Tones of Town finds Field Music... hurling themselves into an abyss of pastoral abstraction with a wholeheartedness that is utterly thrilling.

As wonderful as it is unexpected, Dirt Farmer is a strong candidate for comeback of the year.

With bands like Vampire Weekend so keen on appropriating the polyrhythmic thunder of their African peers, it's only fitting that these childhood friends should often sound like art rock sensations from Brooklyn.

This, their fourth album, feels like a breakthrough, more polished and poised to build on cult 2006 single 'Lloyd, Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?'

With this second album cementing the union between Mariam Wallentin's impassioned gut-bucket vocals and Andreas Werliin's busy percussion, they are on their way to becoming the White Stripes in reverse.

The good news is that the ninth album from these inveterate melancholics is a burnished pleasure.

Certainly Levi's mannered vocal style, with its brittle helium edge, requires a bit of commitment from the listener. Immerse yourself in Black Magick Party's world, though, and you will become hopelessly attached.

It is also a sound that on this, their fifth album, seems as resistant to change as the forces of nature and while seemingly limited in palette, is as expansive as it is inventive.

Rhys has made both his wildest and most accessible record to date.

Nothing Harvey has done in the past, however, can prepare you for her eighth album, White Chalk, whose cover is as singular as the tunes therein.

Spun-out psychedelia, world-weary Appalachian bluegrass and soulful blues make up his first solo album, proving that in the right hands, nostalgia can become a delicate, authentic rediscovery rather than the clunky retread that so many settle for.

A singularly rousing gem.

The tumescent, endlessly inventive songs are seldom less than exquisitely performed.

Bleak and evocative.

Trouble is, save for the soft bits being softer and the hard bits being harder, it's practically a replica of its predecessors.

The result splendidly combines piety with celebration and musical tradition with creative boldness.

It's more jaunty nouveau Traveling Wilburys than folk rock summit as Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, My Morning Jacket's Jim James and M Ward join forces.

Hudson Mohawke, whose debut album contrives to be both idiosyncratic and soulful. The spirits of OutKast and Prince loom large, and, along with most of the albums here, it crackles with imagination.

Once it hits its stride, it just keeps on getting better.

Somehow, though, it soars, the title track especially.

Confessions... is vocally sharp and (at times) lyrically breathtaking, but it is difficult to imagine this album working without Price's involvement.

This album will make your life considerably better.

Every track contains something to surprise and delight.

Anyone familiar with Boden's usual extrovert singing will be amazed by his restraint and, despite outbursts of percussive grunge, the arrangements are primarily gentle and acoustic.

The Dears sound like a band who have finessed their vision and are ready, finally, to take on the world.

The 24-year-old's debut is a tropical soundclash of spiralling steel drums, looped, gnarled local songs and untrammelled joy.

It sounds exactly like a Dinosaur Jr album should.