With Ghosts of West Virginia, he's created some of the most eloquent music he's written in two decades.

Strange to Explain sounds like the result of carefully considered choices in songwriting and production. Without losing the unfiltered emotion that makes them so compelling, Woods reach a new maturity with these songs. Fifteen years into a tirelessly curious evolution, the band sound more comfortable and surefooted here than ever before.

Descendants of Cain proves an exceptional listen. Pairing Ryan’s sublime lyricism with organic production and a precisely constructed concept, the MC’s fifth project is a superb statement piece from one of rap’s most ingenious poets.

Hearing these (sometimes very familiar) songs in this particular sequence is a journey, one that winds along a twisted road yet provides an experience as complete as its mid-'70s companion LPs. It's not a footnote but an essential part of Neil Young's catalog.

Sprawling and intimate, breezy and affecting, Women in Music Pt. III is a low-key triumph.

The new material didn't merely simmer.

As dark and tonally blistering as anything they did in their early years, Inlet essentially finds Hum picking up where they left off in 1998.

Years is a bit more ornate than most Anderson records, yet the layers of guitars and keyboards give the vocalist a rich, sympathetic bed to sing with nuance and grace. His performance, combined with the elegant sweep of Auerbach's production and the emotive songs, turn Years into a minor latter-day masterpiece from the country singer.

The set covers the trajectory of one relationship and was recorded in concentrated fashion, and it consequently plays out like a complete statement made by a self-contained crew. What's more, La Havas' lithe voice forms a tighter bond with the lyrics, and her gently ringing guitar rarely leaves her hands.

The band are nothing if not exceptional at creating a mythos; by promoting inclusiveness and affirmation to aspirational degrees, they demonstrate that by working together, they can create beauty from chaos.

With Devastator, Phantom Planet have crafted an album that deftly undercuts their hooky West Coast optimism with a bitterly cloudy beach bum sadness. You can almost hear the bright pop sound of their youth echoed back through the hazy din of waves returning to shore; California here we come, right back where we started from indeed.

As each of the four musicians here have distinguished themselves as distinctive bandleaders in their own right, it's fascinating to hear their individual styles come to the fore throughout the album.

Like its predecessor, Sex, Death, & the Infinite Void treats naval-gazing like a spectator sport, with each death-obsessed narrative resolving into a gang-vocal crescendo ("God can't save us, so let's live like sinners") of stale cigarette smoke and beer-can-crushing outsider solidarity.

Long Lost Solace Find has traces of Dinosaur Jr.'s most hushed moments, Anne Briggs' heartbreaking clarity, and the resigned grandeur of legendary artists like Karen Dalton or Nick Drake. It's a stunning turn of heel, and one that instills a sense of anticipatory excitement for where Polizze will take his music next.

She and her fellow writers and producers have put together the type of album that drowns out the world and keeps giving with each play.

Imploding the Mirage feels like more than just one of their best albums, but a triumphant and invigorated rut-reversal that shines with a hard-won confidence.

The result is a deeply felt production informed by the group's long-standing love of ambient music, psych-pop, and kinetic, '70s-style Krautrock.

Managing to be uniquely stylized and engrossing while stripped bare, Whole New Mess not only works in isolation, it deserves equal footing in Olsen's discography.

There isn't a wasted moment on the album, an expertly crafted triumph that succeeds by balancing addictive production and a concentrated thematic focus. Beyond the technical, Use Me is also an inspiration, a cathartic rebirth for Gunn where she can take full credit for doing all the work, embracing the pain and cleaning her wounds with strength and confidence.

Recorded at Abbey Road in London, the eight-track set makes good use of the legendary studio's analog infrastructure, peppering the proceedings with fragmented loops and rewinding reels, all the while maintaining a radiant classic rock core. It's also the group's heaviest outing to date.

With a laid-back pace, the album's slipstream sonic quality may require a couple of listens to fully absorb, but it's well worth the effort. Gilberto has made a career of seeking adventure in her music, but her partnership with Bartlett on Agora surpasses all expectations and creative limits.

Blue Hearts is a cry of purifying anger in a dark time, and its heat produces a truly necessary light; it's one of the very best solo albums Mould has given us to date.

By the Fire isn't a drastic shift, but as Moore goes deeper into the sounds he's been exploring for decades, he uncovers new magic.

While its stylistic hallmarks are undeniably part of the band's musical signature, here they pay homage to the past while simultaneously reflecting the tense uncertainty of the present and future, directly and consistently, making No the band's strongest, most visionary outing since Pink.

A dizzying display of a band at peak performance.

Róisín Machine is cohesive and spellbinding. Murphy truly is a machine in her consistent creativity, and this is a particularly well-oiled example of her brilliance.

On All Thoughts Fly, von Hausswolff yearns to express the unspeakable -- that which lies not just beyond words but stands apart from them. She offers a musical authority that can only be fully realized when openly acknowledging and submitting to one's own vulnerability.

Relatable and reinvigorated, the catchy and confessional Melanie C is not only a reboot for the artist's sound, but a rebirth for the icon herself.