Barwick has always celebrated the sheer beauty of voices joining together and likely always will, but she's never done it exactly the same way twice. With Healing Is a Miracle, she once again manages to evolve and remain true to what has made her music special since the beginning.

Bemis and Conley may wield the most power here, but Two Tongues debut is a collaborative effort through and through, with the band taking measures to prove its debt to past traditions and present friends.

Proud to Be Here adds to Adkins' well-deserved reputation as a stylist and an artist who stands apart.

If conviction and quality are the measure of a songwriter and musician, the songs and performances on Brother Sinner & the Whale are the very measure of both.

Goin' Your Way catches two top-notch artists in grand form, giving their best for their fans and seemingly having a lot of fun doing it, and this is an engaging souvenir of an inspired meeting of the smart pop minds.

While Vulnicura Live may not be the most fun of Björk's concert albums, its powerful performances still make it a joy for fans to hear.

That one track ["Canna-Business"] aside, Brotherhood of the Snake is not only on par with Testament's best records during the millennium thus far, but ever.

Whether the duo plan to work this way in the future or not, 2016 Atomized documents a year when they successfully rebooted their sound and opened up their future to all kinds of possibilities.

The amiable quality of his lyrics and his enduring melodicism are in full effect on The Last Rider, which is notable in the Sexsmith canon for being the first record to employ his long-tenured touring band, a whip-smart quartet of tone-savvy sidemen who for many years have faithfully adapted the minute details of his many releases for the stage.

The approaches, from improvised noise pieces to concise electronic pop songs, are almost as numerous and far-flung as the represented outposts. A significant portion of the tracks appears on compact disc for the first time.

Brain Candy is still rock indie pop first, with a garage rock sidecar. Most of this is an up-tempo blast, and Stephenson's vocals are excellent while the guitar work and drumming is expert and fully engaged. Brain Candy isn't kid's stuff, but rather the word of two guys determined to make adulthood work for them without spoiling everything, and Hockey Dad hit that target with flying colors.

If you share the same perspective (as well as the same sense of humor), Floor It!! is a blast: it sounds like your favorite classic rock playlist kicking up forgotten favorites as it cycles through a perpetual shuffle.

More than 50 years after its release, it seems there isn't much new to be said about The Velvet Underground & Nico, and I'll Be Your Mirror doesn't challenge that notion. But it does allow a number of worthy artists a chance to see themselves reflected in these songs, and it's a labor of love that's engaging and from the heart.

While sincerity emanates from Finnigan in every song before it ["Crash & Burn"] -- the singer's empathy enables him to personify characters convincingly -- the words and emotion here pour out, like they had to be released, requiring no imagination.

Peace...Like a River is a labyrinthine trek through original songs that nod at the band's classic rock influences, creating an album that sounds like it was written and recorded during the 1970s.

I Only See the Moon's more diversified approach is an engaging one that, frankly, evades the potential slog of some of the Kids' prior LPs without surrendering heartache, nostalgia, or slow tempos and grace in the process.

Shires has a relaxed, natural rapport with Nelson that gives Loving You a genuine sense of warmth: this wasn't intended as a tribute or a goodbye, it was merely a relaxed session between two kindred spirits and its inherent modesty makes it quite satisfying.

There Is No Space for Us sounds more holistic than its trilogy predecessors, with leaner production, deft arrangements, and extremely inventive songwriting.

The slightly dubby and distorted "What We Are and What We Are Meant to Be" is the band's own acknowledgement that they're challenging themselves and pushing themselves forward.

Pushing the quartet onto yet another exciting path of artistic and creative evolution, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun is a fully committed, thematic foray into the darker corners of the AFI experience.

Crucially, the band brings just the right touch to these performances, their obvious fondness and reverence for the material never getting in the way of a loose, expressive feel, with some very fine bits of soloing and lots of enjoyably breezy ensemble playing.

Tim Hecker's elegantly inventive way around sound art moved into a full decade of released work with An Imaginary Country, one of his most serene and, from its striking start "100 Years Ago" forward, uplifting albums.

If you weren't already on the Russian Circles bandwagon, this is the perfect opportunity to jump on.

More than ever, Abyss proves that she knows when to unleash her full fury and when to rein it in, and the results are stunning.

They do a first-rate job blending humor, emotion, and energy on In the Court; it’s a tricky routine to master but they’ve done it impressively right out of the gate.

The general move away from strong, hooky choruses to a focus on expansive, intricate and percussive arrangements may challenge casual and even some longtime fans of the band's catchy, Southern garage rock twang.

For the most part, she is still able to deliver her tunes with honesty that makes you think about feelings she's conveying, not her recording budgets, as is the case with many over-processed country stars out there.

As dense as R Plus Seven was cleanly sculpted, there's a lot to unpack within Garden of Delete, including its title: a phrase that suggests the meticulous task of editing music as well as the union of creation and destruction (and shortens to G.O.D.), it's the perfect mission statement for an album that combines past and present in surprising, and surprisingly organic ways.