For now, on Everybody's Dying to Meet You, the trio sounds like a worthy heir to the classic noise pop sound and the genre's best bands, like Shop Assistants and Tiger Trap.

The making of Synesthetica was a big deal for Radiation City; the result is a big deal to those who like their modern pop smart, fun, and with just the right amount of modernity.

She has the talent and courage to speak from her heart and make her ideas heard. Anyone who has ever had a (broken) heart will find something they can understand on Good Advice.

As good as these moody moments are, My Wild West is best once the darkness settles, and Lissie offers nicely sculpted miniatures that feel alternately comforting and bruised, with the human touches Lana Del Rey works so hard to remove from her own music.

Opus, the album, is keenly constructed and an excellent beginning-to-end journey in spite of its size.

The appeal of Down to My Last Bad Habit feels more Memphis than Nashville: it's Vince Gill's soul album, which is a welcome thing indeed.

With Né So, Traoré feels completely dialed in and in control, delivering her most compelling record yet.

While Kozelek remains an incredible storyteller, and the album is fascinating as ever to his faithful followers, it's likely to be exhausting, infuriating, or simply head-scratching to anyone who isn't already a fan of his. And as wonderful as Broadrick's musical contributions are, they recede into the background and aren't nearly as distinctive as his own work.

Khalifa, the album, is influenced by the "See You Again" sound, and yet that mammoth single's inclusion would've helped round out a set of tracks that aren't nearly as direct in their lyrics or intent. These expansive cuts surely benefit the Wiz discography, and will do best when shuffled into his canon, but lump them together into one LP and take away the driving influence and Khalifa feels more like part of a continuum than a self-contained statement.

Compared to the impressive and occasionally brilliant Venice, this album's mix of high and hard times has deeper resonance.

Other songs are colored with words and phrases of despair and resignation, like "doubt," "losing my grip," and "let's just break up." If the productions weren't so richly detailed and deceptively varied, Escapements might be a stifling experience.

Songs like "18 Wheeler" and the relationship laundry list "Boys (That I Dated in High School)" are surprising winners on an album that feels like it probably should be written off.

We Are King is all about plush, impeccable grooves and spine-tingling harmonies. It's without fault.

Here and throughout Is the Is Are, DIIV reveal themselves as a more thoughtful, more rewarding band than could have been expected from their debut.

Hold On! provides the best evidence yet that he and his band can find more rhythmic, harmonic, and dynamic paths to explore inside the well of musical history.

If Turin Brakes' world-view has changed little over the years, their embrace of the craft of record-making has only improved, and Lost Property is an impressive document of their skills in the recording studio.

Written and recorded almost entirely in Maine's Manhattan apartment, the album was mixed by Chris Coady (Beach House, !!!) and should play equally well in bedroom headphones and basement nightclubs, and leave many anticipating album three.

Much like Jepsen's Emotion or Swift's 1989, Foxes' All I Need is vibrant, intelligently crafted pop pleasure.

With this sophomore record, Nap Eyes offer a subtle gem that ultimately improves on their debut.

Scheherazade isn't exactly the Feel Good Album of 2016, but being lost and forsaken with Freakwater is a more satisfying experience than feeling perky with most other acts, and Scheherazade is a brilliant reminder of what Catherine Irwin and Janet Beveridge Bean do so strikingly well.

They're able to execute ideas they were only able to hint at when they were a young band. Some songs do have hooks that sink in quickly.

After releasing one of the best and boldest albums of her career with Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, Williams goes from strength to strength with The Ghosts of Highway 20.

Human Ceremony is an impressive debut from a band who seem positioned to make many more excellent albums if they can continue to do such a good job of mining the past for gold and revamping it in their own fashion like they do so well here.

The addition of simple pop elements to Commontime and the fact that the Brewis brothers manage to keep cranking out music this intelligent and flat-out fun to listen to without ever having the slightest dip in quality, makes it one of their more interesting and rewarding efforts to date.

Often, the tunes appear to be handsome constructions--grand, stately, and well appointed--but their foundations are shaky, constructed from threadbare melodies and words that dissipate not long after they land.

By the end of Anti, Rihanna may not arrive at any definitive conclusions about her art but she's allowed herself to be unguarded and anti-commercial, resulting in her most compelling record to date.

Compulsive in more than one sense, Big Black Coat contends with Last Exit as Junior Boys' deepest, most vibrant work.

With their dark fidelity and overly spacious arrangements, these new meditations feel almost as if they were unearthed from some distant vault of preserved wax cylinders rather than re-recorded.