Though it comes a decade after the last entry to Dirty Three's ongoing story, Love Changes Everything picks up, as each new chapter of the group's story does, as if no time has passed at all, and the trio keeps flowing naturally forward.

Sinister Grift is a significant chapter in the Panda Bear story if only for how it finds Lennox shedding some of the stubborn uneasiness that’s so long been part of his music. While still mainly the product of a solitary mind, the album is perhaps the least lonely Panda Bear has sounded to date.

With almost tangible textures and a striking mood of isolation and singularity, Fever Ray is a truly strange but riveting album.

This is vibrant, moody music that showcases a band growing ever stronger with each risk and dare they take.

With Contra, Vampire Weekend make Auto-Tune and real live guitars, Mexican drinks, Jamaican riffs and Upper West Side strings belong together, and this exciting lack of boundaries offers more possibilities than anyone could have expected.

Get Behind Me Satan may confuse and even push away some White Stripes fans, but the more the band pushes itself, the better.

While it's not quite the revelation that That's Not What I Heard was, Movement is still a dramatic album that shows that the Gossip is a powerful group continuing to define and redefine their music.

23rd Street Lullaby is a wise, grown-up record, yet it is guided by an untamed, wily heart.

Listening to the record makes you feel like it was 1993 again, in a good way. In a melodic, honest and jangly kind of way. In a way that makes you think "nobody makes records like this anymore".

Flow demonstrates that industrial music remains potent and vital in the early 2000s, and that one of its greatest pioneers is still one of its greatest innovators.

The best album of the year in the hip-hop underground.

Admirably random samples dug up from underground sources like '70s Italian prog-rockers Goblin, combined with a reckless abandon and an adherence to melodic hooks, makes Cross one of the most interesting electro-crossovers since Ratatat, and the guys in Justice do an excellent job building on Daft Punk's innovative foundation.

You might not trust Thee Oh Sees to give you a ride home after a gig, but if you're looking for a seriously buzzy rave-up, Help certainly delivers the goods.

One of Hart's sharpest decisions is to keep everything short--17 songs over the course of 45 minutes, which if not quite Ramones level is still pretty brisk--while ensuring each piece has its own individual character.

The slocore tag Picastro received early on in some corners has a vague relevance, but on a song like "Pig & Sucker," the sense of compelling, unsettled strangeness is much greater than most bands could pull off.

It's when they stomp their feet on that middle ground that their eponymous debut kicks up the most sand, and with a little more nuance, their future endeavors could leave some pretty hefty footprints.

Each of the the album's ten tracks is naked, open, and bleeding, yet rousing at the same time. The lyrics don't hide behind Stern's infectious, blast-and-burn 21st century rock; they are buoyed by them.

Last is not the sort of music you'll want to play at a party on a Friday night, but if you're looking for the proper accompaniment as you ponder life's twists and turns on a rainy Sunday afternoon, the Unthanks will give you all the deeply shaded wisdom you could use.

The Coldest Winter for a Hundred Years may not be the most cheerful record you'll hear all year, but it's one which proves that a curmudgeonly middle age demeanor isn't a barrier to producing triumphant indie pop.

Anyone open-minded enough to approach the project without any expectations will be quickly swept off into the spacious perennial twilight created by these two master craftsmen.

Here, he has crafted them into something startlingly new, although that '70s spirit of pimp-hand-up-top, bell-bottoms-down-below is intact the whole way.

It's part punk, part grunge, part riot grrrl, all slamming together in the mosh pit and exploding into a fist-pumping fury you won't soon want to forget.

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.

Undefeated is a revealing set of songs that spins gold from life's big and little ups and downs.

Last Dance is a necessary addendum to Jasmine; it fleshes out the confident, mature, amiable, and eloquent speech in the canonical language these two jazz masters share.

Manipulator is a reminder that Ty Segall knows his rock & roll, but he knows a lot more than just that, and this '70s-inspired madness results in one of Segall's best and most pleasurable efforts to date.

Devilish and delicious, the album can be precious to a fault, as following all the Queen-sized arrangements and all the Adam Lambert-esque sass isn't an everyday thing for most.

What sets Romano apart is the natural, ineffable blue mood of his sad songs, which hit the heart dead-on without ever sounding forced, as well as his impressive studio techniques, all of which are on display on Romano's fourth solo album, 2015's If I've Only One Time Askin'.