Janelle Monáe has not simply lived up to our expectations here; she has shattered them, delivering a confident, creative, and enormously entertaining record that marginally betters her sublime debut.

Set My Heart on Fire Immediately isn’t a perfect album. There are a couple of wormholes that Hadreas gets lost down and the sequencing causes a slightly jilted second half, but once these songs nestle in, they’re impossible to shift.

Anyone with any vague taste in good music needs to own this album, right now.

For a debut album from a gal who can’t even legally rent a car by herself, this is very impressive. She attracts to a wide audience, displays restraint and obscurity at appropriate times.

Rhyton simply play their music, unfettered by the constraints of tradition, structure or expectation, and it's that quality that makes their album such a thrilling experience.

A most personal and intimate collection of demos and early takes from George's personal archive of recordings which he left behind

Searing. ... Just when you think Viagra Boys have exhausted their ideas, outside of the surprisingly confessional ADD, Murphy and his cohorts crank up the energy one last time on Return of the Monke.

Perfect Pussy constantly find new ways to stimulate that teenage bit of your brain that wants to scream and punch things and has a lot of things to say but doesn’t know how to say them.

That’s not to say Girl With Fish is an exclusively positive, agreeable record, though: “Steamroller, you fuck like you’re eating” is how Slocum opens the record’s best song, cutting through a maze of noise with a lackadaisical demeanor. It’s this balance that cues Feeble Little Horse up to be one of the biggest bands working in indie rock right now, especially if they keep making records as good as this one.

It may lack some of the avant-garde experimentation and concepts of her full-lengths but after all she’s been through and all that she’s given us, CAPRISONGS feels like a victory lap.

This will surely be counted as one of the most remarkable, individual, and adorable albums of the year.

The bizarre take on folk, pop and anything else she sees fit is enchanting, joyful and thought provoking; it's everything at once.

Compelling and emotionally charged.

Wolf Parade is a great band, and while one will automatically think of Brock when they first hear You Are a Runner I Am My Father’s Son, (or any song featuring the first of the band’s two vocalists, Jason Krug,) many of the album’s strongest moments actually come when they more closely resemble other bands.

It may be his own manifesto, but when the music is this striking, it makes you appreciate life more.

Staples has so much to say in Summertime '06 that it’d be impossible to fully dissect in one listen, and his ingenious phrasing makes for a constantly amusing variety of vignettes. A record is only as good as the music that accompanies, though, and collaborative producer No I.D. delivers in spades and then some.

Powered by its fluid and seeming invincibility, Mirrored is almost frighteningly cosmic.

Matmos successfully craft an environment both musical and tactile, some of the elements stretched to such extremes and arranged so well that they sound convincingly like instruments.

A focused, yet relaxed, song-writing atmosphere has resulted in something completely sophisticated yet entirely effortless, and genuinely warm.

X’ed Out is unmarred by any narcissistic disposition, or pretentious or elitist demeanor, but it makes no creative sacrifice. Bravo.

The narratives it employs are true to life, the reverb drenched instrumentation was rightfully summoned, and the substitution of dark undertones over lighter sensibilities that such genre was commonly known for were ditched with good reason. No wonder Slumberland has wholeheartedly embraced Black Tambourine's influence to their label. That's good enough reason to bring another of independent music's long forgotten cult stories into the forefront.

From start to finish, The Hunter is a collection of songs that inadvertently expands their repertoire and capabilities while they turn off their heads and let their fingers tell the story.

Cox sounds comfortable and confident, and has made the best solo album of his prolific career.

Not everything dazzles, but it’s truly shocking what does.

It’s a vital record, one that’s Nick Cave through and through, and whether he’s exploring his garage roots or his spooky, narrative tendencies it’s at all points a triumph.

With this record, there is Britpop, Radiohead, Spiritualized, grunge, trip-hop and more basking under an astral, space-rock umbrella, and Pumarosa have turned it all into a contorting, ornamental obelisk.

Smoke Ring For My Halo might not be for everyone, but it will definitely find a wider audience than anything else in Vile's catalogue.

Magus captures well the force of its players throughout its near 90-minute runtime, the culmination of which occurs in the album’s final track, Supremacy.