This feels fuller, richer than any Chesney album in recent memory, but it's also unhurried and light, an ideal soundtrack for a long, lazy summer.

What's really impressive, though, isn't that the band can do spacious or aggressive or psychedelic, it's that they can somehow find a way to cram it all into one album and make it work without feeling muddled or diminished in any way.

In some ways Silence Yourself doesn't provide the full Savages experience, but it offers more than enough to make it a powerful debut that suggests they'll become an even more distinctive force to be reckoned with over time.

With Richard Formby and the MC himself on production, Ghostpoet remains the most aptly named rapper in the game with his excellent sophomore effort.

The quality of the record is still on par with the first part, so anyone who enjoyed the previous record will certainly find more to love here.

Ultimately, Modern Vampires of the City is more thoughtful than it is dark, balancing its more serious moments with a lighter touch and more confidence than they've shown before.

Clearly disciples of the era of album rock, Wolf People have created a record that works best when taken as a whole piece, and when experienced as such, it creates a unique environment that's cold, cryptic, mysterious, and startlingly direct all at once.

Potter's vision and compositions on The Sirens never lose sight of his goal: portraying the eternal essence of humanity in the mythos of his subject; his poetic lyricism as a soloist, and his empathy as a bandleader are consummate.

Despite a few moments of inconsistency, Fool Metal Jack fares far better than most records from bands returning to form after decades of silence, and in its best moments highlights the brilliance of a group that never lost its unique voice.

For those of you already caught in the band's spider web of eternal summer, this album delivers the goods.

Despite its short 31-minute duration, Four (Acts of Love) is a weighty, thought-provoking, moving experience.

Ultimately, with More Than Just a Dream, Fitz & the Tantrums have made an even more infectious, club-ready album than Pickin' Up the Pieces, while still retaining all of the band's organic soulfulness.

Ultimately, Walking Shadows is a mature, sophisticated album that can stand head to head with the best orchestral jazz albums of any decade.

Buying into Luhrmann's vision is always the issue, but here, the music is crafted enough, inspired enough, and deep enough that it's worth diving into without reservations.

Though it may puzzle initially, its substance is such that it creates a mysterious and compelling listening experience that assures one that more will be revealed.

Cunningly sequenced, The Ways We Separate is exceptionally fluid and tightly bound, made for compulsive listening with no weak links.

Cooper's ability to infuse a very human emotional arc into his wordless sheets of sound is a large part of what's made his body of work so captivating. Electronic webs meet with patient piano moments throughout Nightmare Ending, sometimes casting heavy shadows of fear or pain, other times offering relief from that very pain.

Wasner and Ehrens have made an album that honors their devotion to R&B and dance music in the best way possible, with love, respect, and a bunch of memorable jams.

Even with some of its more unpredictable moments, Silver Wilkinson offers a scenic route through Bibio's music that showcases its depth as well as its breadth.

Bright Sunny South doesn't stray too far from Amidon's previous work, but still suggests his development in its gorgeous production, increasingly deft arrangements, and a general sense of greater confidence and vision throughout the record.

The inevitability implied in The Way Things Fall's title is delivered in its songs: far from sounding like a concession to anyone or anything, its directness makes this one of Adult.'s most confident and satisfying albums.

Taking a step away from their homespun beginnings into something more real could have gone all wrong, but Kids in L.A. proves that Kisses have what it takes to bring their songs and sound out of the bedroom and into the real world.

By the time closing track "Hachiko" comes in with its softly ambient strains, Empty Estate has wandered through various modes, ultimately coming off like a thoroughly pleasant but unexpected long walk on a summer evening, with Tatum stopping for a moment to say hello to all his various different inclinations for a moment before moving on.

13 is a much more natural sounding effort than the group's 2009 EP Black Cocaine.

This shift toward playing to the listener's gut rather than head gives the Dillinger Escape Plan a newfound level of accessibility without diminishing the impact of their punishing sound.

What comes out of him sounds exactly like pure expression, despite the fact that he can sing his behind off as his violin saws, stings, and flutters with considerable grace and force.

Perils from the Sea skillfully bridges the gap between Kozelek's most recent offerings, which favored classical guitar and vocal over full-band arrangements, with the fuller sound of his Red House Painters and early Sun Kil Moon years, resulting in a listening experience that trades in the distant, narrative-driven opaqueness of Admiral Fell Promises and Among the Leaves for a newfound inclusivity that suits both parties.

An unlikely pairing of artists leads here to an uncommon focus, and one gets the feeling that the duo might not be done.

The naked emotion expressed here doesn't exactly make for an easy listening experience, but it's a brave, welcome, and perhaps even necessary one.

It's actually Thomas' gift for indelible melody--the album title-referencing chorus of "Break In," for example--that will keep the listener coming back.

