Instinct is an electro-pop album, but it's got that New Order-style darkness that gives it a comforting weight; this is that kind of bummer music that will make you dance.

There's a studio slickness and a consistent attention to detail here-crisp hand claps, crystal-clear acoustic guitar strumming, clean drums-that most contemporary garage-rock bands have little interest in.

There are no throwaway songs about weed, women or cars here, just 11 separate streams of consciousness, each with subtle lyrical and instrumental nuances.

Thailand and telephone love letters might not have been how you spent your summer, but Janssen finds a way to make it all seem relatable.

If this album were condensed into an EP, it would be great, but as an LP, the Aussies seem to be stretching the good stuff too thin.

Mohawke and Lunice prove that you can strike a perfect balance between experimentation and restraint.

The end result is an infectious pop album every bit as bright and dreamy as Manners yet far more straight-up, dark, honest and vulnerable.

Sometimes lying on the wood floor or recording an album of pretty retro-pop songs is all you can do, and sometimes it's enough.

The synths are so smooth sounding that after a few moments they begin to lull you but not into sleep. This is way too dark of a place for sleep; it seems more like hypnosis.

It probably won't rope in many. But for those few who do get it, A Collection Of Rarities will provide a truly uncommon and sometimes jarring glimpse into the evolution of an incredible musical mind.

In a sparse 34 minutes, A Shut-In's Prayer switches tracks, tempos and narrators often enough to feel relatively fresh from start to finish.

The roominess and the variety are what make this album so interesting.

The band has crafted something surprising: a poignant, reflective hard-rock album that straddles the divide between '70s classic rock ambition and '90s alt-rock theatrics.

The EP's only weakness comes in the form of "City."

The result is the raw and crunchy folk record Total Dust.

The infectious beats and catchy hooks are still a driving force, but Lewis has abandoned the bedroom vibes to surge ahead with full-on amphetamine-induced vigor.

The Dirty Projectors are still fantastic weirdos making fantastically weird music, but Swing Lo Magellan humanizes them by letting you see through to their heartstrings.

For all of their individual, conflicting quirks, Miller et al. operate like some strange musical beast, spitting out hooks and devouring them with brute force.

More than ever he seems to accept his differences and embrace them, making an album that is more a solid work of art than anything previous.

A Place To Bury Strangers succeeds in one aspect: It produces music so hammering and explosively airy that it crumbles the very walls used to create such an echoed and amplified sound. It just fails to recognize that in doing so for almost 45-minutes straight, we begin to feel like we're getting buried alive under the rubble.

[Slaughterhouse is] a master's thesis of reverb, crafted by an electric orator who, more and more, finds the pithiest ways to worship the guitar as instrument, drug and weapon.

Positive Force will uplift you.

At this crossroads between excitement, adventure and melancholy, Gold Motel resides.

These songs seamlessly trickle from one to the next in a perfect collection of sounds, showcasing both complexity and musical depth in this mostly instrumental music.

Dry Land Is Not A Myth blows by in what feels like an instant, but it is so easily engrained into your memory, you'll find yourself humming it all day.

Polysick displays a nerdish devotion to subtleties, like creating rhythms without beats and overlaying field recordings under a mix.

The vision of Southern California terrain Barfod molds in Salton Sea seems strangely undead and haunting even at its most jubilant moments, creating a chilling sense of something epic and part-human.