While there may not be a ton of surprises from his solo work at this point, this is still an awfully strong set from a guy who's pretty tough to beat when he's on his game.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra has produced the rare indie pop record that seizes you on the first listen but also rewards repeated playing.

On Weekend At Burnie's, Curren$y has crafted a record he's probably chilling out to right now.

The fact that it turned out quite well makes that fact that much more satisfying, and elevates the album above mere curiosity to a possible road sign pointing towards Fuck Buttons' future material.

It may not have the knockout highs that Dual Hawks or Flashes and Cables had, but it is just as consistent all the way through.

If there's been a better album, hip-hop or not, out this year, I haven't heard it.

We can all go on loving For Emma, Forever Ago (with good reason), but don't let your attachment to that obscure what Vernon has created here. No cabin, no crazy backstory. Just a great, inventive album.

Ross is better when he's more ambitious, when he goes beyond the tired hood-rap/pop-rap divisions.

The danger with The Errant Charm is pretty much the same as any other Vetiver album -- so many mid-tempo, strummy songs can create a sluggish effect.

Clutching Stems is the band's finest record since The Albemarle Sound, and the kind of pop record that may break your heart, may even tear you apart, but it's also generous and complex enough to put you back together in the end.

For all the creativity, there's a certain fire that's missing. The jagged energy that set White Denim apart from so many others has been rounded out, replaced with a relaxed streak and lots of noodling that wears down by D's end.

Here they've proved that their success isn't all charm or happenstance. Woods have gotten to this point by following every creative impulse, and they seemingly have a million more possibilities stretching out ahead.

The Submarines are at their best when toying with charmed synth-pop.

Castlemania indicates that like the most accomplished psychedelia, Thee Oh Sees are thoroughly capable of adding dimensionality to "odd"--and oddness to "pop."

It's an album that sounds like it was difficult to make, as these two move from being the couple to being the players, and that difficulty yields some of their most beautiful moments on record yet, even if it also (and perhaps necessarily) gets in the way of the songs sometimes.

It's poppy, it's quirky, but it's also shrouded in forebodingness and unease. When the group achieves that sort of balance, AttentionPlease is close to perfect. The album fails when there is too much dance, too much party.

It is an album based very clearly on a concept, an overall construct. Within that, Fucked Up once again morph themselves, moving further away from anything you could call hardcore (save Damian Abraham's voice).

Mountain finds the band taking several huge leaps toward that end, resulting in a more cohesive picture of their sound and a band beating down a clear path for where they'd like to take their music.

New Zealand pop lifer David Kilgour's Left by Soft, his seventh proper full-length (and third for Merge), is a lovely addition to the veteran songwriter's catalog.

For much of Diaper Island, he hits his sweet spot of raw indie folk-rock, but for others he seems to be bending his personality to fit the demands of guitar noise, instead of the other way around.

Demolished Thoughts is a consistent and strong record all the way through. In the same way Mascis turned his talents effectively to quieter tones, Moore gives us a new perspective on the talents we've seen from him for decades.

Despite the somewhat dubious timing of Heavy Rocks' release, there are still some awesome songs to be found here, and the album as a whole acts a great sampler platter of all of Boris' strengths.

It's quiet but it gets your attention, surrounds you, and makes you feel a part of it all the way through.

Okkervil River has never provided easy answers in their albums--unless you read the many interviews with Sheff, who always seems willing to explain what he can--and I Am Very Far is another fine album in an increasingly finer canon.

While the songs may seem borderline psychotic at moments, the bright zeal of their delivery and the band's careful crafting imply some moving on.

Assembling an impressive list of guests that understand his legacy (Paolo Nutini, Mayer Hawthorne, and the Dirtbombs' Mick Collins among them), Coffey sounds downright vital, unleashing dusted licks and stinging wah-wah over boom-bap breaks and buoyant horns.

While it would have been easy for Feel It Break to fall into new wave hero worship, it succeeds thanks to the singularity of Stelmanis' vision. Feel It Break announces her as a force to be reckoned with.

It comes down to what you're expecting here. Do you earnestly yearn for another album full of beautifully arranged, meticulously pored over harmonic acoustic folk? Then this is probably your album of the year to beat.

It's a lot to take in, but the simple, hypnotic beauty of the stark landscapes Tyler has created here reveals itself more with each subsequent listen.

Maybe it's because we've come to expect these guys to knock us out with each album, but Smother can't help but feel like a misstep.

Thanks to his varied songwriting, there's nary a weak link in Burst Apart. It might not benefit from the easy hooks of a concept album, but if you stick around till the end, it is every bit as rewarding as Hospice.

More important than any commentary about the listening habits of internet browsers I could possibly make is the fact that Dancer Equired stands as the perfect gateway for new Times New Viking listeners, and definitely deserves to be enjoyed and not brushed aside.

