It's sharp songwriting, strong, emotive vocals, and unostentatious attitude lead to three of the most unassumingly replayable pop songs of the year.

Rinse Presents: Brackles is one of the strongest and most immediate full-length UK bass debuts in some time and one that exceeds the promise of a young producer's previous potential.

The album struggles to find a particular voice, and make any sort of statement, leaving me more than a couple of steps off using the album's own title to describe my opinion of it.

As a whole, Lex Hives serves the same purpose as just about every Hives album thus far: dance, let yourself go, and have a good time.

There's No Leaving Now is one of the best albums of the year.

WIXIW is simply a Liars album that exceeds expectations and throws a sonic left curve that not only impresses, but reminds us how talented this band is.

This isn't yet Tucker's masterpiece. But it's surely a step in that direction.

Prophet is both eclectic and balanced, and the powerful imagination behind it makes it easier to forgive the occasional overindulgence.

The songs he thinks up are somehow both resonate and impossible to anticipate--old and new at once.

Though it may lack a song with the immediacy of something like "Girls FM," the tracks on King Tuff represent some of the best work of the career of a man who's hopefully just getting started.

The set might get a little long in the tooth, even in its individual parts, but on both parts Shackleton is treading fresh ground in a whole different solar system than the rest of dance music and all its various eccentrics.

This record is a perfect soundtrack for any drunken destruction party, tantrum, or any other moment of great primitivism.

The resulting album is one that is deceptively simple, a send-up to the aggressive cultural awareness of old-school rap on the surface, filtered through a hundred different post-apocalyptic scenarios, musical and lyrical.

For everyone else, the predictable melodic twists and some truly awful lyrics will likely prove too much to endure.

The end results are still pleasant enough, but can wear thin, even just after five songs.

Ultimately what this record lacks is any sense of audacity or ambition.

Thoroughly enjoyable from front to back, Heaven oozes confidence and polish.

With Passage, Exitmusic has turned in one of the more ambition, evocative, and engaging efforts of 2012.

Blessed with an old-fashioned FM radio charm, Here is a worthy follow-up.

The triumph of Heady Fwends lies the way it sands off the rough edges off 2011's excess and whittles an honest, enjoyable set out of the mire while coaxing a wealth of unexpected voices into the fray without losing its way.

Here is an album that's neither forgettable nor empty.

It's that care and attention that leaves the older songs sounding fresh and like they belong, the newer stuff sounding great and the album as a whole sounding cohesive and pretty awesome.

Celebration Rock is in perpetual motion, driven by a visceral sense of urgency that most modern guitar music is so sorely lacking.

Like everything else the Cribs have done, In the Belly of the Brazen Bull is a relatively easy album to like, with sharp melodies and catchy hooks. It's just held back by a feeling of indecision that permeates tracks whose parts seem to want to go in conflicting directions.

It does sound a lot like oOoOO and under scrutiny with A-B comparisons, Our Loving Is Hurting Us is pretty starkly more of the same.

These twelve tracks are full, they're self-aware, they're straight up funny, and it's these traits that immediately separate Father John Misty's folk-rock from what Fleet Foxes do.

It's when I keep in mind the idea of Pull It Together being an album for her daughter that I enjoy the album most, as it's in this light that it sounds at its most charming and likeable.

It not so much a record that juxtaposes itself, but rather one that sways between the two sides of whatever spectrum you put it in.

There's potential here but it's sadly unrealized.

The music never gets in the way, and works pretty much perfectly to help the songs ebb and flow, and to heighten the best moments.

New Epoch, Goth-Trad has adopted a patience, openness and attention to detail that feels indebted to the more intricacy-focused realms of bass music and techno, but retains the sweaty, oxidized exhalations of muscled jungle rhythms.

When a flower blooms, it changes shape and appearance but not its biological essence; similarly, for all its subtle differences, Bloom avoids shedding the bittersweet swells that have become the duo's stock-and-trade.

With repeated listens, even the least of the songs still reach for that relaxing, carefree Best Coast vibe, but the feeling takes more work to achieve compared to the immediately lovable, attention-demanding nature of their entirely natural, easy-as-pie debut.

While Ship has a few compelling moments, it's mostly lethargic and sinks into its own monotonous haze.

The worst thing I can say about an EP is that it's too damn short, it's certainly a success.

Lone doesn't reinvent himself on Galaxy Garden like he did with Emerald Fantasy Tracks, but the jump from one record to the next is made even more revelatory by the English producer's refinement and assuredness.

Anyone who considers themselves a fan of unvarnished punk should listen to OFF! at least once.

Death Dreams' loops of feedback, ghostly monologues and multipronged guitar attacks lash out, often in tandem, making the music feel big.

The finished product sounds like a work in progress, which is cool, but here's to hoping that Blunt and Copeland will improve the production quality and fully realize their genrebending sketches next time around.

Many live records these days get a bad rap because of the stigma they carry (many reek of contractual obligation), but this is a respectable and enlightening release.

Absolutely perfect, sun-soaked pop.

Make Believe takes the listener from the same point A to point B as Santogold, but has no qualms about taking a completely different route, which is both more scenic and more difficult, but ultimately feels more fulfilling.

It can become background music all too easily: while Silver's work will always have a degree of ambience to it, Exercises can completely disappear from your consciousness if you don't pay enough attention, especially during the last few tracks.

Allo Darlin' makes this leap on Europe, resulting in an album that is subtly ambitious and surprisingly rewarding.

Splazsh's followup simply doesn't hold the same tension or drive.

Keepers of the Light is as much of a singular expression of the hardcore continuum as it is an exploration of it, but maybe the best way to soak in its two and half hours is as a richly constructed sound world unto itself.

