His latest is a stunner of a record, with songs that are stark in their simplicity, yet emotionally rich in a way that can catch your breath in your throat or leave your eyes suddenly damp.

It’s a smoother ride than Delaware, for better or for worse, but not without edges. Drop Nineteens have not lost all of their style; if anything, they’ve gained some finesse. It was never supposed to happen, but we should be glad that it has.

For the most part, bar italia have nonchalantly leveled up on The Twits. The noisy songs are louder, the edginess is more precise and, when bar italia tone down the bite, genuine creativity bubbles from the calm.

Pound for pound, Stern’s latest offering is as urgent and electrifying as anything she’s managed in the 16 years since her disarming debut.

Anderson brings along his DIY community for the ride. It’s that bedrock that makes Cartwheel such an expressive and foundational album. And one that’s not just a triumph for Anderson and Hotline TNT, but for shoegaze itself.

1989 (Taylor’s Version) is a sparkling ode from an artist in her prime to an album that played a significant role in paving her way there.

The masterful Spike Field, isn’t just interested in mere questions: It aspires to tear apart time, inspect each shorn fabric and sew up each of its distant stretches to create a new, shimmering collage of the future-past. Within its intricately textured synth patterns, off-tune piano lines and yearning mezzo-soprano are tellings of intimate histories.

The tone on History Books is less frenetic and more reflective. It’s the work of a band that has arguably outgrown the fiery intensity of youth without losing the passion that made the Gaslight Anthem so compelling in the first place.

One of this record’s biggest achievements might be building out the character of Jenny while managing to not sacrifice her central mystery.

The fact that Hackney Diamonds is this damn good further proves that even the bands who’ve given every bit of themselves to the music still have more left to give.

The result is an unspooled revelation, a supplicant’s distorted glee—a celebration which Hayter leaves pointedly open-ended.

While how i’m feeling now is by no means Charli’s most genre-pushing work, nor an indication of the creative potential she has left, it will be remembered as a quintessential 2020 album—not just because of its unique recording constraints, but because of the passion, authenticity and work ethic interwoven in every fuzzy beat and every sprightly, lovelorn lilt of Charli’s most intimate vocal work to date.

Lahai is a transformative album that explores themes like afrofuturism and magical realism across 14 tracks that span a multitude of genres, including soul, rap, jazz, dance, jungle and West African music. And it’s a record that’s as intimate as it is imaginative.

Even with the three original albums alone, Joni Mitchell has left us with such a profound legacy that it didn’t seem possible for anything to come along and reveal more depth to her art. Against all odds, Archives, Vol. 3 does just that and more.

It’s clearly a liberating piece of work, and Humberstone’s honesty and alluring delivery is bound to resonate with listeners near and far.

Her third album, Tomorrow’s Fire, is her best work. Leaning in harder than ever to rock music, the roiling catharsis so often found in Williams’ vocal performance now bleeds into the production. Tomorrow’s Fire is lean, clocking in at 34 minutes across 10 tracks, but Williams doesn’t waste a second of it

This lush, lustful record contains some of Sivan’s most adventurous work to date, with its global influences and club-ready beats vividly evoking the catharsis of being in touch with yourself and your community.

I Killed Your Dog dazzles with its musicality, but its emotion is what takes it to the next level.

At its peaks, it is capacious, melancholy and beautifully indicative of the human desire for connection and meaning. It is also, at times, simpering and molasses-y, when Savage has proven he knows how to succeed without shackling himself to those tropes. When it burns low, its ashes are suffocating—but when it flares, it blazes high.

Fans may feel it’s more of a long slog than they remember, with the slower tempo stretching many of the songs beyond their natural length, and the spoken word passages lending a languorous quality that may induce drowsiness.

Despite his quiet voice and instrumentation, his music refuses to recede into the background. It commands your attention in every conceivable way.

Whether Creevy’s eking out an epiphany or bent on her own destruction, I Don’t Want You Anymore successfully embodies the private suffering that precedes any semblance of healing.

Many of the genre’s most popular songs right now resemble its past more than its future (or at least what one would hope constitutes its future). The music of Rustin’ In The Rain is an exception—and best of all, there’s space in its world for all of us.

The unconcealed emotion gushing out of Again is stupefying. Where Oneohtrix Point Never takes these sounds may challenge the senses, but the feelings Lopatin is drawing forward are all too familiar.

Album closer “Meant to Be” is maybe the best song on the album. It’s uptempo, for one thing, with electric guitars that circle and soar above a bed of synthesizers and a propulsive beat that help Tweedy’s melody take flight. It’s a reminder of how good Wilco can be at their best, even if that’s a standard the band doesn’t always reach on Cousin.

Yard reveals the band’s versatility—confirming that the band has extensive new sonic avenues to explore in depth moving forward. The album is already a delicious feast but, after this achievement, one can’t help but wonder what the band will try next.

Especially as it enters the moody second half, the album begins to mirror what M83 did in 2016 with Junk, leaning so hard into the cheese and schmaltz of late-‘80s muzak that it almost verges on fetishistic parody. But Palomo’s sun-soaked, salt-rimmed, neon-tinged world has such an immersive, hypnotic pull that its more derivative tendencies don’t really matter. World of Hassle oozes so much personality that a two-hour vaporwave YouTube video could never replicate.

Tension is strong proof that Kylie Minogue in 2023 is more than just “Padam Padam,” but it’s also a relatively uncomplicated message from the international superstar. It delivers what she does best: a campaign speech on behalf of pleasure and its pursuit, with an electro-pop shine that delivers dopamine hit after dopamine hit.