Magnetic Man accomplishes its goal: make pretty for the spotlight.

While Start And Complete happens to have been recorded in just one day, lo and behold, it turns out to be album of relatively straightforward songs, staying largely within the musical and lyrical conventions of the pop/rock universe.

We get to peer deep into McCombs's mind, but with the benefit of coming up for air once the record ends.

Take Care, Take Care, Take Care is another beautiful record from the band, and another fresh track laid on their sonic landscape, a slight tangent from their other records that never loses their overall direction.

The overall result is pleasant yet hardly exceptional.

In spite of this second half lag, Daedelus continues to exhibit a tremendous capacity for distilling disparate ideas into something personable.

If there's one thing made clear by the satisfying catharsis and musical quantum leap of In And Out Of Youth And Lightness, it's that Patterson should ignore his earlier advice more often if it results in albums of this caliber.

On a whole Salon lacks more of these emotional moments.

The irony is Black Sun is better-suited for the club. The album's sounds and ideas are large enough to fill a dark, echoing room.

Credit Callahan then not just for his latest vision, but for how he done it.

Garbus might be more known right now as a magnetic performer, but w h o k i l l proves she's just as beguiling on record.

Ponytail fans will surely enjoy this relatively formed incarnation of the band's energy.

While no single song on the album comes close to the weight and volume that Lift to Experience was capable of slinging, Last of the Country Gentlemen delivers its own subtle intensity.

Here Low are, still going strong, still this consistent, still delivering vital albums like C'mon.

Tomboy's best quality is its consistency with Lennox's vision, in spite of the critical hullabaloo surrounding it.

Maybe it's time to alter our exercitations for new TV on the Radio albums: We might not be blown away, but TV on the Radio's sonic environment is still one of the most interesting venues in music.

One Nation may not demand repeated spins, but its lack of form and formality is refreshing.

Bleariness and monochrome sexual appeal are more popular than they were when The Raveonettes first broke, so you wonder how they'd be received had this been their first record, not their fifth.

It's hard to shake the feeling that the band's fourth album, Blood Pressures, is the one that will take The Kills to the next level.

Those who stick around will be treated to a sort of musical security blanket, jam-packed with hooks and an overall sound that should appease to fans of both the lightly melodic and relentlessly heavy.

Unfortunately, despite White Wires' earnestness, likability, and knack for hooks, WWII is an album that is threatened to be overshadowed not just by albums from all over the musical spectrum, but also by other albums on Dirtnap itself.

Darnielle's usual knack for detail and word play is surgical here, as usual, but All Eternals Deck is notable for its wide sonic palate.

No matter what band he's playing with, Froberg has always had a great ear for guitar tones, and here, he and second guitarist/vocalist Sohrab Habibion whittle down their instruments into scythes, dialing down their more surfy tendencies in favor of guitars that lurk during the verses and slice only at the most opportune moments for maximum impact.

Even at its most elemental moments He Gets Me High sounds a lot more expansive than their debut. It might not be essential listening, but it certainly can be taking as foreshadowing of what a high-budgeted Dum Dum Girls might sound like.

Maybe it's my lowered expectations for major-label rap debuts, or the fact that I never had Wiz pegged for out-and-out greatness, but Rolling Papers sure feels like a qualified success. The album's high points earn Wiz forgiveness for his mistakes.

As expected, the album's highlights are its patient explorations.

Constant Future is another fine rock record from a band that gets harder to ignore with each release, even when the album's titular problem is exactly what keeps them flying under the radar.

It's as good an introduction to the band as those 2008 singles were; sometimes thrilling, sometimes disappointing, but always formidable.

Sure, Barton Hollow's love-swept core and well-worn conventions might make it a tad limited, but for what it sets outs to accomplish, it succeeds with pitch-perfect elegance.

Build a Rocket Boys! sounds very much like an Elbow record, but it doesn't sound like any Elbow record we've heard before.

It's easy to see Smoke Ring being remembered as the stepping stone to a transcendent piece of work in Vile's discography.

It keeps Raekwon relevant, not to mention is better than most of the hip hop out there. But it's always worrying when an artist, even one as celebrated as Raekwon, gets complacent.

Sparsely lit lover's folk is by no means a fresh development, but The Rural Alberta Advantage continue to take the sound in new, interesting ways.

The songcraft on display here indicates that a similar crossover future is not outside the realm of possibility for these young Brits.

Radio Dept. caught flak for being derivative early in their career, but Passive Aggressive posits that they may have sounded like a lot of different bands during their run so far, but they've always just been themselves: an overlooked band deserving of more attention than the little they've received. This comp should fix that.

Although its completed form has been framed as the most explicit tribute to Fuchs on the album, it is the furthest thing from somber, rocking an insistent downstroke bass part and a series of statement-making, sunsoaked guitar parts.

