Their 10th album, I Bet on Sky, offers a shortcut through their solid, sonic history.

Know Better Learn Faster mostly sounds like a young artist coming into her own--in music and life and love.

Lost On The River is a joyful record, and everyone sounds like they had a lot of fun making it. And, for once T Bone Burnett seems to have been content to steer the proceedings without imposing his very recognizable production style on top of every recording.

While the similarities to both his contemporaries and those who came before him are impossible to ignore, there are few musicians who could pull off singing about an aspiring building inspector and make it so equally funny and sweet—but Hutson possesses a rare balance of critical wit and soul.

Even if a few experiments fall flat, on the rest of Youth Novels Li is as witty and self-possessed, even if most of her songs brutally document her emotional masochism.

Where previous Pink Mountaintops releases sounded a bit tossed off and crudely drawn, Outside Love is an intricately illustrated affair, built out of druggy walls of guitar feedback, reverb-drenched male/female vocals, and leaden drum splashes.

The songs may not be as individually memorable this time around, but it’s perhaps the better full album. And boy, will it keep you warm throughout fall into winter.

Honor among thieves, love amongst scoundrels... Keith Richards has carved an encompassing survey of his own spirit and set it to a vast set of influences for all to see.

Upside Down Mountain is a great achievement and Conor Oberst’s best work to date.

Thank Me Later may not have been the game-changing release everyone was hoping for, but we now have every reason to believe that the hype will ring true on his next album.

In the end, anyone who’s tapped feet or nodded along to Fruit Bats in the past will find plenty to embrace with this new batch of familiar, comfortable tunes.

{A] scattered, contradictory work of an icon straining to keep up with his own brilliant pace.

His latest effort is in many ways subtler and even more subdued than much of his work, but it’s an album that sticks.

while one can easily imagine smoke machines spurting during many of the album's 13 other tracks, there is no irony in the mix. Just fun.

Producer Ray Kennedy delivers the tough, guitar/keyboard/ bass/drum sound you’d expect, with no gratuitous nods toward alt.country.... Welcome back, old friend.

It’s an effortlessly elegant and pleasant ride that even the obvious hip-yuppie trappings of it all can’t obscure.

Wilson and her band thrive on musical democracy, where each instrument--even the most famous--gets an equal say in the song.

Shooter isn’t perfect, but it’s a good, solid collection of satisfying songs. And for those who’ve been waiting for Jennings to re-embrace his country-music birthright, it’ll be more than enough. Now he can wander some more, if he wants to.

Frances bursts at the jewel-case hinges with Comatorium’s trademarks: musical inventiveness and wildly emotive vocals.

Belle & Sebastian aren't trying striving for new heights: They're just wounded introverts looking for healing, one wistful melody at a time.

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.

It sounds like they’ve fallen into a niche but they’re dead-set on redefining the borders that they’ve set forth for themselves. And that is quite an exciting place for a band to be.

It’s clearly a liberating piece of work, and Humberstone’s honesty and alluring delivery is bound to resonate with listeners near and far.

What makes The Best Day work is that the songs play to the band’s strengths, especially the interplay between Moore and Sedwards.

At 14 tracks long, there are a few songs on Hardly Electronic that feel superfluous. But that’s a minor quibble, especially since we’ve been without new music from The Essex Green for a dozen years. ... And now, Hardly Electronic is here, and it more than makes up for lost time.

At times, the manicured production seems to be actively undermining the emotional fuse of the new-old material. ... Present-day Tegan and Sara are very much grown up, gay and alive. The record, though, could have used more of that grainy adolescent roughness.

While the 12 songs on Hello Exile don’t sonically deviate too much from the rest of The Menzingers’ previous six albums from the past decade or so, it offers a level of introspection relatively unheard in their genre. It’s an honest portrayal of where they are at this point in their life: not ready to settle down and give up the 4 A.M. nights at the dive bar down the street, but also realizing that those around them are in the process of doing so.

For all her bratty star power, Charli XCX’s purest magic lies in the intimate--not the irreverent.