For all the hype and controversy Kneecap has received, it feels like the group is simply getting back to basics and doing what they do best on Fenian, resulting in their most accomplished effort to date.

Weller at the BBC (Vol. 2) is a dense digest of this particular category of his art form, and he shines throughout all of it.

As Miss Grit confronts and conceals their heartache on Under My Umbrella, they continue to unite high-concept ambition and pop immediacy in fascinating ways.

The driving "Alone with You" might seem seductive and romantic, but it's about much more than just physical pleasure, as dal Forno sings about building a future with a partner and "lock[ing] away bad memories together." The dreamy, lo-fi "Gave You Up" is particularly entrancing, with dal Forno's sighing vocals meshing perfectly with the hypnotic guitar strums. Throughout the album, instrumental tunes act as curious segues between moods.

Lyrically and vocally, Kehlani exudes more warmth here than ever, and the album's additional echoes of '90s/2000s contemporary R&B is enhanced with the featured artists.

While it may be enough for most people to look for a best-of compilation, there are many delights to be found on this set.

Produced by the aforementioned Johnny Wilson, Live Forever is full of warm and gritty textures and includes just enough crowd noise to transport listeners without competing with the music.

Mostly playful in tone despite its timely, often serious topics, Long Wave Home makes for another strong entry in Hoop's catalog.

Loose yet consistently engaging, i sure am getting sick of this bowling alley is the work of a band in its element.

Decades into Melanie C's storied career, Sweat is one of her best.

Look for Your Mind! is a relatively more romping set of Lemon Twigs songs, but the performances remain airtight and the song construction is as intricate and involved as any of their previous work, keeping them one of the most intelligent and infallible bands making power pop in the 2020s.

It’s another album of subtlety and intriguing songwriting choices from Cola, not reinventing their sound by any means, but bringing in new ideas that keep things engaging and confounding in equal measure.

Much more than just more of the same, Badges is a step forward for the group. Sounding more confident and comfortable, it's clear that they've gotten over the shock of being together again and have settled into being the kind of thoughtful and dramatic indie pop group one always hoped they would be.

Often riveting and never boring, and with credit to the band's charismatic leader, the album makes for an exciting and noteworthy debut.

Hope!! may be bursting at the seams, but its communal power is also life-giving.

Lavender Networks almost feels like a successor to Aphex Twin's Come to Daddy because of the way it juxtaposes surreal aggression with a softer, more sensitive side.

At the time of American Stories' release, striving for harmony was a rare thing. It's still a noble goal, and on these songs, Rostam achieves it beautifully.

It's brimming with invention and exploration offered with generosity and creative openness.

Bitches Blues is the sound of a band experimenting with and developing a language distinctly their own; it is at once physical, fluid, wildly creative, and deftly spacious, revealing a striking 21st century approach to the guitar/keyboard/drum trio.

OOIOO and Lightning Bolt both make adventurous, awe-inspiring music, and their split LP feels like a triumph for both acts.

It's another triumph, albeit a low key one, for one of the best bands of their era.

Their music is soothing, rustic, lonesome, and ethereal all at once.

The ever-present -- and ever-changing -- blend of grief and joy within Bleachers' music is always heartfelt, but it's rarely sounded as rousingly real as it does on Everyone for Ten Minutes.

Gravity Freeze may lack some of the unhinged excitement of previous albums, but the depth and feeling they put on display is impressive and makes the album a detour well worth taking.

Kramer and Moore interact with each other's fiery and ungovernable sounds effortlessly, often finding anger and peace within the same tune. They craft an atmosphere that stays in this tenuous balance for the entirety of the album, acknowledging suffering and universal loss while always keeping the hope for something better as a guiding light.

The Joy of Sing-Sing is a divine first album -- fans will undoubtedly be delighted.

There's an innocence that's like slow dancing at twilight that sets Night On My Side apart from all the rest.

What makes it great is excellent producer and guest rapper choices, a tight track list with nearly perfect flow, and the fresh G-Unit meets crunk and Lil Jon sound that dominates the album.

Merritt's kitchen produces pop confections that can rot teeth, but the bitter aftertaste owes more to Randy Newman than it does Belle & Sebastian.

There's almost nothing in the way of guitar heroics and it's far from groundbreaking, but fans of darkly personal skewed pop should enjoy Will to Death.