Replicants is solid, displaying the conflicted inner workings of a sonically agitated man, even if its restlessness makes the album feel too frenetic at times.

You won't catch every note, every shift--he's never that transparent. But there's a welcoming feel to this record that makes it resonate longer than any jarring shift could.

12 Desperate Straight Lines is Lerner's second LP under the Telekinesis moniker, and it finds his introspection all the more labyrinthine, but his chops as a genuine architect nothing if not totally satisfying.

The self-titled release was dominated more by decaying, almost bleak instrumental meanderings than the half-cocked pop-fuzz that made the group's many singles such hot items. 2010's Nothing Fits, released on In the Red, is a near total about-face, consisting of 11 swift, fierce blasts.

It remains to be seen if the loose, congenial vibe of Sun Bronzed Greek Gods can be sustained for more than this EP's 19 minutes, but betting against Dom might be foolhardy.

Like their creator, the 10 songs that make up We Live in Rented Rooms won't demand you listen to them. But the more these songs play, the more layers they reveal.

Kind of like Brooklyn, which wants you to think it doesn't care what you think, The Babies are impressively adept at making it look easy, at making it look like they're not trying too hard. The truth is that there's as much skill and passion going into this slumming side-project than most full-time bands could hope for.

It's in that strange tug and pull from which struggle springs passion and beauty that these men seemed to effortlessly thrive. And it is there with both a genuine, relatable sadness and an unwavering resolve so rooted in the broken concrete Bradley walks upon, that No Time For Dreaming also comfortably sits.

Ultimately, there's a sense of urgency that's missing throughout Honors. The Stampers can surround themselves with more instrumentation and a fuller band, but there's still not enough suspense on Honors to make it a consistently engaging listen.

Underneath the Pine, like Causers before it, is slightly padded, with ambient passages helping bump this past the 35-minute mark.

His self-producing the album allows for complete creative control and its pure sense of cohesion as one track flows seamlessly into the next.

Little Joy never really breaks out of its mostly grey color scheme, and is an album that could test the patience of many, but these do not seem like things that concern My Disco in the slightest.

A powerfully uncomplicated rock album.

Excerpts takes it one step further and expects audiences to linger on the great tidal shifts of memory happening in our minds every day. If we manage to lodge ourselves within his cause, Alary has a whole world behind a world to open up to us.

Like every live album ever, this is pretty much for fans only. A newcomer isn't going to learn much from coming in this late, and casual observers won't find anything here they can't get on LCD Soundsystem's studio albums. But as Murphy seems content to head into retirement after this touring cycle, he's entitled to a victory or lap or two.

Don't consider Saigon's The Greatest Story Never Told his debut, but his farewell. It is a goodbye to the discarded first chapter of his career. The half-decade-in-the-making effort needed to be released in order for the rapper to move on.

Harvey's singing delivers the material by juggling unwieldy emotions with care and empathy. And she makes the experience sound natural -- like a true no-brainer.

As of right now, the main emotional component of this music is the whiplash thrill of hearing rock music played on the edge of sanity, but if we can be nudged into feeling something in our hearts more affecting or cerebral, something more powerful than an echoing warstomp, then we've got a landmark album on our hands.

Keys and effects -- including layered samples from the bands early recordings -- sound like the foundation to the songs, creating a fuzzy expanse that the players worm their way into.

Kind of like the whole idea of a disco album, a collaboration with a visual artist about African-Americans' tragic history is something you would never expect from Destroyer, and yet once you listen, it seems perfectly authentic, inspired, and essential.

It would be more of a worry if Dye It Blonde's high points weren't so revelatory or well-executed because while it's not a conceptually brilliant record, there are enough triumphs to score a summer romance and get cut up on mix CDs.

It's rich in talent, even if short on crossover appeal. Tyler is gifted enough to do most anything with his guitar, and he'll move you if you let him.

Everything is more complex, more daring, and simply more produced than anything else they've done. In that sense, it's the best kind of EP, existing because of a discernable creative spark, not as a clearinghouse for also-ran songs or a victory lap following a knockout year.

Is Growing Faith feels more like an actual lost psychedelic-era gem than a revivalist record.

They've all called Zonoscope less poppy and more meandering. That's not necessarily the entire case here, but don't doubt the band on this: there are fewer big singles here, and this one isn't likely to spawn multiple indie hits months after its release like the last album.

A noticeable departure on Kiss Each Other Clean is that Beam seems to be having a genuinely good time on the album.

The conceit of The Dirtbombs covering dance music is genius.

With Not Yet, Monotonix delivers a tight half hour of intensely likable scuzz rock that gives a solid kick to the lizard part of the brain.

Yes, believe it or not, The Get Up Kids have produced the first truly surprising album of 2011.

Even for Deerhoof, this is a tricky album to work your way through. But even if you never quite figure it out, it's unlikely you'll get tired of trying any time soon.