For an album that spans multiple styles and features a different guest vocalist on every song, Always Centered at Night is consistently passionate and spiritual.

Throughout Eight Pointed Star's various stylistic touchpoints, artistic allusions, and consistently lyrical melodies, Allen effectively merges the cerebral and the sentimental on an album that's ultimately about different kinds of love.

We Sang, Therefore We Were may have been born out of restlessness and anger, but it's also a remarkably fun dispatch from one of indie music's most inventive musical minds.

Rest assured, songs including the opening "Millions of Heartbeats" make clear that Nash hasn't lost her impudent flair; however, by the end of the record, any cheekiness is easily outweighed by disarming earnestness.

Stung! is yet another hard-to-categorize but easy-to-enjoy chapter in Pond's ever-changing story. It's full of melodies made for both sunny summer days and solitary, reflective walks, and often changes gears with little notice.

The results are mixed if always entertaining.

While The Secret of Us finds her still vulnerable and singing with an audible frown, her delivery is stronger, arrangements are more sweeping and robust, and at least some of the songs are trying to look forward.

Alvin and Gilmore are two great tastes who taste great together, with Alvin's salt and Gilmore's sweetness accenting one another very well indeed, and Texicali is strong enough to suggest this collaboration should have gas in the tank for at least one more album.

At its best, C,XOXO is a vibes album, musical perfume -- a spritz of Cabello's "meteor shower" pop moment.

While Megan strays somewhat from the formula of invincible confidence and crowd-pleasing summer anthems that we're used to from MTS, its moments of bitterness and uncertainty do a lot to humanize the larger-than-life rap queen, one whose head has grown heavy from wearing the crown.

The Healer is an emotionally draining experience, like all of SUMAC's other releases, but it reaches transcendence in a unique and powerful way.

Still tuned in to an aesthetic of translating disparate ideas into fine-tuned songs, the Folk Implosion sound at home on Walk Thru Me, taking their music to new, strange places, as always, regardless of the years that have passed since the last time we heard from them.

As Guided by Voices approach their fourth decade as a band, Strut of Kings reminds us that they're not only at the top of their game, but they're still growing and trying new things, and succeeding admirably.

The laid-back "Time Will Tell" is bound to prompt comparisons to certain late-'70s soft rock hits but has a lonesome if sanguine character all its own. Even lighter in touch, "Dime" ("tell me") is a lush, Tropicália-inspired duet with Chilean singer/drummer Cancamusa that flashes back to when Frazer's romance was blossoming.

It may not change the minds of those who think there isn't much to Cigarettes After Sex's music, but X's delivers enough glamorous brooding to keep fans happily miserable.

Given how packed the guest list is, it's not surprising that this party runs a little long, but ultimately, each of Harmonics' tracks reflects the warmth and generosity of Goddard's creativity.

Also involving contributions from PJ, Jennifer Hudson, J Rocc, and Tuamie, the album is an inspired extension of hip-hop's 50th anniversary celebrations.

There are enough good things in Hear the Children Sing the Evidence to understand why Salsburg wanted to document this experiment for posterity, but don't be surprised if you feel the need for a cup of coffee after putting this on repeat.

Things shift a bit toward the end with the stomping neo-gospel of "On My Knees," a bit of testifying that recalls the bluster of Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats more than a Sunday service. The rest of Made by These Moments hums along to a neo-soul vibe that places the Red Clay Strays in Rateliff's wheelhouse, an expansion that doesn't necessarily seem like an evolution even if it broadens the band's appeal.

Alex Izenberg & the Exiles is an album for late nights, back porches, and lonely weekends, and another intriguing entry in the growing catalog of a distinctive music personality.

Cults still aren't as easy to pin down as might be expected, but To the Ghosts reflects how they've endured without compromising the innocence and artful popcraft at the heart of their sound.

Stampede is the work of a singer who is a star and obviously excited by the possibilities it offers him as a performer, but the best moments suggest he should offer a little more space for Orville Peck the Artist, who deserves his share of the spotlight.

JPEGMAFIA's confrontational personality can be overbearing at times, especially to listeners who don't consider themselves to be chronically online, but his production is always stellar, and his sheer creativity is unparalleled. I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU is up there with LP! as the artist's most accessible work to date.

The songs take agile twists and turns, the guitar interplay between Mike Haliechuk and Josh Zucker is satisfying and makes room for far more than the traditional four/four downstroke, and bassist Sandy Miranda and drummer Jonah Falco power this music with muscle and panache. And if the mix doesn't always put Abraham's vocals front and center, making it something of a challenge to understand all the lyrics, what's audible hits an admirable balance between rage and hope.

Lungu Boy has some great material, but having risen to the top with back-to-back successes, Asake appears to be experiencing a few growing pains.

Dune Rats' attempts to kinda sorta reinvent themselves aren't always a roaring success, but none of them are abject failures either. If It Sucks, Turn It Up reveals they can change if they need to, though they are probably most comfortable just being their snotty, weed-addled selves.

The combination of bright, '80s artifice, '90s cynicism, and 2020s uncertainty here works, if the "fun" is often tinged with consternation.

This exercise works surprisingly well and, if one is a fan of this genre, F-1 Trillion knocks it out of the park.