A well-considered and promising debut album, one that knows just when to stop and breathe before breaking another sweat.

It's this combination of shadowy unknowability and full-hearted melody that makes Pull My Hair Back such an intriguing listen, and certainly one of the year's best debuts.

For a jingle writer whose album is almost relentlessly upbeat, his music can cut surprisingly close to the bone.

Copeland is an accomplished collage artist adept at combining the highbrow and the trashy, but when the individual bits are laid out on their own they can seem a bit throwaway.

Loud City Song is her most broadly scoped and epic album to date.

Black Jazz Records is a label worth knowing. As far as introductions go, you could do worse than a tribute mix by Theo Parrish.

What Barnes has done here is give us a full tour of a hidden place he only let us peek at before, a place that's even more breathtaking than Dagger Paths made it out to be.

Ikonika has delivered one of 2013's definitive summer albums. It's time to get happy.

This is a perfectly fine debut, but probably nothing compared to seeing them live.

Surely Saginaw's most confident work yet, No Better Time Than Now shows a young artist maturing with the grace of a seasoned musician.

Blue Gardens is another milestone in a banner year for one of the UK's most consistently exciting labels.

These might not be Martin's most envelope-pushing beats, but it's hard to think about that when the walls are violently shaking.

That feeling of organic growth and decay is, definitively, what makes Blondes unique--everything is in its right place, but instead of processed-to-death perfection, it just feels natural.

Slow Focus is more often than not an Olympic-standard piece of work.

Where Moderat sounded at times tentative and disjointed, II is in every regard a better and more well-rounded record. If there were no third Moderat album, this would stand as a definitive statement.

It's peaceful and distantly serene, but with flickers of dissonance rubbing away at the edges. Those contrasting textures are part of what makes The Inheritors perhaps the year's most revealing and intriguing album yet.

Serious and focused but also enormously fun, it represents the late flowering of a distinctive, accomplished talent.

You're drawn in by a minimalist master at work.

Standing alongside DeGraw's contribution as an EP standout, Teengirl Fantasy offer an all too brief remix of "Monkey Riches" that takes in analogue house, indie thrash and dreamy Machinedrum-style juke.

His fans might find this fascinating. For anyone else, there are better entry points into Jonson's catalogue.

You may not always know what's going on or why, but that hardly matters when it's such a joyous whirl.

In many ways Ghost Systems Rave is as bumpy and nerve-jangling as a joyride in a stolen Ford Fiesta. Whether that's your idea of fun or not, no one could ever claim it's clean and healthy.

Coles has a way of making her tracks sound massive and intimate at the same time, using reverb in a way that evokes both the expanse of an arena and the introspection of a bedroom.... Comfort has enough of these moments to remind us of her casual brilliance, but not enough to make it the complete knockout it could be.

For Years feels like the natural conclusion to the quest he quietly started back in 2010.

Waverly is constant and consistent in its crossing between a less exotic Dead Can Dance and a more lo-fi Fever Ray, which is certainly a captivating enough blend for a debut album.

The end result sounds like a shameful karaoke. Nonetheless, fans of Miss Kittin should still give Calling From The Stars a go, as it remains her most accomplished solo release to date.

For an artist so intent on self-mythologizing--with his grand pronouncements, rare interviews and mask-wearing anonymity--With Love feels like a surprisingly comprehensive piece of work. But it's still a rambling outpouring of quick-fire songs.

As nice and welcoming as Getting Closer is, it'll never challenge you.