Sleeper is an album worthy of adorning your shelf until the shelf itself crumbles.

Transgender Dysphoria Blues is a perfect storm of great songwriting paired with some timely, frank admissions from Grace.

This is an album about vision, movement and manifestation. It’s about removing oneself from the familiar to tap into the brain’s ability to create unprecedented and inspiring art. Success.

With 16 albums behind them, it would be easy to repeat themselves and crank out another dull routine. But Darnielle and company have more respect for their audience than that, producing an album with the potency to draw in new listeners and give thanks to those already in their company.

She has put in the time to master her instrument of choice, and she combines that mastery with top-shelf compositional skills. As a result, she sounds like no one else.

True to the tone of the record, Bowie is almost a spectre throughout [Blackstar].

An experimental, genre-less and extremely noisy sound to exceptional results. Schlagenheim is beyond weird. Schlagenheim is a legitimate one of a kind record. Schlagenheim is a masterpiece.

Beyond the approach that Ceremony is taking on The L-Shaped Man musically--a simmering post-punk sound that evokes the best of that genre’s late ‘70s/early ‘80s heyday--you can’t get away from the pain and despair that vocalist Ross Farrar experienced. He simply won’t let you.

The group has evolved by revealing that sentiment is eternal. RTJ3 sharpens that revelation and encases it in lustrous, dazzling gold. The crooks had the jewels all along.

She hones in on her emotional and sexual connections both to herself and others post-breakup. The truths Hackman discovers along the way, illuminated by songs both inventive and entrancing, are enough to make anyone want to be her human friend (or, at least, a rabid fan).

Olsen shares graciously in her music, and if you are willing, Burn a Fire for No Witness will change your world. Or, actually, it will change how you see your world.

Kiss Each Other Clean has the potential to please longtime fans and generate plenty of new ones.

The enduring message is that there’s no tribulation that can’t be overcome with unwavering honesty and durable companionship—a hard-won and time-worn truth that also happens to translate into brilliant music.

Don’t blink--no mere mid-career album, Monomania registers as an absolute impact event, a massive dirty blast marking the moment Deerhunter’s steady trajectory spins out of control.

From the first sung note of Hummingbird, Local Natives are frank in their presentation of a serious album, challenging listeners to heal along with them; cognizant that investment is proportional to remuneration.

The scaffolding of ANOHNI’s voice across these 10 tracks is remarkable, and the way she excavates a deep, unrelenting love within them through accessible and awing prose is magnetic, thoughtful and intricate. From a lyrical place, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross enacts an exotic balance that is so rarely seen in contemporary music.

The most fascinating aspect of this collection is how the artistic scales within the band tipped back and forth in these early days before they found the true balance that carried them through the six studio albums they made post-1984. Within this box set, it takes all eight discs to get to that point, but the moment-by-moment journey is a fascinating one marked with some remarkable pop songs.

Here, he dresses his music in full regalia--with whistles, horns, organs and marching-band drums--and it’s exquisite.

It’s a true piece of art, and we’re lucky Godspeed You! Black Emperor gave listeners a proper document.

Sylvan Esso is as cerebral as it is sexy.

There is no end to the nuances and subtleties that lay within. Find your starting point and start exploring.

Powerfully, the evolution of the songcraft on Muchacho doesn’t arrive as a random left turn but instead progresses directly out of Phosphorescent’s own canon.

Adult work, Ghosts hits the gut, the soul and the grey matter.

She writes songs that hover entrancingly, enticing the listener not with tractor-beam beats or huge hooks, but with a persistent and wholehearted interest in reaching your heart and speaking to it in a way that only it can understand.

Its arrangements are intricate and densely layered so that every song reveals itself to you more and more upon revisiting.

Not every song is perfect, but perfection is boring. What we need in these weary times--and what Passion Pit brings--is exuberance. Manners delivers the elusive feeling that everything will be alright. Or, just maybe, that everything already is.

Recalibrated as a looser, more energetic band, The Helio Sequence has created a euphoric, career-defining album.

Little Honey finds Williams in celebratory mode, with raucous rock, bluesy testimonies and tongue-in-cheek twang.