If you'd cooled on the duo for this reason, now is the time to jump back in. Justice have purified their sound on Hyperdrama, largely for the better.

Despite electric amplifiers and a plethora of pedals, BIG|BRAVE have created an album that sounds like it's existed since the dawn of time. Tears will be shed and embraces are encouraged.

On All Born Screaming, Clark sounds more at home than she has in a while, but all planets inevitably die — perhaps the next one she lands on will finally be her own.

It's yet another solid rock record from a reliable group who are very good at this sort of thing.

At its best it's far closer to the sort of comeback album that reminds listeners why they loved the music in the first place, instead of the hollow nostalgia of past glories.

There is unquestionable bravery in the access and vulnerability that sentiment communicates, and the journey into pop music is yet another promising step in rousay's always-morphing development.

Across its 10 songs, Don't Forget Me is as concise as it is exciting. Not a note is wasted, not a second under-utilized. What truly sets it apart is how comfortable Rogers seems embodying her full potential.

The glowering strength of If I don't make it, I love u is in its commitment to both sides of the coin, an album both experimental and laid fully bare — The result is one of the best rock records of the year.

Clocking in at only 35 minutes — though it feels longer, richer — Up on Gravity Hill is a quick glimpse into a more earnest METZ. This doesn't sound like a band experimenting with something new, but rather a group of musicians secure enough in their craft to humbly evolve with increasingly uncertain times.

Whether it's the sing-songy Britpop and jazz on a song like "Out of Options'' or the contemplative soundtrack to a late night walk home on "So Tell Me…," Archives captures intense closeness and isolation, often at the same time in one song.

As disjointed and tense as this sophomore effort may come across, angeltape is a proclamation of artistic and emotional resilience.

With Older, McAlpine enters a new era of her career, armed with bluesy seventh chords and simple rhythms. She's done the work; she's done the soul-searching; she's done the meticulous labour of shaving her thoughts down to their purest, most authentic truths. Consider the ceiling of her last album cycle shattered.

On The Sunset Violent, Mount Kimbie throw things at the wall and see what sticks — those flung with high velocity make the most impact.

A LA SALA is an endlessly rewarding album. There's always something new to be discovered in its haze, a whispered lyric between the layers, a little pebble of meaning waiting to be overturned.

Vampire Weekend have lost the carefree immediacy of some of their best-loved work; there's nothing on Only God as viscerally addictive as "A-Punk" or "This Life," and there's a prog-like complexity to these performances that's geared more toward the head than the heart. But there's also just enough stripped-down beauty — like the balladic "Capricorn," or the swooning brass outro of "The Surfer" — that Only God Was Above Us remains emotional as well as academic.

Love in Constant Spectacle features all of Weaver's strengths and none of her (very few) weaknesses. There's a kind of magical play here that conceals the emotional weight the album continuously heaves skyward, any evidence of the effort smoothed out in the subtitles.

COWBOY CARTER deserves your full attention; its sprawl unsuited for TikTok-sized consumption habits. Clocking in at just under 80 minutes, it takes time to properly digest, a rich 27-course meal that dares one to really let it sit on the tongue.

Occasionally, there are times when you wish Chastity Belt would shed their melancholic coil and get a little louder; interrupt their carefully considered listlessness with an impassioned outburst. But they prefer to simmer in their milieu, aware of the effect that quiet contemplation has in moving their message forward.

Like all of her best work, Akoma is heavy, mysterious and boundless. This is Jlin's world; we're just lucky enough to listen in.

While the songs of Something in the Room She Moves seem to exist in two modes — one buoyant, playful and adventurous, and the other weighty, contemplative and measured — a deeply somatic sense of sound design binds those halves together beautifully.

Lenker’s writing is always in conversations with traditional songwriting modes, but her soft sense of self and fascination with the surreal makes her art compellingly and unmistakably individual.

It's a joy to bask in the glow of one of the world's best producers leaning into his strengths.

Tigers Blood is another tour-de-force: a brawny, brainy, rollicking excursion through Crutchfield’s heartland, revving with the power of a pickup truck.

Simply put, Playing Favorites is their best work yet.

While it loses some of her past work’s joyous electricity, it reveals something truer. This is Whack’s world after all, we’re just lucky enough to live in it.

Moor Mother’s latest album is a tough listen, and might take a bit of research and a few listens to fully situate in its various contexts. This is all to be expected — grappling with terrible moments in history is never a pleasant or easy experience, but Ayewa makes the pain of remembering feel like fuel for the future.

Gordon has managed to create an album that pushes her legacy as an experimental force even further, another piece in a discography that refuses to be categorized. Rather than drift off quietly into the sunset, she might just be making the most interesting music of her career.

It’s fast, furious, funny, sad and above all real.