Zayna Jumma has a similar clarity, allowing listeners to immerse themselves, for a spell, in the special magic that Group Doueh have made their own.

In its more spacious moments, Look A Little Closer recalls the best Talk Talk in the way that their tight grooves serve to (almost) order and contain the ambient chaos and arrhythmic percussion in the gaps.

Down There carries many of the hallmarks of c-wave in its purse like a pack of mints or set of keys, but it diverges in notable ways.

This music took time, precision, intuition, will. But it is the same. It doesn’t demand reverence, but its immense power might go null if not for the voidless silence that could introduce it, carry it like a medium into your every day everyday.

Even at its densest, Whole and Cloven, the third solo record for Bowles, sounds almost desultory, a great credit to his compositional approach.

It's fitting that Mason reserved his first official solo album for his best work since The Beta Band. The results prove well worth the wait.

Pyramids would serve as a helluva soundtrack to a dream I once had, a lucid dream around age 10 wherein I woke up within the dream, realized I was in a dream, and acted accordingly. Super accordingly.

All of a sudden, the hooks sink deeper; the simple solos, redolent of Pavement/Malkmus to the axe-max, sound better; and, most of all, the songwriting is muscular.

Imps of Perversion is every bit as stark and nasty as the band’s previous outings. Only this time, the boogeymen and the futuristic hellscapes seem a little less remote, not quite as far-removed from reality as before.

The LP straps us into its cramped, jilted rhythms and harsh materiality, keeping us in its grips. And it’s successful in keeping us there precisely because we enjoy its confinement, we enjoy its power over us, and we enjoy the illusion that we aren’t confined and powerless. That’s ultimately what makes it a wonderland.

Widow City is by far the band’s toughest-as-nails record yet, with Matthew incessantly setting fire to the stage.

This is a dynamic, densely-packaged slab of rock ’n’ roll, which not only stands alongside the titans of the genre, but gives Kylesa a name of their own.

Get Color is exactly what a sophomore release should be: a deepening of and expansion upon the promise laid out by the band’s first record.

Each sound swerves about unpredictably, as free-willed as particles twisting through a vast nothingness, powerful and intricate in their brutal simplicity.

This is mood music, flecked with beauty and riven with hurt, a compelling, complex work that extends itself outwards, generously inviting the listener to share in its triumphs and disappointments.

The album’s a treasure trove of exciting, sharp production, recruiting some of today’s most tuneful producers (Mick Shultz, Vinylz, London On Da Track, Murda Beatz, DJ Mustard, Soundz) who simply understand what works best for Jeremih’s adroit, rhythmic vocals.

Their strangeness marks them out from more typical death metal bands, while still retaining their brutality and extremity, a distinction that results from the ideas that animate Portal’s work and their commitment to forming their music into a vehicle for the monsters to which they bow.

As a representation of how it feels to find yourself helplessly adrift, The Rip Tide simultaneously strikes a nerve and soothes it; that's a pretty old trick, but Beirut have done it with the right mixture of solipsism and grace to bring the feelings flooding back again.

Some will rank it among other gimcrack releases, like Dylan & the Dead. Still others will categorize it as an oddity, like Self Portrait. It’s all and none of these.

Airs resists the cheap gratification of the indie genre’s tendency of plundering from rock & roll’s rich past with only a passing fancy. Rae’s commitment to serving the dignity and stateliness of those genres is the record’s greatest asset, and with it comes the authenticity of a younger artist who’s keenly aware of her modest place in Nashville’s wide musical tapestry, but nonetheless confident enough to prove her salt time and again.

The Monitor more than cements Titus Andronicus's place in the indie rock arena. At its best moments, it reminds you of just how durable--and dangerous--a beast like rock 'n' roll can still be.

A consistent, immediately catchy album that holds up after repeated listens.

If anything, this album is best compared to the aesthetic of hip-hop, where allusions to universality and transcendence are simply non-existent, and what we are left with is content that will be dated within months.

Rather than attempting to outdo themselves, Efterklang scale back, ending sweetly, without overplaying their hand or overstaying their welcome.

We find ourselves encountering songs that give themselves the time and space to breathe, build, incorporate shimmering choirs of backing singers and more layered overdubs than you can shake a stick at into the mix.

Sea Lion is a delight.

The music on Safe is embedded in the contours of an anxiety attack itself. Rather than an attempt at inducing states of rest, the music is contrarily restless and embroiled in agony.

Despite the aforementioned darkwave influences, it’s not that his earworms get leechlike hooks into you--but that, while you’re caught listening and daydreaming, strands of ivy poke tentative tendrils into the eardrum, and deeper.

Hello Sadness hits harder than any indie rock record in recent memory because it doesn't really sound like the gentrified indie rock I've grown so frustratingly familiar with.

Mitski may not be any taller or feel like any less of a child, yet Puberty 2 is a monument built high, visible to more and more.

