While the band's involvement, particularly more active drums, help the sound lean forward, Frankie Cosmos' essential musical qualities remain: hooky melodies, a disarming lyrical style, and impressive efficiency (Vessel's 18 tracks clock in at 33 minutes).

With a genuine sense of melancholy that is far beyond their young years, the Söderbergs have taken the mild success of their sophomore record, Lion's Roar, in their stride, and with the expert hand of Bright Eyes' Mike Mogis once again producing, the lush harmonies and melodies of this album show that they are worthy of a place in the mainstream.

Free for All is a fascinating, innovative record that provides a fresh perspective on trap and other contemporary hip-hop styles.

Goodbye Bread sounds more like a "real album" than anything Ty Segall has done to date, but not so much so that it robs him of the loose-limbed soul that makes him memorable.

Apart from the wonderfully elastic, surprising “Us," it doesn't offer anything striking or resonant.

Credit much of the album's dusky allure to the atmospheric production of John Parish, which lends a shadowy beauty, revealing new layers of subtlety lurking underneath the band's ragged guitar-pop approach; the focal point is still Van Dijk's searing vocals, which harness the extremes of both pride and desperation to devastating effect.

A wonderful balance of beautiful indie rock and subtle country.

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.

By turns breathtakingly radiant and heartbreakingly melancholy... the record is both comforting and challenging, its placid surfaces masking poignant meditations on resignation, dislocation, and loss.

Wedding might not be Oneida's most way-out album, but it's as satisfyingly restless as anything in their catalog.

Drab Majesty have crafted an album that works on its own merits, with songs that you may want to revisit just as much as your favorite vintage post-punk classic track. There's also a nice emotional arc and flow to the album that speaks to the band's theatrical nature as they recontextualize a kohl-eyed '80s goth aesthetic for the next doom generation.

By incorporating these offhand allusions to the past while being firmly planted in a mature present, Modern Nature showcases a band whose members are aware of where they've been and grateful for what they have.

The album feels like getting to really know someone: at first, it's polite and a little restrained, but then its real personality, with all of its charming idiosyncrasies, finally reveals itself.

There is a Hell finds Bring Me the Horizon at the top of their game, and its lack of over indulgent production makes it an album that'll not only please fans of the band, but may surprise fans of bands like Converge who are interested in seeing what the kids are up to these days.

It's ambient music at its absolute best, providing a space that the listener can be enveloped in completely just as easily as they can drift away from it without noticing.

With Crutchfield as forthright as ever and collaborators suited to drive home her position, Out in the Storm hits with as much strength as emotion.

No Age's brief moment of near-mainstream notoriety may have passed by the time Everything in Between was released, but their growth as recording artists was progressing nicely and the album stands alongside Nouns as two of the finest noise rock/pop albums of the new millennium.

Foxygen has made something that reaches out for so many possibilities it ends up reverting inward, ultimately sounding insular, like a highway of endlessly firing synapses in someone elses' brain.

Throughout the solid set of songs, Fitchuck and Tashian prove a tasteful fit for the duo, reinforcing and embellishing the sisters' languid technique but also staying out of their way.

Reflektor is as fascinating as it is frustrating, an oddly compelling miasma of big pop moments and empty sonic vistas that offers up a (full-size) snapshot of a band at its commerical peak, trying to establish eye contact from atop a mountain.

The result is a masterpiece, and a master class in what songwriting is really all about. Songs.

It's a flat-out joy.

Where her previous album was ethereal and ephemeral, IRM is exciting and eclectic.

C'mon, while well short of sunny, is an album devoted to the search for answers amidst the darkness, and it's a powerful, deeply moving work from a truly singular band.

Layered viewpoints, bittersweet situations, and complicated anger flow out of this articulate effort, but the sweet trick of the album is how approachable it is, living up to its title with equal shares of Mourning and Dreaming.

Warmer Corners is like most Lucksmiths records; it's meant to be swallowed whole, and in an age of singles with albums attached to them, it's both refreshing and nostalgic at the same time.

Their voices are strong and clean (maybe too clean) and the parts are played well enough, but when you remove the punk from pop-punk, the attitude goes with it and you'd better be sure that the material underneath is something of greater interest than these largely forgettable acoustic emo ramblings.

Revival ranks among their best work and is definitely their most contemporary effort in tone.