Bad Cameo is a compelling picture of two collaborators inspiring each other to try things they might not have on their own.

While Peyroux expertly commands the styles and forms she always has, her wonderful, songwriting elevates Let's Walk to an entirely different level. Essential.

On Oath, Mono's seemingly disparate, trademark elements create a universe of sound and emotion to completely immerse oneself in for a moment, an hour, or a lifetime.

There is a wealth of emotions in the material -- some of which is self-critical -- along with some abrupt changes in style, such as the transition from the scruffy ballad "Spite" to the speedy electro-disco track "Less of You," two of many highlights. Even so, there's a flow to God Said No that rewards start-to-finish play.

While Mercury kept their hit streak going and matured the band with a welcome vulnerability, longtime fans of their aggressive empowerment anthems will delight in this pseudo-"return to form" from the Vegas quartet, one of their most satisfying and immediate sets to date.

SML lay down some heavy grooves, but their music is less about making people dance than it is about exploring space through communal joy.

Passing through the Valley of Abandoned Songs, it seems, is a little like visiting the Lost & Found, and there's definite value in these reclaimed works of art.

While the title track is ostensibly a song about a couple falling in love, the track, as with much of Good Together, could just as easily work as a love letter penned by the members of Lake Street Dive to each other.

Thanks to the always sympathetic production, Cottrill's dedication, and the overall strength of the songs, it's a living, breathing sound that end sup as Clairo's most inviting and easy to love record yet.

Dig beneath the surface, the lyrics make plain Healy's claim of the album being a personal record but the trick that Travis pulls off with L.A. Times is that it is engaging on the surface thanks to colorful melodies and shifting arrangements--the very things that beg for subsequent listens, the ones where themes reveal themselves.

While Big Ideas could be accused of being uneven, filler is a matter of personal genre preference here, left turns that are fun or even funny dominate, and with a closer like the helium-voiced disco entry "Slay Bitch," any remaining scolds should be few and far between.

While Brijean's music is rooted in bossa nova, AM pop, and funk influences, Macro is one of their most stylistically well-rounded productions.

It can just as easily function as music for quiet reflection, nature exploration, travel, studying, or most other activities. II is their most distinctive, sophisticated, and emotionally rich work yet.

The stage show in this form is a perfect distillation of all the themes and feelings the book digs into, boiling them down to the truest, most intense nuggets, and Pastel and Thompson's music is a big part of why it works so well both in the show and as a stand-alone album.

As on each of Fussell's albums, he moves the songs into his own special, nuanced space, creating a vibe that is unmistakably his own. This sense of personality feels increasingly rare in folk music which often errs in either self-congratulatory retro-ism or indulgent innovation. In avoiding many of the traditional avenues to authenticity, he achieves it naturally.

Orquesta Akokan aren't merely revivalists -- they create their own 21st century jazzy, polyrhythmic innovations, proving that mambo remains relevant musically, culturally, and spiritually.

Cohen uses Paint a Room to circle through a deceptively wide spectrum of ideas and arrangements, organizing his various strange and beautiful sounds in a way that keeps drawing the listener's attention back, like trying to focus your eyes on something just out of view and figure out exactly what you're looking at.

Alternating between imaginative reinterpretations and faithful renditions of familiar hits, offering a testament to the resilience of the songbook of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

Bando Stone & the New World may not be his best album - it was always going to be impossible to dislodge “Awaken, My Love!” -- but it serves as a fitting summation of all the good-to-great music that has been released under the Gambino banner and might even give some clues as to where he's headed next.

All Hell stands as one of their most consistent albums while simultaneously being bolder and more unrestrained than usual.

The highlights are many, but "Black Flag Freestyle" with That Mexican OT sounds like a direct homage to Memphis greats Three 6ix Mafia.

Dreamland may have been the album that made Glass Animals big, but song for song, I Love You So F***ing Much's thoughtful, anxious pop might be more rewarding.

Even without its publicity stunt release, No Name would doubtless clicked with an awful lot of Jack White's fans, and it's the sort of idiosyncratic but lean and mean rock album he's needed to make for a while.

In its moments of both catharsis and ambience, Vertigo maintains a consistent balance. It's a quietly adventurous album that never feels like it's pushing too hard in any one direction, even when the sounds are swinging from blown amplifiers to bubbly flutes.

While 2016's Two Vines had its merits, Ask That God is a welcome return to the blissful, body-moving spirit of Empire of the Sun's first two classics.

It's at times caught between escaping into nostalgic juvenilia and dialing in perfectly manicured indie rock productions, but ultimately, Crack Cloud joyfully exploring that incongruity is the entire point.

It's a lovely record with a lot of personality and passion that showcases a rarely heard instrumental combo.

While there's plenty of dreamy heartache, it's the often bewildering beauty Chrystabell and Lynch achieve on this album that makes it an artistic milestone for both of them.