Although his rough-around-the-edges production and label affiliation suggest he is a folkie or New Weird American, his songwriting harkens back more to Tin Pan Alley than The Incredible String Band.

Sixteen tracks make for a long album, but the set works remarkably, with the Boys’ excursions into Tex-Mex pop and blues rarely even pushing the three-minute mark.

Although disintegration’s reach is far, infinite abandonment, even imagined, can’t be contained, but it can be uttered in a cry. All vibrantly tactile, this realization that it took self to cry for a self with which you’re now commingled in song.

The delivery is too matter-of-fact, too genuine to evoke pity or sadness. It is lethargic, yet not dreary -- it grabs you violently and lays you down so, so gently.

If the man’s curious oeuvre hasn’t already provided reason enough to pay attention, it’s doubtful Beware will convert anyone to the fold. But for those already attuned to Oldham’s songcraft, Beware is a rich and fulfilling work from a man who seems to have a paranormal grasp on human nature, with all the sensuality, God-fearing, tummy-rubbing and head-scratching that implies.

This is extremely addictive stuff, and after only a few listens, every track will attempt to/will succeed in worming its way into the willing listener's brain.

While there’s certainly something thrilling about the wild, back-and-forth rollercoaster ride of listening to a Danny Brown album, in the end the grandest triumphs of Danny’s work are the myriad revelations gained from how the seemingly contradictory elements of these dualities interact with one another.

Burned Mind contains some of the heaviest moments on record that I've ever heard.

Stuck On Nothing is a boozy, lusty hug of a record--an album so loving and large-hearted that its virtues essentially cancel out its flaws.

Despite some shortcomings, 4 is an unqualified success in the Hawksian sense: There are at least three great songs and no bad ones.

White Lung demand attention, engaging heart-to-heart conversations while simultaneously rioting.

It's a subtle album about an unexpected range life, full of slow talk and afterglows, the work of a confident and comforting craftsman. If this is what it means to grow old with Stephen Malkmus, faults and all, then bring it on.

Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings is essentially an audio sketchbook, and its contents are necessarily rough, half-formed, and fragmentary. There is pleasure to be found here, particularly in Cobain’s left-field excursions into Burroughs-ian collage, but these pleasures will hold scant value to anyone not already convinced of the author’s peculiar genius.

Who Killed Harry Houdini?, the band’s second full-length release and first on major-label affiliate Mute Records, continues the group’s tradition of making happy, light-hearted pop music that’s simultaneously fizzy and sticky.

The result is an exuberant, almost joyful record brimming with sly cynicism and a newfound fondness for whoa-oh refrains and handclaps.

It hits just as furiously and sloppily as all the old Markers standards, no matter its label, run time, or production quality.

The resulting record plays like a soundtrack to a non-existent film, skeleton-framed and dramatic.

Simply put and strongly stated, King of Jeans goes beyond charting Pissed Jeans’ position as the Deans of Denim--it places them front and center as one of the best and most ferocious guitar bands out there.

As ever, the music of Rob Mazurek has numerous layers to confront, peel away, and embrace.

It's perhaps not as immediately satisfying as their early work and not nearly as charming as their intimate mid-career efforts, but, after several careful listens, the album feels as powerful and urgent as anything else in their discography.

Picking up where "Z" skidded off, Evil Urges is like a carnival, like life (after all, My Morning Jacket is in cahoots with The Band), like cigarrons, discarded cigarettes dredged from the Cimarron River, and cinnamon sticks in a pot of boiled apples on the stove.

It's clear there's a lot of, well, love on Infinite Love. And it's exciting to share in it.

Trying Hartz works as either an excellent starting point for Danielson or the perfectly paced next step for someone getting acquainted with the work of Daniel Smith and his musical family.

Dude Incredible is every bit as lean as its older siblings when it comes to reverb, overdubbings, FX, and samples.

NMW works as a ‘00s update of British invasion rock and orchestral and baroque pop, just as Jeff Lynne and the boys updated those sounds for the ‘70s.

In a lesser person's hands, this particular analog stew would have turned out to be nothing more than an album of farting robot sounds, but in Prekop's it is a well-conceived piece of musical experimentation. Drastically more daring than previous releases, Old Punch Card shows a radical side to Prekop that is relentlessly inventive.

Anti-Pop Consortium are still vital enough to keep the momentum they lost, in dreadfully untimely fashion, when they inexplicably broke up in 02.

The songs on This Is Another Life are so well written, so finely paced, and so relatable in the sentiments and predicaments they weave together, there’s little justification in chiding the album for not making it patently clear that art alone doesn’t redeem misfortune and anguish.

No Love Deep Web includes some of the group's most accessible material; "Lil Boy" and "Deep Web" are the type of glitch freak-outs over which Lil Ugly Mane acolytes and Crystal Castles fans can come together.

Slowly, quietly, with near-complete calm, Fall Forever edges the listener into that space of total fragility.

It's thrilling to feel all the hooks in this thing; one gets to feeling all Hellraisery, exploding with joy everywhichway.

