Return to the Sea is filled with breezy, infectious melodies and quirky whip-smart lyrics; qualities that were sometimes lost underneath the Unicorns' shtick.

Stephen Malkmus is back with Mirror Traffic, in a way he wasn't with the Pavement reunion, which is to say in a way that reaches past nostalgia and easy money and is based in great music built to last.

For all the bravado of its title, Destroy Rock & Roll is in fact a neat, listenable trip.

By turns exuberant and hushed, intricate and occasionally frenzied, Gorilla Manor more than lives up to its title.

Fin creates a passionate kind of poetry not only in its music but also in its listeners.

In short, Thursday is a mixtape of subtleties.

Its power and poise never ceases for 90 wonderful minutes.

For all its delectable dance tracks, infused with Barnes’ latest influences of Afrobeat, disco and electronic music, The Sunlandic Twins still offers thoughtful lyrics and emotionally heady songs.

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.

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.

As great as these songs are, how much you love them will rest on how long a leash you're willing to give Young and Lanois with the all ringing, sometimes overbearing, noise they wrap them in.

Veirs hasn’t given us anything strikingly original with Year Of Meteors, but there’s something to be said for working within the confines of a given genre and excelling at what that entails.

The older songs blend well with the more recent numbers; Helm and his menagerie of backing musicians use bluegrass instrumentation throughout the album and ably blur the lines between traditional pieces and modern songs by the likes of Steve Earle and Paul Kennerley.

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.

I think we should all be thanking our respective Higher Power right now that [Lekman's] hiatus was brief, because the album he would eventually make, the stunning Night Falls over Kortedala, is among the best of the year.

Believers is another step away from Bondy's noisy past, and he knows how to use his inside voice.

Mystery, a four-song warning shot of an EP, completes the cycle of hype. Duck and cover, y’all: Something wicked this way comes.

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.

It is a better album than its predecessor in almost every regard, but it hardly shows Condon taking risks.

As an album The Lady Killer achieves everything it purports to be. Its music is familiar enough to attract broad attention.

This is Spoon at its most Spoony.

Over the course of one great LP (2004’s "Underachievers Please Try Harder"), one pretty great one (2006’s "Let’s Get Out of This Country"), and now My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura have arrived at a sound centered on Campbell’s self-reflective loneliness and their lifting of all the best of ‘60s music--a sound they own by themselves.

Wildbirds & Peacedrums make experimental music that really carves out its own sonic space, that intrigues and engages without ever really attempting to "challenge," because that's not what it cares about.

Not necessarily a mix for ages, but a mix that's pretty easy to come back to, be it road-trips, background music, or a personal headphones-odyssey.

There's a true songwriter's ear buried beneath all the fist-pumping, and it relies on a well-honed melodic sensibility that borrows on classic power-pop tropes but introduces impressive key and tempo shifts.

Nobody is putting out music like Pop Levi's right now.

The Wedding is certainly one of the best records this band has released and, more important, one of the better rock records released this year.

Begin to Hope has its highs and lows, but it is a journey worth taking.