It may have taken Boyer a long time to take flight, but on Clarietta he soars.

Although Cullum got his start during the jazz singer boom of the early 2000s, with Momentum he's proven once again to be a musically eclectic songwriter with more than enough creative speed to keep him going for years to come.

Her partnership with Sigsworth is a fine, even seamless fit, making this consistent, and satisfying, top to bottom.

This stop on the journey is pretty magical.

A headlong dive into the uncomfortable territory where vital art is made, this album takes all of Baths' skills to a new level.

Quite a few people are doing this kind of music in 2013; precious few are doing it this well.

Tales of a GrassWidow may not be as overtly challenging as Grey Oceans, but it offers some of CocoRosie's most focused, accomplished songs yet.

The band's mastery of various styles, moods, and sounds here is impressive, and while it bodes well for future albums, it also means that Hooded Fang have arrived as one of the most exciting indie rock/pop bands around in 2013.

This is an interesting album, one that will reward repeated listening, but one can't help but think that it's a transitional album, and that Dead Confederate are building to something even bigger and more balanced down the road.

Package it all together in an album that's sensibly sized and runs smooth as silk, and the evolving and growing Mount Kimbie remain a keeper.

When producers like Mr. Green, Apathy, and Buckwild come up with fresh, funky ideas, R.A. responds with excellence, and sometimes a J-Zone-sized sense of humor.

Clearly hyper-detailed and considered with the utmost patience, the album still feels spontaneous and more than anything captures a stark honesty that makes every song glow. It's a brilliant return.

These songs also reflect how When Saints Go Machine have expanded and enriched their sound on Infinity Pool even more than Konkylie might have suggested.

Considering the Black Dog's immense volume of output over the previous few years, it's remarkable that the group's attention to detail and uniquely stern sound remains. And yet, for all the output that preceded it, Tranklements isn't merely another Black Dog album.

The 11 songs breeze by quickly, cultivating a mood so generous and warm that listening to the album feels like a friend smiling and waving from across the room at the first party of the summer.

The density of the album might take a while to sink into, but its catchiness will keep the listener returning to try to crack the code.

This isn't a dogged re-creation of the past, the work of an artist concerned with painting within the lines, this is an album of celebration of groovy sounds that is pretty hard to resist.

Considering all the shrewd alliances and its polished attack, Settle seems like it was designed to be 2013's acceptable dance album. That said, any purist who denies its pleasures is a crank.

As the title suggests, it excels at capturing the kind of partly sunny heartbreak that can actually feel pretty good if you give yourself over to it.

If you're a fan of autumnal pop that wears its heart on its sleeve as it shouts its feelings out to anyone who will listen and you're not a fan of these guys, The Greatest Generation is here to realign your priorities for you.

With Selfhood, Sharks have come into their own as a band, one that’s grown past the simple sturm und drang of punk's three-chord limitations and emerged as something even more inspiring.

Even if the album is more comforting than exciting, it's still an enjoyable portrait of Friedberger's artistry: warm, genuine and a little mischievous.

Few songwriters can capture the bleak comedy of loneliness, bitterness, and the sheer helplessness that accompanies aging than Merritt, and he does so here with great aplomb.

The Weapon is the welcome resurrection of that classic Skinny Puppy album, coming just as the band enters its 30th year of existence.

Just as the music on Damage is a sophisticated, fully realized version of the urgent, rambunctious rock Jimmy Eat World played early their career, the lyrics are more sophisticated as well.

Howlin is good enough to make you forget most of the bands they were influenced by too, as it both embraces and somehow transcends the '90s in a flash of sound and vision.

Kveikur isn't the kind of post-rock album that you throw on to listen to as you contemplate the changing of the leaves, but rather an album that explores the differences between the comforts of the day and the anxieties of the night, blending the bright and the brooding to create something bold and beautiful.

Another sublime chapter in this group's recorded legacy.

It is, quite frankly, Isbell's best solo album thus far.

The plethora of unlikely choices adds a depth and tension to the songs, recalling a variety of unique reference points while creating the album's own remarkably strange, remarkably honest statement.

Thanks to their actual growth as artists, it may be their best yet.

With such careful attention to detail, The Eldritch Dark isn't just an homage to the sounds of the past, it's also a gateway to another era in metal history that, with any luck, more bands will go into and explore.

After an impressive debut, Tesseract return with Altered State, a sophomore effort that finds the band expanding its progressive metal sound in a bigger, more ambitious direction.

The guys in Empire of the Sun manage to not only catch the lightning again, but their skill at crafting perfect pop, the depth in their songs, and the emotion their voices transmit make this record better than one might have ever expected. Modern pop doesn't get any better than this.

"Crooked Smile" with special guests TLC is a genuine, mature step in the right direction and will have no trouble reaching vintage age. A handful of other numbers carry that same weight, making Born Sinner a daring step forward for Cole and an exciting attempt at mastering Jay's Blueprint style.

