While filled with warm analog electronics and is borderline ambient, Thomas manages to execute it in a tasteful way.

This is an album loosely forged in all those places where pop, rock, funk and soul congregate and it's hard to imagine it all coming together much better.

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings are back with their fourth album I Learned the Hard Way. It’s another authentic, heart-felt album filled with heartache and daily struggles.

After five full-length albums, Shame, Shame finds Dr. Dog far from having exhausted their creativity, sounding more passionate and frenzied than ever on what is a lasting testament to their showmanship and remarkably consistent songwriting.

Javelin know what they're good at, where they stand, and they aren't trying to shove their knowledge and musical interests in their listeners faces. Instead, they let them find it for themselves by picking up on bits and pieces and carrying them forward, focusing on what interests them without having to worry about what they don't.

Whereas past Wu albums have been scorned for their filler, Meth, Ghost and Rae leave plenty on the chopping block this time around, only allowing the best of the best to make the cut on Wu-Massacre.

So while the music on this disc might not inspire a wave of followers and imitators like his Pixies days, Thompson is clearly having a lot of fun cranking out his latest batch of rock ‘n roll surrealism.

The record is a winning release, if not entirely novel, and the sound of a likable band honing their sound while refusing, somewhat obstinately, to alter it.

It doesn’t always make for a relaxed listen, although it is certainly capable of settling in as a moody background or standing in the forefront captivating rapt ears. The swarms of noise can be both comforting and disconcerting, but each finds a place of its own as this duo continues their run of impressively novel music making.

Simon Green stands with a select group of musicians who have been consistent in both quantity/quality output of this type of introspective music. Bonobo's Black Sands is an album that should not be missed and is undoubtedly one of the most superior releases of this year.

The lyrics are largely uncomplicated musings about disastrous love and lust but the band manages to broaden its musical style without compromising its core identity. A solid next step in the band's evolution and not a bad listen either.

Standing on Top of Utopia is a strong album, but utopia also means “an illusion”–a non-existent place–and sometimes it sounds like too many moods under one cover.

Wolf’s elastic compositions straddle the line between a multitude of genres without making it sound forced. Widely respected as one of the best drummers on the indie scene for years, Josiah Wolf has deftly proven he has the chops to stand on his own.

Distracting at times is Thomas’s voice--he seems to take pride in being purposefully off key--but breezy opener “Girls FM” and later the low key “Eyes Music” calm his shrieking affinity and keep him just where he needs to be; melodic.

Every moment on Broken Bells is necessary. James Mercer and Brian Burton, in this highly personal project, have nurtured a carefully multilayered array of pleasant sound with slow-moving vocals that capture the best of the worlds of both these talented artists.

With a brand new sound, rich production, and a palpable sense of growth, graduation has come, and Kidz in the Hall have officially earned their degree in unadulterated artistry.

A transportive offering in a record full of them--strangely relatable, hauntingly beautiful and in the truest sense, exquisite.

If you are a serious Groove Armada fan you will love it or hate it, I doubt there will be an in between. If you are just a music lover who is really digging the way electro and indie sounds have come into their own in the last few years than this is definitely for you.

But for all the labels and feelings the album conjures and provokes, Fight Softly ends up sounding like a bunch of beats and blips gesticulating wildly instead of a cohesive body of melodies and songs.

There’s an intriguing, never pandering, blend of genres on Be Brave–from soul to blues to modern day indie rock-packaged as Texas blues–making the record a more interesting listen each time around.

From the get-go the album announces itself through insidious emotive aural effects, which through a blistering barrage of time-travel sounds, encompass the listener in a feeling that although intense, evaporates rather instantly.

While it’s commendable, if unnecessary, that Whitney and Votolato are exploring new musical areas, there’s no denying the fact that if Take Me to the Sea ever ran into Hologram Jams in a dark alley, Hologram would be down for the count.

With Similes, he has re-grounded himself using surprisingly un-ambient means: plaintive vocal turns, steady human percussion, traditional and discernible instrumentation

Even though the “fast forward button” will be needed here and there, The Stimulus Package is still a solid release that is easily the top hip-hop release so far this year.

Don’t be expecting any Texas harsh, desert-crusted psychedelia–this is more fields and forest music, lush electronica crafted with some awesome, mutant pop songwriting.

Mathematics’ more traditional drumwork keeps this distinct from a RZA production and provides a surprisingly snappy cohesion to the whole affair.

While it almost goes without staying that every band’s aspiration is to ingeniously pique the interest of their listeners by reinventing old elements and coupling them with new and creative tones, it seems this record’s goal is not necessarily to go without saying, but say it all in the fewest possible breaths.

A band/sound that could easily have been a flash in the synth-pop revival pan has actually proven itself worthy of revisit , over and over again.