While Blackstar features a fair amount of indulgence, especially on the aforementioned 10-minute-long title track, it never feels labored, and the music never even once imitates the nightmarish soundscapes of Scott Walker.

What one rarely finds, however, is the synthesis of the sounds brought by such a group's various components into a new form that nonetheless retains their recognizable trademarks. But Channel Pressure is such a beast.

No one wants to see a zombie in the rear-view mirror, and nobody wants music that reeks of old trends, but both have their uses. Bands like Weekend have us looking nervously over our shoulder as we drive recklessly into the future.

Every track on Axes offers something exciting for those who care to listen.

It ensnares the listening consciousness, simultaneously revealing the trap and pacifying the listener.

The ultimate judgment of Going Places ought to be that of a great record that should and will be listened to often.

As an unsettling exercise in pop terrorism, The Horror is a rare treat.

If you like gorgeous folk, then this album is for you. If you don’t, well, The Hold Steady released something not that long ago.

This album has the power to make you feel uncomfortable enough to look away from yourself, which isn’t easy.

After repeat listens, the content of El-P’s more afflictive lyrics begins to fall away so that only the rhythm and timbre of his smoky growl remain to complement the record’s malevolent chorus of synth effects and samples. A beautiful use of negative space, indeed.

Despite the flying dog daydream that inspired the record, Cabral often underlines the more fantastical elements of her work with a deep sense of melancholy.

As good as Hastings’ production is, however, it is Young Fathers’ vocals that make Dead great.

Barter 6 is an obvious, tight application of Thug’s lawless style brought into the space of a linear album, letting his flow drip and collect in horizontal spaces, as opposed to being sharply crafted like in his iconic hits, “Stoner,” “Danny Glover,” and “Lifestyle.”

Kaito could be the best band in the world, but Band Red isn't the best album in the world. What it is, though, is a record that shows just how good this band can be when they get it right, even if that isn't all the time.

Ishi may be a lullaby, calling Ishi’s and Gengras’ friends to rest, but ultimately it imparts a peace to all who oscillate within the flux of the universe.

God Save the Clientele is more of the same for the group’s fans, who will find the record near-faultless.

With only six tracks, Lala Belu shows that being hypnotized is what we secretly want.

It is one of the better EDM records in recent years due to its well-mired quality, and it feels neither trendy nor throwbacky nor settled.

Clue to Kalo may give acts like Postal Service and Her Space Holiday a run for their money.

Rausch is a portrait of nature as the birthplace of modernity, and the birthplace of modernity is here.

If you think you’ve heard songs more successful at melodrama and heavy mood than “Bad Magic” or more successful at the naked, perennial mode of “pure beauty” than “Requiem For Forgiveness,” I want you to forget them, because you are kidding yourself.

If Melnyk’s technique hasn’t changed, he is breaking new conceptual ground.

What makes The Historical Conquests Of... a great album and not just Ritter’s foray into stylistic versatility is the integrity of his musicianship. The album is thorough; it is complete.

While spare in its construction, Copia offers a bounty of emotion for those who give it the chance.

For an album so complex--one that’s simultaneously funny and fearless--it has an uncanny way of simplifying things

Through tackling the repercussions of vocal processing and by demonstrating some of the most profound uses of it, Love Streams gives credence to the act in a way that vilifies the most obscure uses of it, even when the end results yield little more than the evaporated phantoms that we continue to chase in our everyday lives.

In Rebound, Friedberger meets mementos of happier times and opportunities for immediate joy with identical ease. And that is the promise, making her latest album an intriguing open door from an artist who continues to grow in all possible ways.

Far from the naval-gazing, self-conscious banality one might expect from such a young artist, Moondagger is filled with moments of philosophical prowess and intelligence.

Behold both as an artifact and as a word doesn’t invalidate utterance however; rather, it invites unbound reflection.

One doesn’t listen to these songs waiting for these moments; one listens to the album knowing full well that it will consistently wrestle with one’s grip. That’s the contract listeners face, and I’m not surprised some people don’t buy into it, but for those sticking to earth, % is teeming with more rewards and audacious invention than virtually any other debut 2010’s seen so far.

The music won't knock you on your ass, but the overall delivery is a real treat, if you go in for this sort of thing.

On his latest, How the Thing Sings, Orcutt summons from this compromised thing a droning, sputtering blues that is utterly personal, theoretically rigorous, skeptical of tradition, and completely enthralling.

Here’s Yo La Tengo as embracing, alienating, and prolific as ever, with another strong new album, Popular Music.

In Prism’s genius is to service the newbies and true believers in equal measure.

For such a musically potent album, it sometimes lacks something interesting to say.... But make no mistake; this is the most daring, catchy, and dramatic dance music you're going to hear this summer.

The sound of loving is consistent, even as it appears in radically different instances. The mechanism of love song fits all bodies, all modes. It lands on ears, it laps and licks and it does no harm.

What we have on The Jazz Age is music that’s haunting itself.