Ultimately, Need Your Light is an ambitious, thrilling album, full of songs that aim to grab your heart as well as your ears.

Even with the album's epic length, it never feels meandering or indulgent, as Prins Thomas remains supremely focused throughout the entire journey, finding the duality between the different types of "cosmic" music.

Banshee is a smart and impressive piece of work that speaks to the mind and the soul with similar clarity.

Dixon judiciously edited over one-third of the tracks to facilitate flow, his craftiness most evident in the way Talc's breezy part-soft rock/part-Daft Punk hybrid melts into one of Beady Belle's graceful lounge laments. Dixon's taste dips back several decades, but he keeps it relatively contemporary all the way through.

Anyone who was into previous El Guincho albums will be satisfied by the new direction he's taken, and who knows, some R&B fans with an adventurous nature may even find his sound to be something worth checking out.

There's no pretense here: this album is pure, no-frills, feel-good fun, a start-to-finish crowd-pleaser for fans of that classic pop-punk sound.

The album constantly maintains feelings of loneliness and obsession, and serves equally as a soundtrack for fantasy exploration as well as late-night dancefloor enrapturement.

Crowded and long overdue as it is, In My Mind is a satisfying and mature showcase for one of the most skilled and creative talents in R&B.

Grandfeathered shows them looking outward while successfully building upon their already impressive sound.

As the title implies, it may take the 1975 a while to get to the point on I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It, but when they do, the results are revelatory.

How to Dance is a quietly remarkable work from a group that can make modesty and excellence coexist.

Within Ward's canon, More Rain may not work overtime to distinguish itself, but like nearly all of his releases, it's a companionable listen with a lot of craft hidden under its layers.

This mix of genres at work makes for an exciting listen, another addictive affair of dark melody and bold beats from a trio that excels in intelligent, deftly produced art pop.

Consistent in character and quality, WYWALDYAT is a rare debut, one that impacts second to second rather than by hook or groove.

Fallon has found a way to distill his band's fiery nostalgia into something a little more refined, but no less affecting.

It's the sound of a great band evolving with the times, even as those times try their soul and conscience.

United Crushers is driven by the seemingly contradictory desires to bring things together and break them apart, but Poliça bring them into harmony with a gloves-off fearlessness, resulting in their most impassioned and immediate music yet.

As produced by her daughter and family friend, Lynn is in good, trusting hands who wish to present her at her best and, more or less, that's precisely what Full Circle offers.

It's not quite Hunx and it's definitely not punk, but Seth Bogart is a blast.

The bookends are tracks that aim to be masterworks and fall just one step short, but everything in between is delightful, stunning, or both, making the album's title less than one-tenth apt, and Macklemore & Lewis both emo under-promisers and Grammy-worthy over-deliverers.

Unlike a lot of bands that seem to reunite just to cash in or repeat the past, the Coral came back with a renewed focus and a new sound. That's impressive in itself, and resulted in one of the band's best albums to date.

It's an intense and trippy odyssey, one that should make fans old and new appreciative of Jurado's depth while mulling along.

Near perfect and a step forward as well, Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future belongs on Underworld's top shelf.

Maybe his previous effort, 2013's I Am, flowed better and came with more of a sense of purpose, but this loose LP is still well above satisfying and features highlights that stand with the man's best.

Freed of commercial expectations and paired with an empathetic band, Wynonna will sing anything she damn well pleases and she's wound up with a monster of an album.

Creative songcraft and catching melodies are also in full force here, as expected by this point from Nguyen, though the strongest impact of the A Man Alive may be the temerity of its sound--thankfully, there's no need to separate the two. Even at 12 tracks, the album will leave many wanting more (and more Nguyen-Garbus collabs).

On their debut album, they strike a balance between delicate, pastoral folk and heavy, loud space rock, with Meg Baird's fragile, wispy vocals sharing the stage with Noel von Harmonson and Charlie Saufley's crushing guitar solos.

While Spalding never sounds anything less than original on the album, part of the beauty here is in recognizing her inspirations and reveling in how she has made them her own.