Pip retains the sizzling electronics and soaring melodies of her first offering, but delivers them like a sultry wrong'un wracked with self doubt, battering drums and attacking every guitar she can lay her hands on.

Morbid one minute, cute the next, finally untangling 'Choreography' is an engrossing pleasure.

'Tiger Talk' allows YB to earn their stripes as purveyors of plush, 70s-inspired powerpop.

If this is bedroom pop, it surely stems from the most cluttered yet colourful bedroom imaginable.

Guitar work comes across as the strongest feature of 'Spooky Action At A Distance' – tricky arpeggios and impeccably crafted feedback combine to create bleary, Kurt-Vile-esque smokescapes.

Refreshingly repetitive. We love you too, Bear In Heaven.

These are songs that flinch as much as they fight, that veer wildly into strange territories but never overindulge and that, essentially, draw all of the best bits from Coxon's weird and wonderful arsenal into one inimitable package.

These are tracks made for the pub, to be bawled to with beating hearts and swollen lungs. Get involved.

It may be a skip away from the processes they know best but, in 'In Time To Voices', Blood Red Shoes find fresh invention.

Provides far more ecstasy than agony.

Their narratives have been stronger before, but 'Noctourniquet' remains abject absurdity masquerading as sexy heroism.

Saxophone solos! Samples that may or may not be from the Sugarhill Gang! The EastEnders theme tune sung in the style of Boyz II Men!

Expansive, orchestral and delicate, its beauty [the band's music] is totally deserving of another round of critical acclaim.

A refreshingly innovative take on the decade [the 80's], and though it occasionally lacks a little heart, 'Interstellar' at least pushes Rose's talents in an impressive and unexpected direction.

Spoek Mathambo's mixture of rapid rhymes and genre-melding combining thrillingly.

[Zoo will piss you off if you think] their Fugaziish formative albums are sacrosanct and that any deviation voids them in the eyes of The Living Christ Our Lord Henry Rollins. Two, you hate loud noises.

'Visions' is a cornucopia of Claire Boucher's most vivid waking dreams. Gripping, then, but also as intangible as the prevailing dread of a forgotten nightmare.

While Dry The River stick resolutely--and somewhat predictably--to their 'start quiet, build to a stomping ending' mantra throughout, Shallow Bed is an uplifting debut.

The Clearing is a subtle, expansive work.

The tenth Magnetic Fields album sees Stephin Merrit returning to both form and familiar territory.

Truly special.

Both bewitching and berserk, Featherbrain keeps its creator comfortably in the shadows.

It's sentimental in places, but it also marks the 24-year-old out as one of the most exciting new producers around.

On NZCA/Lines, he achieves his goal [to make 2012 sexy], slipping from slick pop that transforms the mundane into sheer seductiveness ('Okinawa Channels'), to monastic barbershop harmonies ('AM Travel Approach').

Jamie Stewart's most preposterously tremulous and knuckle-whiteningly transgressive work.

Ghostory is as potent and decadent as School Of Seven Bells have ever been.

There's a nagging sense of melancholy throughout that gives these tracks a compelling and slightly haunting quality.

Fine, intelligent and, at times, thoroughly heart-warming--but you've got to work for it.