As a treat for the most passionate fans, it’s a winner, but by focusing on only one aspect of the band’s identity it doesn’t register as much as almost every other record they’ve ever released.

Brother Sister is a down-home record, the kind only people who are related to each other could make. It’s the sound of two people reminiscing about childhood while trying to survive adulthood.

Throughout, there’s a dynamic contrast of ultra-femininity with talk of violence, power, and crouching wrath.

THICK lay it all out in a way that isn’t subtle, but that’s okay. Their vocals convey emotion as raw as their instruments, and that alone is something worthy of praise when studios frequently make bands sound cookie-cutter.

If it’s true that Lydia Loveless’ jets are starting to cool, Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again shows that their music still throws off plenty of heat.

What’s remarkable about it is that she has spun her personal experiences into a soulful, touching R&B record with broad appeal beyond her particular demographic.

In Pale Fire El Perro Del Mar distances herself from the confines of her solitary beginnings, opening up an entire world of possibility.

The layers at times get a little too thick, enough to hide some of Follin’s words. But as packed as the songs get with incident and sound, the gooey goodness of Cults’ candy pop wins out every time.

Building on a well-received debut, and taking a bold step in a new direction. It’s an impressive feat that Glaspy manages to do both at once.

An album that feels inspired by nostalgia but not limited to it, which bodes well for wherever Minus The Bear decides to go next.

The metamorphosis of her personal quest has undoubtedly spilled over into this ultimate blossoming of Young Magic. Still Life manages to feel like Indonesia and when artists seek to understand themselves with music as their driver for catharsis and enlightenment, the end result will show what they’ve discovered.

Schmilco is an acoustic record but not a slow one--thank God--which proves the right vehicle for the band’s loosest, most unadorned set of songs since its debut. There’s electricity here, if not much electric guitar.

Still, if Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out! is a ramble, it’s an infectious ramble, too much fun not to rock out to; you’ll pick out bits and pieces of The Mr. T Experience, Descendents and Ted Leo in the record’s texture, but then again, you may be too busy bobbing your head along to care about such paltry things as influence.

Throughout, Bird and Mathus span a wide swath of human experience, and the practiced ease with which they do so, and their easy rapport, suggest that maybe they ought to do this more often.

Daddy’s Home brings us a far moodier, expansive work than predecessor MASSEDUCTION; it begs us to sit and listen, calling back to the slow-burn complexity of Strange Mercy.

The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs is arguably Wye Oak’s most assured album: Wasner and Stack perform with a confidence that is almost serene, as if self-doubt weren’t even a possibility

Despite the stuffing of unnecessary transition tracks on this album, Drugdealer still makes a clean getaway with The End of Comedy.

Bazan evokes the tumult of emotion that accompanies the middle school years, sometimes so well that it’s uncomfortable, as he chronicles the year or so he spent in Lake Havasu before his family moved again.

Although it's a trite concept, Dear's delivery sounds new, bathed in glowing, emerald light.

The result is their best effort since at least 2008’s Parallel Play, and possibly even since the last century.

Kenney may not always have the right language to describe her love and her worries about it, but where words fail her, her unabashed musical rhapsodies speak volumes.

Ryan Adams strikes the best balance between them [country and rock] that he’s found yet.

Though Painted Shut only clocks in at 41 minutes total, it feels like a much lengthier record. For fans of Hop Along, that should be just enough. For new listeners, it’s a thorough introduction.

Along with the mesmerizing musical arrangements, what makes Carvings compelling is the balance Habel finds between acknowledging the fleeting span of any one life, and her determination to find meaning in the transience. In that regard, Carvings is at once a eulogy and a celebration.

A few songs on Together At Last don’t have much to offer if you’re familiar with the album versions, including “Muzzle of Bees” and “In A Future Age.” The former, in particular, misses the noisy burst Tweedy’s band mates provided. But even they are effortlessly listenable, because Tweedy makes them so.

It’s a smoother ride than Delaware, for better or for worse, but not without edges. Drop Nineteens have not lost all of their style; if anything, they’ve gained some finesse. It was never supposed to happen, but we should be glad that it has.

Hungry Ghosts may not be the musical evolution that fans sought after four years, but OK Go’s bold pursuits of creativity in all media remain exciting still.

Mommy flushes out all the misplaced pressure and instability that defined the group’s first go-round, while making it clear that Be Your Own Pet remain a force to be reckoned with—but on their terms.

The album ends with “Weekend Love,” a delightful slice of slightly psychedelic indie-ish-club-pop co-written with Ethan Gruska, best known for his work with Phoebe Bridgers and Kimbra. The rest of The Loveliest Time finds Jepsen blasting off in different directions—the dubby soul of “Kollage,” the throbbing synth-rock of “Stadium Love,” for example—with varying degrees of success.

Hot Chip is a band you can count on to consistently make crowd-pleasing records, and Freakout/Release is a well-rounded addition to their discography.

The result is Dehd’s best album to date, a significant upgrade on their sound that finds their Windy City DIY scene-honed amalgam of surf rock, shoegaze and dream pop at its most melodic and expressive. The trio demonstrate newfound levels of intensity and focus on Flower of Devotion, leaving minimalism behind in favor of glossier compositions.

On Parks’ long-awaited debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams, her narratives remain vivid and often crushing. Likewise intact is her vibrant fusion of rock, jazz, folk and hip-hop.

Stands bravely on its own, inhabiting a newfound world, and it’s both idyllic and tragic. It’s placid and romantic, but it’s also broken and trying to heal.

The songs that do make up Collector are packed with interesting guitar tones, an intuition for pop magic and a message that should be shouted from the rooftops.