Like Richard Buckner, Zedek holds the amazing capacity to make the saddest stuff compelling, even heartening.

Palookaville could stand one more trimming pass, but it gives Cook's canon the needed depth.

Stone Roses fans who haven't tracked Brown's musical progress after that band's breakup will find much to love on Solarized, another mini-masterpiece that perfectly balances mood and melody.

Final Straw is another strong slab of emotion and invigorating energy from a solid band that mixes its influences into an always heady sonic libation.

Driving music with an edge that you can get lost in.

If you're looking for some red-hot rockabilly, the Rev is still your man, but Revival shows off some unexpected sides of his personality, and the changeup makes for some refreshing listening.

As distinctive as the band's sound is, it's not particularly varied, and two-thirds of the way through the album things may start to drag a little for those who aren't deeply indoctrinated in the ways of the Polyphonic Spree.

It doesn't scale the heights of either of their main projects, but it's far more consistent and enjoyable than might be expected.

As easy as the disc is to slide into, it's far and away the least commercial R&B release of the year.

Get Away From Me is an exciting debut that could become a cult favorite among pissed-off girl-women of McKay's age; if she can focus her creative energy without sacrificing any of the bite of her debut, she'll become an even more impressive talent.

This record isn't about progressing or regressing, and one hesitates to refer to such a strong, enjoyable listen as a holding pattern.

Like a less electronic version of the Postal Service, on The Trial of the Century the band invokes nostalgia for that decade but puts it in a different context.

Despite some slightly draggy moments, On My Way is still another solid effort.

The just fair pop tracks keep it from being classic, but this is the best the talented team has sounded on record yet.

If label executives of 1982 were brought to the present day, they'd hear at least six singles here.

Although some of the tracks seem like replicas of their previous album and Dykes' voice sometimes falls flat, The Cover Up makes up for that with the attitude that non-stop dance music can save the day.

He's skilled and inventive with his work as a musician, but the aches and pains of songs like "Swinging Man" and "God's Lonely People" fall short of what Malin delivered on The Fine Art of Self-Destruction.

And while the album is still more focused and a much-needed improvement over 2002's Round Room and their finest since Billy Breathes, Undermind is essentially the sound of four musicians growing tired of the limits they've imposed on one another after decades of albums and touring.

Little Heart's Ease does deliver more of the dark but oddly jaunty songwriting that made Royal City's previous album noteworthy.

Of course, if you really care for Topley-Bird, you're going to want the full-length U.K. album. But if you just want a great album, Anything will not disappoint.

Stringfellow has concocted a frustratingly obtuse record that's as beautiful and bold as it is shapeless and erratic.

There are times when One Plus One Is One is simply too much, and the fresh spin that Gough brought to the British singer/songwriter tradition in his earlier work is missed, but he's still a fine addition to it.

Owing to its themes, Fuckin A is a shade or two less exuberant than More Parts Per Million, but it's no less passionate or energetic.

They've sounded stuck and overconfident before, but this old-school-styled, true hip-hop album finds the Mobb hungry again.

An engaging and passionate collection of songs from a man who has never failed to sing directly from his heart.

Even though Half Smiles of the Decomposed sounds great, the band plays with impressive skill, and it represents one of Pollard's most successful attempts to balance his low-fi musical impulses against the demands of proper record production, it lacks the ineffable fire and energy that has always set their best work apart.

Menomena clearly thinks of itself as a clever bunch of musicians. Maybe next time around they'll be more interested in sharing their wit with their listeners rather than just alluding to it.

While siblings Morgan and Mercedes Lander's songwriting has improved since 2001's Oracle, there's still an air of mediocrity to later tracks like "Loveless" and "Burning Bridges" that shows an adherence to formulaic modern metal clichés, and a lack of confidence on some of the vocal takes that makes some of the songs sound like demos.

Jean Grae continues to improve in every respect, but the negative aspect is that too many of the beats bleed into one another.

A parade of digital R&B jams that skillfully navigate the divide between cutting-edge headphone productions and bumping club tracks.

A really good record by a potentially great rock & roll band.

A restrained lamentation, a controlled elegiac mediation on the death of a loved one.

That Rilo Kiley jump around so much stylistically could slow down More Adventurous' heat-seeker status.

There's a newfound sense of poignancy that overrides much of Mississauga's patchwork nihilism.