Melt Yourself Down is an exhilarating debut from a group whose members know each other well enough to head into this kind of wild territory with nothing holding them back.

Austra opts for a more balanced and poised version of the sound they set forth on Feel It Break; even though that album's rough edges and raw nerves were a large part of what made it so potent, Olympia feels like the beginning of a more sustainable, and versatile, direction for the band.

It's always fun to see where Smith's muse will take him next, but this kind of simple and true album is where he is at his best.

Remarkably, Turbines makes the right choices at almost every turn, never meandering or spending too much time indulging one idea but instead leaving just enough unsaid to keep drawing the listener back.

Unlike Dali's separate delivery of the two, Yeezus is an extravagant stunt with the high-art packed in, offering an eccentric, audacious, and gripping experience that's vital and truly unlike anything else.

Ultimately, Bounty was made to create mystique and interest, and it still does that even after Iamamiwhoami's secret wasn't one anymore.

Fossils is not only an auspicious debut, but one that lives up to, and at times even exceeds, the promise of its potential.

Despite the fact that this is the fifth album completed in six years, Statik Selektah's Extended Play doesn't seem sloppily thrown together. Instead, it's a dense, imaginative outing that pays tribute to classic East Coast hip-hop lovingly.

Even at their most psychedelic on Golden Age, Grandchildren remain a memorably melodic, utterly listenable band.

All four members of this indie supergroup make Overseas unique, but at its highest heights, the Kadane brothers make the band great.

While Long Enough to Leave may lack some of the punch and energy of previous releases, it shows The Mantles developing their own sound and the record grows more and more powerful with each play.

The high level of songcraft, Saloman's devotion to his sound, and the fierce performances on White Numbers show that anyone who thought maybe the Bevis Frond were past their prime was just dead wrong, and this is a welcome addition to their catalog.

An album that's engrossing and just a little hard to break away from--but in a good way, of course.

Throughout, Tweedy and company give Mavis even more room than on You Are Not Alone. While this isn't as exciting, the grip is instant, hard to break.

If there's a flaw here, it's that there's little change from song to song in pace and approach, but then, this is a duo built around simply hitting the pedal and going, clattering and thundering along, impossible to ignore.

Side-stepping the chart-busting singles of their former labelmates, they have carved their own identity in the rich roots of the country and folk musics that have inspired their debut.

Deceiver of the Gods suggests that Amon Amarth may just now be hitting their stride, as it's an undeniably well-honed set, yet the band manage to flex their muscles well outside of the Draconian stylistic confines of the genre by remaining, like a true Viking horde, prickly, primal, and unstable.

Without a weak song on board, Bosnian Rainbows is a daring, excellent debut that is as compelling as it is ambitious.

The best songs on Fantasy are easily the best in Lightning Dust's catalog because of this winning combination of pushed boundaries and inspired writing.

Those looking for the cleverness of MC Paul Barman and the conceptual weight of Deltron 3030 really ought to give this a listen.

He acknowledges and celebrates musical difference, allows for those tensions to reveal themselves inside his music, and creates a dialogue that uses rhythm and harmony as unifying signifiers in his political language. Brilliant.

An impressive first full-length from an artist equally adept at intricate productions and affecting songwriting, Without Your Love brings all of Greenspan's talents together in a satisfying whole.

Listeners attached to Aguayo's comparatively spindly early-2000s work will hear much of this as cracked chaos, but the level of carefree delight brimming throughout has to be, at the very least, admired.

Names like Just Blaze, Lee Majors, Cardiak, and No Credit supply the beats for this more mature/still flashy release, all of it adding up to Wale's win number three.

At a surface level, the album seems like more of the same kind of offerings found on GB City, but with more styles covered and improved songwriting, the album is a slight step up. His skill set as a singer, vocalist, drummer, guitarist, and bassist is very impressive.

For fans of the members' other groups, Palms' debut is an easy recommendation that will leave listeners enjoying the similarities and getting lost exploring the differences.

American Ride is every bit as strong as Innocent Ones, if not more so.

The interchangeability of the songs and artists is one of the best parts of the hypnotic, detached, and ultimately insular sound.

Time Off contains great songs. It's warm, spacious, sophisticated, and elastic.

In a way, the Black Dahlia Murder have figured out how to create a new sound not by innovation, but invitation, welcoming bits and pieces from all over the metal world to make something exciting and exhilarating.

All told, The Migration is an exciting and surprisingly fun album filled will take listeners on a journey through its soaring heights, provided they're brave enough to handle the thrills.

It's a solid debut for the duo that places them up near the top echelon of their neo-disco contemporaries.

On spirityouall, McFerrin does what he has always done as an artist -- he makes this troubled world shine bright as a diamond.