectors” struggled toward hope, but Lamp-Lit Prose has found it, and at its end it opens toward new possibilities.

The songs on “High as Hope” don’t have as much youthful urgency of past anthems, but Welch’s thoughtful words and the raw power of her melodies keep the songs compelling. The lush production by Emile Haynie (Lana Del Rey) and Welch herself (her first production credit) bolster each song with sweeping atmosphere.

Lloyd complements Williams’s plaintive growl with his own tenor saxophone cries, in some cases the obbligatos becoming an ongoing commentary. ... “Blues for Langston and LaRue” shows off Lloyd’s buoyant flute work. The Lloyd/Frisell duet on Thelonious Monk’s “Monk’s Mood” is capacious and endearing. And the album closer, Jim Hendrix’s “Angel”--with just the trio of Williams, Frisell, and Lloyd--is a spare and apt benediction, dispelling darkness with the faith of art.

Production-wise, the album sounds amazing, every multilayered arrangement and synth tone calibrated for maximum headphone-listening pleasure. ... Reznor is still making records that crackle with restless energy.

This album offers a 12-song slice of unpretentious, lovely Americana. Her songs didn’t vie for my attention or seize it; instead, I felt like I was settling into their embrace, unrushed. My heart rate slowed. Erin Rae’s lyrics are wistful and sometimes personal.

Jordan exudes a level of confidence that’s all her own, never once flinching at the opportunity to reveal her feelings and insecurities, and it’s her insight and level-headedness that take her music beyond catchy earworms.

Nearly every song on the new Courtney Barnett album has something to recommend it--a familiar melody that takes distinctive turns, a lyric that grows deeper with each listening, strong backup from a band led by Barnett’s rough-hewn guitar riffs.

It takes a few listens for this space oddity to come into focus, but Tranquility Base gradually proves itself a rather daring reinvention. It’s poetic and expansive, subdued yet spellbinding--altogether, one giant leap for Monkey-kind.

The sound and the playing are crisp and lean, with sharp lines drawn between the guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums in a way that keeps them distinct. It also sometimes keeps them frustratingly distanced from one another, as the otherwise pleasantly groovy “Red Light Kisses” and “Baby Don’t Leave Me Alone With My Thoughts” echo the coolly dispassionate jazz-funk lite of the ’70s and ’80s.

The headiness doesn’t always work to Dupuis’s advantage; for every song on Twerp Verse that gets its point across with fresh, memorable language, there’s one where cutting through the thickets of wordplay feels more exhausting than enjoyable. Still, when she gets the balance just right, as she does on the creepy sexual-harassment story “Villain” and the romantic-dysfunction anthem “Backslidin’,” she’s one of indie rock’s finest lyricists.

The goodies are hidden in the deeper tracks. The Hit-Boy-produced title track starts with a vocal siren, and the singer struts through her haunting lower octave over a high-octane stomp.

The songs are bigger, the production is bolder, and Hop Along is more confident than ever, expertly weaving fresh, unexpected elements into its sound.

An album this endlessly chill might get boring in a less talented songwriter’s hands, but Musgraves never fails to draw listeners into her reverie.

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.

The Breeders have never sounded so determined to make a great record, and with All Nerve their efforts have paid off.

All at Once is an accomplished, expertly crafted album, the kind that’s the product of years slugging it out in dank basements and half-empty bars.

Another great Superchunk record. What a Time to Be Alive bristles with anxious energy; even by Superchunk’s over-caffeinated standards, it keeps an unrelenting pace.

MGMT spikes the formula with just enough outsider charm to milk an album’s worth of inspiration from the tired aesthetic. It’s not going to inspire legions of imitators à la “Oracular Spectacular,” but Little Dark Age should be both hooky and eccentric enough to please MGMT fans of all stripes.

Though Milosh remains focused on exploring the full range of his vocal instrument, he infuses the album’s 11 tracks with a sultry, often carnal warmth and raw energy that Rhye’s debut eschewed in favor of hushed, slickly produced ambience.

Freedom’s Goblin gives Segall room to play with a dizzying array of styles and genres, yet his excellent taste and melodic sensibility ensure that the whole wild endeavor stays firmly on the rails.

Børns has improved technically as a singer since his last record, and he’s smart not to cede the spotlight to Del Rey, instead using the album to twist his peculiar brand of romantic retrofuturism into inventive new shapes.

The disc exudes confidence on every front, though the group’s ambitions seem scaled up to world domination.

The record alternates between Crazy Horse-style rockers and gentle acoustic folk, though as always Young throws a few curveballs.

The shimmering War & Leisure, the singer’s fourth LP, finds him operating in a similarly creative groove [as on 2015's Wildheart] but tamping down wolfish eroticism in favor of breezier, tropical vibes.

The music draws on two decades of musicianship to showcase the indie veterans’ trademark versatility. Anthemic “We Were Beautiful” melds euphoric horns with programmed drum machines; elsewhere, “The Girl Doesn’t Get It” floats its lyrics across a sea of synths. Best of all is delicate opener “Sweet Dew Lee,” on which Stuart Murdoch’s honeyed delivery posits him as the missing link between Simon and Garfunkel.