The changes seem to be more internal to the band’s processes and each member’s role as they branch out and record together, but that confidence in each other bleeds through in these songs.

With A Beginner’s Mind, Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine have stumbled upon a beautiful vocal recipe.

The extra material here from those same home sessions finds the group working through early versions of tunes that would find full flower on later releases. ... Those tracks do, like the other “session highlights” and studio tapes, flesh out the story of the Beach Boys’ year, but they were rightfully left off Wild Honey.

It’s best to take When the Wind Forgets Your Name in the spirit offered. That is to say, it’s a rewarding one-off project on songs that underscore Martsch’s talent as a songwriter and guitarist, while also showing him in a different light. May all his future collaborations be so inspired.

Relaxing as it may be, the album works best as vague metaphor, affording the listener room to infer, interpret and apply personal meaning, independent of any direction by Hartley.

Despite a few major lulls, Get Gone, for the better part of its run time, is a sharp, unique, and enjoyable record brought to you by a band that has all the energy and musicianship required to ensure each listen is going to be a good time that gleans something new.

Lately is a much more introspective and muted work compared to the countryfied indie rock sensibility of Walking Proof, the style Hiatt is known for. The change of pace is welcome, though, and reveals much about where she’s been as a person and where she’s going as an artist.

Though Cash refrains from direct political speech on this record, she offers solace amid the political unrest, choosing to focus on personal connection rather than polarization as we near the end of a chaotic, divisive year.

West has said she intended the album to resemble a “poem or a puzzle box,” and often, the obfuscation is part of the charm. Occasionally, though, there are too many barriers between West and what she wants to say.

As a singer and songwriter, Lanegan's range is so much wider and deeper than anything the vast majority of singer/songwriters can touch, and his fearlessness remains devastatingly affecting.

Agitprop Alterna is far more elegant and thoughtful than your average shoegaze album. It pulls from a wide variety of moods and sounds, but its textures are always a source of joyful awe.

On the band’s new album, her lonely psychoses are exposed and have taken center stage for an unapologetically dire, wistful listen.

Cyclamen is a bold reintroduction to Núria Graham, a confident demonstration that, nudged into fresh sunlight, experience can always blossom into beautiful new forms.

The result might not be her most accessible album, but it’s certainly her most rewarding.

Real Life is No Cool is a tasteful take on the edgier side of ’80s pop radio--like the lucid oddities of Kate Bush—but with a dash of classic soul.

On Such Fun, Annuals--led by songwriter Adam Baker--employed sensitive elements of country and western (see: “Down the Mountain”), balladry (“Springtime”) and chamber music (“Blue Ridge”), but nearly all resulted in full-spectrum climaxes, with many instruments employed dramatically.

His velvet-rich voice is one that’s part lounge smoothie, one part vintage crooner, and one part vampiric Roy Orbison filled to the brim with drama and inherent romance. This ensures that Make Way For Love is more than an album full of weepy torch-songs, but an ode to all the feelings and phases that are the makings of a relationship’s end.

It's All True still doesn't have the inclusive warmth of similar acts like Hot Chip or Passion Pit. But for those of us who've been rooting for them, it's nice to see the Junior Boys get a little hedonistic within their grayscale world.

The newest record from Alex Giannascoli at times improves on the inscrutable, circuitous experimentation of his Domino debut, Beach Music. At other times, it refines the accessible but still characteristically sauntering country-lite of Rocket, his masterful second album for the British indie label. In other words, House of Sugar sounds like a middle ground between the two albums that preceded it.

More than just a denizen of a passing trend or an artist cloaking lack of melody in reverb and fuzz, Washed Out consistently sounds like actual thought was put behind its music, which can't be said about a lot of its so-called peers.

Miracle Mile is the most varied Starfucker joint to date. It’s also one of the prettiest party records you’ll hear this year.

With the no-bullshit, spare-n-catchy Based on a T.R.U. Story, Chainz confirms himself as the quintessential 2012 rapper.

The LP is woven with otherworldly, alien sounds, yet there is an undeniable coziness to the songs—thanks in part to the cozy crackle of vinyl samples and stirring vocals—that combats the coldness often associated with outer space.

The Modern Age is a record to get down to. Most of all it’s a terrific comeback for a band that rose to fame and flamed out much too quickly.

Ultimately, American Love Song is a soundtrack to accompany today’s struggle for survival, a paean to those that are daring and determined despite all the odds. If it’s not Bingham’s best effort to date, and it may well be, then it’s certainly his most unflinching, and with that, his rawest record yet.

The b-sides disc is, like most sets of this sort, an interesting collection of odds and sods, but the inclusion of traditional English folk standards, “Silver Dagger” and “False Knight on the Road” offers a true insight into their initial inspiration and the folk finesse they aspired to. A book of photos and lyrics is interesting but offers little in the way of liner notes or a narrative. Still, as part of this tidy package, it ought to help inspire Fleet Foxes fans to dig in deeper.

Ryder-Jones is trying to put himself back together throughout the lines of Yawn, but his affecting songs, nostalgia-swathed observations and unabashed vulnerability will inadvertently help you heal too.

That Ab-Soul tries to do both makes for a pretty entertaining ride, even when he technically falters. Ambition changes the definition of success, making this Ab-Soul record a better experience that can be picked apart.