Disarming, and maybe slightly disingenuous, Boniface shows very clearly that Visser has full control, along with a wide-open heart and a keen ear. They make the most of those attributes, which coalesce into a first-rate debut LP.

In a genre so saccharine, overwrought and predictable, Jones and the Dap-Kings reinvigorate the very notion of Christmas and holiday music, recording warm and witty originals while using sharp, soulful arrangements to transform classics like “White Christmas.”

[A] taut, intense collection of songs.

The three-disc version is a great foundational understanding of what The Fall and Mark E. Smith is all about, but the hefty seven-disc issue offers up the blueprints for the whole operation. Whether your interest is just in seeing why groups like Pavement and Elastica marked this band as a major influence or if it’s in jumping into the Olympic-sized pool of material by The Fall, you know which lane to choose.

While 40-plus minutes of these experiments may start to drag, Liars' ability to work in hooks and structure to oddball electronic music is both admirable and pleasantly surprising.

He's really coming into his own, and he'll have his masterpiece yet, probably a few of them. FOMO isn't one, but it sure is a lovely listen, something that completists will likely point to one day as some of the old guy's "good-but-not-great, early stuff."

Tension is strong proof that Kylie Minogue in 2023 is more than just “Padam Padam,” but it’s also a relatively uncomplicated message from the international superstar. It delivers what she does best: a campaign speech on behalf of pleasure and its pursuit, with an electro-pop shine that delivers dopamine hit after dopamine hit.

A Black Mile To The Surface does not disappoint. It may not be a no-hitter (nothing here is as immediately visceral as, say, “Shake It Off” or as instantly gorgeous as “Simple Math,” perhaps), but the band still looks and sounds strong.

This could be considered their mature album, but the Mods don’t sound the least bit worn out. Less sweary, maybe, though no less profane.

Punk in sentiment, pop in sound, and political for the fact that it exists, All of Us Flames weaves justified fury into a testament to community, borrowing from sounds of the past to envision a less destructive future.

All in all, it’s just good fun. And more than a little bit clever.

For as much fun as Wanderlust often was, the sound of The Breaker is really the band’s wheelhouse.

This alone-in-a-crowd sound suits Merritt so well and makes Traveling Alone her best and most fully realized album yet.

The risk they took with their complete metamorphosis paid off, further solidifying them as a band with talent that transcends genres and states.

Seeds is quaint in its psychedelia, but it's not a hallucinogenic cocktail like Shades of Blue.

Meg Duffy’s humble, comforting vocals will help cushion the blow that will inevitably come with any relationship, and their poetic aptitude results in a record that’s just as therapeutic and affecting on the written page as it is in sung form.

Oh Sees’ most obvious strength has always been their own restlessness and commitment to exploration, and as Face Stabber’s dozen other tracks ricochet between super-potent pysch, punk, noise and funk, they prove that this is still one of the very best and most adventurous rock bands on the planet.

Although Vestiges & Claws may wander close to guitar-based, folk-rock homogeny, González’s musings offer a cerebral reminder to enjoy figuring out what it all means.

Tokyo Police Club get back to doing their favorite thing: Playing their hearts out, two or three minutes at a time.

She’s been utilizing her voice to influence the world for generations, and Blueprint emphasizes that her work is far from done. Whatever Alice Bag wants to talk about, we’re here to listen.

Cobra Juicy leaves you sonically stoned, in a good way--good luck even getting off the couch.

There are elements of yearning found on In Roses that, while well-intentioned and often spellbindingly beautiful, are lost in the grand scheme of the broad, willful instrumental experimentation between Barnes, cellist Kristen Drymala and vocalist Ieva Berberian.

They [“Cut To The Quick” and “Takes One To Know One”] serve as the best representation of the band’s strengths: subtly hooky melodies, abstract yet relatable lyrics, and an appealing dreaminess that will have you surprising yourself when the album ends, and you go to start it over once more.

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.

At times The Snake sounds like a drum solo with vocals, but they make their limited line-up sound endlessly malleable, which is no small feat.

Scattered moments show the band capturing a spark of creativity to make this exercise in using different instruments for very specific purposes mean something similar to their LPs. The results are some of the more exciting moments of the band’s recent output.

On In the Dark the band has paired its roadworthiness with greater ingenuity, and it finally feels like a fuse has been lit.

Mandatory Fun is a good, humorous album that shows that Yankovic is not slowing down in the slightest.

Even within individual songs, there's a genuine sense of struggle with a gamut of emotions: hopes, fears, joys and frustrations.

City Music doesn’t hustle and bustle. But it won’t let you miss it, either.

There’s a lot going on here, as required by any worthwhile slate of electronica, and Greene streamlines the grooves, tempos, beats and boom bap in a meaningful way.

Seek Shelter is ultimately less effective in its catchiness and sheer force, considering its occasionally clunky sequences, but Iceage attempting to write songs of unprecedented magnitude this far into their career is admirable. The album’s greatest triumph is its finale, “The Holding Hand,” which plays to their tension-building strengths.

The elegance of Solar Power is in its warmth, how you can put it on and not pay much attention to its details, and still catch yourself hitting replay.

Despite Higher’s lyrical shortcomings, Chris Stapleton still reigns high in the country genre and has delivered another admirable album.

She doesn’t experiment much throughout her debut, but Pilbeam knows what she does best and sticks to it throughout. Her dream pop niche in the indie rock world is sure to win her loads of new fans going forward, and with her debut, she establishes herself as not only one of its rising stars, but also one of its best songwriters.

Free of filler, and with the beneficial addition of cameos from Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino and Fucked Up's Damian Abraham, Life Sux is hands down Wavves' best statement.

Love Is Dead brims with that kind of confidence: assertive but not showy, passionate but not gaudy, and wholly necessary.