A worthy and wonderfully engaging testament to Robinson's creative evolution.

Morrison is challenging expectations and listeners by stretching his musical boundaries and defying people to come along for the ride through close listening.

While most would classify this record under "folktronica," Memphis don't attempt to strip down the clicks and plucks. Instead, they go for the big pop sound of Burt Bacharach and George Martin to make something almost as ambitious as hiring a real horn section.

Love Songs for Patriots isn't an American Music Club masterpiece in the manner of Everclear or Mercury, but it's certainly a stronger and more coherent effort than the group's last set.

Even if The Concretes is slightly disappointing in some aspects, it also has more than enough charms in its own right.

Even if it's not quite as strong a debut album as Pink Grease's prior work suggested it might be, This Is for Real really does have a lot of hedonistic, cleverly mindless kicks to offer.

At no point are they longwinded, and they keep the variations on their sound rolling throughout the closing track.

Kiss & Tell comes off a bit contrived and lackluster in the beginning, but after a few spins you'll grasp (and thirst) for its sonic goodness.

LL offers up "you rap for the thugs/I rap for the ladies" on the album, but there's some tough, near-"Mama Said Knock You Out"'s here, and from any hardcore thug's point of view, he's getting better at splitting the difference.

The Hunger for More is another solid release from the crew and is a couple steps down from 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' and a step above G-Unit's Beg for Mercy.

Seems oddly lacking in passion.

What the album lacks in ambition and social commentary it makes up for with deep soul.

Couture, Couture, Couture is an uneven album, but it does tend to wear better than some other albums by '80s-inspired bands.

Although the uniformly sweet pop songs on Kicking the National Habit sound influenced by the likes of the Police, Men at Work, Duran Duran, and the rest of the more commercial side of the early MTV era, the arrangements are more electronic in nature.

Real Gone is another provocative moment for Waits, one that has problems, but then, all his records do.

While not a terrific album, the good often outweighs the occasional filler.

Camper Van Beethoven have pulled off the difficult trick of not only reuniting, but picking up exactly where they had left off.

The Runaway Found is an incredibly focused first album, giving evidence of how serious the Veils are about composing a stylish, quality sound.

Too much roam and wander for some, but Doom-heads looking for the perfect downer couldn't ask for much more.

Ray Ray occasionally loses focus, slipping into moments that are either undercooked or worthy of the cutting room, but it's enjoyable enough to keep his followers happy and will certainly act as a remedy for those who don't like the gold-bricked path being taken by mainstream R&B.

Summer in Abaddon is an album of small, but hardly insignificant pleasures, and it may be Pinback's finest work yet.

Without a concept to tout, The Grind Date doesn't gel like AOI: Bionix, but it does show De La Soul keeping everything together more than 15 years after their debut.

Earle's polemics are much stronger than the work of your typical "protest" songwriter, and this is a better focused and more passionate work than Jerusalem.

It's their seamless and agreeable blend of rock & roll, country, and Roky Erickson-style psychedelia, matched with a keen lyrical wit, that makes them fascinating to both sides of the pond.

A dazzling debut.

It's not perfect, and it's often affected, but it winds up being endearing because of her earnestness.

It's not a perfect album -- it's far too indulgent for that -- and would have been stronger as a single disc, but its ambitious sprawl makes for a powerful statement that Nas disciples will surely savor.

For all their well-crafted ambition on Chronicles, "I Just Wanna Live" feels like Good Charlotte's centerpiece, since it's spiked with rock power, but gets its soul from the pop life they lead.

To the band's credit, the weaker songs aren't necessarily eating space for no reason -- their B-material here is more affecting than the average indie band's A-material. The problem is that, during those lesser moments, the band shows signs of attempting to cannibalize Turn on the Bright Lights' magnetic sulking, and their hearts don't seem to be as in it.

Smart, subtly subversive, and always catchy - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Knopfler fans and lovers of Chet Atkins, Gordon Lightfoot, and J.J. Cale, as well as late-night poker players and early risers with an acerbic streak, will find much to love here.

The shift to a more dynamically rich sound suits Simple Plan just fine.

Where You Want to Be is definitely a solid album -- especially considering that it was recorded so soon after half the band was replaced -- but crafting something a little more unique would take Taking Back Sunday's music that much farther.

Worlds Apart might be a noble failure, but it would probably be worse if it just revisited previous successes.