Roxanne's music is balming and refreshing, yet also reflective of an intense spiritual and physical journey, and Because of a Flower is a quietly powerful encapsulation of the progress she's made.

This set is a classic-sounding Tears for Fears record, one that makes the listener take emotional, spiritual, and mental inventory of their inner world even as the one outside roils with trouble, violence, and madness. Welcome back gents, we've missed you.

Everything Was Beautiful is delirious and exciting, a perfect distilment of the best parts of the band's various phases that feels reinvigorated and new.

Headlights is his most unassuming, back-to-basics (Neil Young, Elliott Smith) record in years.

Fidelity is of a piece with Do It Afraid and caps a three-album/three-year streak for the ages.

Artful and ambitious throughout, Oh, Common Life may not bring cheer to most listeners, but the passion informing both the lyrics and the music shows that Fireworks offer something genuinely life-affirming despite their dour surfaces.

The sound is huge and intimate all at once; the songs have hooks and staying power.

Showcases a band testing themselves by going down an untravelled road while still maintaining their identity.

Even though Her Majesty isn't quite as striking and full-formed as Castaways and Cutouts, it's still a consistently charming album that finds the band coming into its own.

Chemical Warfare keeps this capo's reputation in tact. Recommended for aspiring dons and more open-minded thugs.

Cosmic Ocean Ship is Todd's most "exotic" recording, but it's easily one of her most ambitious, focused, and satisfying as well.

Epic riffs play a bigger part than before, but Abasi is as jaw-dropping as ever with his double-tapping technique and arpeggiated whirlwind solos.

A special work, Loggerhead is among the most necessary albums of its time.

Ready for Heaven is easily her best record to date; it brings all her talents together in one shimmering, emotionally charged, and musically impressive package.

Cosplay ranks among Sorry's most vivid and exciting works, masterfully keeping all of its seething vocal lines, clashing instrumentation, and shattered glass melodies from imploding, just barely, but by perfect design.

Two decades on, Lambchop are not only still able to surprise listeners, they're doing some of their best work at the same time, and FLOTUS is an unexpected triumph.

It is full of emotion yet never sophomoric, it is full of aural poetry and never pretentious, and it is full of that certain mercurial grace that makes each new offering from Six Organs of Admittance something wholly other and an essential listen.

Time to Die is not Dopethrone; you only get one of those. But its well-tread riffology is enough of a back to basics approach that it should bring alienated purists back into the EW fold.

While the subject matter here is more personal, it sticks to a palette of lush, guitar-based band arrangements and doesn't shed any sociopolitical awareness.

Another Martin masterstroke.

Celebration Rock could arguably lack the powerful impact of the first record. Still, it's a hell of lot of fun.

Holistic in breadth and deep in vision, it provides a way into this music for many, and challenges the cultural conversation about jazz without compromising or pandering.

Projector is an impressive debut and all-around solid effort from a band at the start of a promising career.

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.

Furling never feels like a mixed bag, primarily due to the control with which she moves through her songs. The softer acoustic folk tunes and heavier, more far-reaching dives into piano and densely stacked arrangement all feel like similar parts of a whole, and the album flutters by beautifully like an unbothered mind wandering through various thoughts on a sunny day.

If Sarah Shook has evolved a bit as a person on Nightroamer, as an artist they're as articulate, as fearless, and as smart as ever.

Return of the Ankh is a relief in that Badu does not attempt to trump herself with a set that is even more intense and powerful than its predecessor.

All the added instrumental layering and effects -- wriggling synthesizers, buzzing basslines, ricocheting percussion, apparition-like vocal processing, and suchlike -- are nuanced, not once getting in the way of a musician who can put forth an affecting message with just her voice and violin.