Bibio's references may already be T-shirts in your bureau, and his dovetailing of crisp guitars, tangling melodies, smart electronic gestures, and resin-hit production values (all evident on the title track) isn't new by any means. But if you can get out from under caring (that is, if you can locate the title lane), you'll feel as liberated as Bibio sounds here — an artist making a mixtape of himself. Folk yes.

Silver Age is the best album Mould has released since his days in Sugar.

At its core, Earthly Delights is the sound of a band digging in so deep, they’ve struck something molten.

Daisy may lack the immediate accessibility of Brand New's previous efforts, but once it grows on you, good luck getting it out of your head.

Johnny Jewel's trademark retro-futuro-electro production sound underpins this 16-track set with a dreamy, after-the-afterparty atmosphere that feels like it could go on all night long.

Everything That Happens is a brilliant addition to a creative partnership that has yielded so much and shouldn’t have taken 27 years to rekindle.

Here, he recruits a cast of producers ranging from the familiar (Dungeon Family compatriots Mr. DJ and Organized Noize) to the surprisingly appropriate (Scott Storch, Lil Jon) to craft a palette of dexterous futurist funk that seems to be a logical successor to the groundwork laid by 2003's Speakerboxxx.

Part of Caveman's appeal, other than having the coolest debut album title in recent memory (a respelling of the moniker of the '80s WWF superstar), is making the complicated simple.

In Preliminaires, the Stooge King has put together a perfect soundtrack for a short, doomy stay in the Hotel Lautréamont.

Exploding Head is less an interpretation of a forgotten sound than a restoration of an abandoned mission. Even if you've heard it all before, you certainly haven't heard the end of it.

Danilova has crafted perhaps the year's most emphatically romantic record--defiant, loyal, indomitable.

The simplicity of the punk-driven songwriting and the bare, urgent honesty of vocalist/guitarist Hutch Harris’ delivery drive home the album’s political points with startling effectiveness.

Without a smidgen of a doubt, See Mystery Lights has egghead-party-album-of-the-year potential. But its value is greater than that.

At times, the album draws more from drum and bass than from UK funky or any other bass music du jour.

New Moon is their most purposeful beast yet.

Four records deep, Pissed Jeans may have trimmed some heaviness, but they open space for discovery.

Thirty-some years in, the Beasties are as sharp, hilarious, funky, and escapist as they've ever been.

On the whole, Forever is downcast, introspective, and melodic.

Johns’s stylistic schizophrenia might set you off here; even his singing on Young Modern changes from cut to cut. Everyone else: dig in--this thing is quite a feast.

Nirvana launch into a 90-minute onslaught of fugly-beautiful grunge-guitar fury.

[It delivers] 55 minutes of pit-in-your-gut tension from two of bass music's foremost masterminds.

Carry on, ye bearded gods.

Even more than on last year’s auspicious digital-only "Exposion," Austin’s White Denim stomp down the fine line between fertile versatility and iffy uncertainty. More often than not on Fits, this works out awesome.

America is a beguiling, remarkable work, a deep, carefully measured, completely idiosyncratic breath released on the dawn of a promising day.

The key is confidence. Moments that would be cringe-inducing if delivered by the less intrepid come across as triumphant.

The Unthanks’ voices are hair-raisingly exquisite in the most sororal of ways.

Halcyon Digest is the perfect LP to spin twice, love unrepentantly, and walk away from. This refreshing tonic (poured from the cash bar of overrated newer bands) is straight from the heart of Mr. Bradford Cox, poet and purveyor of Deerhunter's zen pop psych.

Easy review: three tracks, each between 10 and 29 minutes, every moment electric.