As compelling as their musicianship may be conceptually, it rarely goes the distance on Remembrance of Things to Come.

Despite a couple speed bumps, Dross Glop is as solid of a collaborative remix album as you're going to find.

This album will make for a perfectly amicable spring soundtrack, but in terms of a long-term shelf life it's be hard to imagine Candy Salad making it through the sweat and debauchery of the summer festival circuit in one relevant piece.

Two of the more prolific musicians of our time have come together to put out eight interesting tracks.

People shouldn't expect a "completely Dr. John" record, but there is a lot to enjoy from the simplicity and overall throwback feel to Locked Down that provides a positive and hopeful experience.

It's an album that continues to unpack itself after half a dozen listens--as beautiful as it is detailed.

It's not quite a masterpiece, but its successes are both grand and numerous enough to suggest that the next time Chromatics come around, they'll likely be delivering one.

Blunderbuss is a quiet album that that doesn't yearn, instead unfolding slowly, from an artist known for his stark music and desperately longing lyrics.

Much like their genre, Clock Opera's music is nothing new, but has charming roots.

The recycling of sounds from past eras of music has become a huge trend over the past few years, but when those sounds are successfully appropriated in new ways, like they are here, the result proves to be very worthwhile.

It's all dizzying and overwhelming, but the sheer brute strength of The Money Store stays tempered by a pervasive, unbridled sense of creativity.

Iradelphic is the sound of an artist who already had a trademark sound coming into his own while still breaking out of his crackly IDM shell.

There's nothing bad about it--at all--but considering how much work seems to have gone into it, it should feel that bit more captivating.

Everything on 151a is mixed so that every sound is waiting to be heard. Every cherished moment is ready and waiting for you to hear it.

For the many Heartbreaking Bravery will help rekindle an interest in Krug once more.

As it stands, Beak & Claw gets an A for effort but considerably lower marks for execution.

Though Mr. Impossible is their most accessible work to date, it's still unmistakably Black Dice.

Instead of charm you've got big dramatic gestures at every turn.

They sound like too much like themselves and too much like the others, and even if you discount the pinpoint instrumentation, it's depressingly calculated.

God's Father is nearly two hours long, and it's actually good.

While it's not as subtle or as elegantly constructed as Beast Rest Forth Mouth, this record has a kineticism and momentum that Beast lacked.

Ripe for radio play it may never see, Spine Hits is a neutral but enjoyable record for the impending days of sun and so-what.

My Head is an Animal is a highly impressive debut that's full of emotional lyrics, lush, diverse instrumentation, and a powerful and dynamic male/female vocals.

Unfortunately it's largely downhill from here [after opener "Silence"].

Crafting an album that's bold and expansive but manageable and narratively sound is no easy task, and that's exactly what AU have done.

All in all, Nothing's Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now is a good record, but it's not success it could have been as the songs are not as strong as one would have hoped.

Boys & Girls is a short album that clocks in at 35-minutes over the course of 11 songs. But by the time it's done, you'll want to start it over again.

It's just a Hot Chip side project that sounds like a Hot Chip side project, and there's nothing wrong with that, but nothing terribly exciting either.

Leaving Atlanta is far from a perfect record - there is not anything approaching 'classic status' on it – but it is a very fine one, and certainly one of the best we will see in its genre this year.

The Italian duo have put together a timeless and beautiful dance record that slides easily to the top of 2012′s best.

For all its gorgeous expansiveness and new perspectives, it never comes together to be incisive or essential.

awE naturalE is at least a great, deep listen, and all that THEESatisfaction has done to challenge the listener warrants serious admiration.

If the album in its entirety feels open-ended, well, that's because it is, but by any measure Family Perfume is a pleasantly disarming ride, loaded with great, barely noticeable moments.

Brilliantly sequenced and realised though it is, the album only just manages to keep the attention for its 54 minutes, meaning first-time listeners could be put off by the sparse arrangements and slow pace.

It's not that this material is any less challenging than anything that The Books did, it's just infinitely more memorable on a first listen.

Races' debut is a powerfully tenacious effort.

If I don't revisit it, (and I might not, because it wasn't exactly mind-blowing), I appreciate it for at least being a pleasant listen.

Their identity is hard to peg, and its just this that allows the music to completely possess the forefront, that makes it such an engaging, entertaining, and, perhaps most significantly, fascinating listen.

Ugly is so rich, so dense, so full that you forget there's just three of them.

All ten of the songs here are grandiose and muscular in the great tradition of Spiritualized songs.

Without a dull moment in sight, Reep has succeeded in creating something of an ethereal masterpiece.

Mixed Emotions seems served just too late, and comes off as regrettably stale.

The change-ups between choruses and verses are less rote, and along with Goodman's ability to write good hooks, there isn't too much that gets in the way.

I'd say that MDNA is at the very least "not bad," but frankly, it's worse than bad: it's mediocre.

There are occasions in the album's 45 minutes that are pretty good.

It's as if you chucked the lot into a tumble dry and waited to see what came out, ultimately ending up with something completely different.

Ghosts, Monolake's eighth record, is one of his most approachable and organic outings to date.

This new collection is most certainly not a pinnacle for the group, but it is a welcome rekindling of the same spirit and sonic magnitude that fueled their last undisputed gem, 2005′s Frances the Mute.

Beal appears determined to make his debut as inaccessible as possible. Intentionally crappy instrumentation holds the album back, stealing the focus from what is an incendiary voice--a lot of casual fans will be dumbfounded by this grating, uneasy listening.

It sounds like fun; precisely what the Odd Future discography has been lacking lately.

It's comfortably K.R.I.T., neither venturing beyond the most basic facets of his developing sound, nor sinking below the standard he's set.

There is much one could say about how this EP compares to Rossen's past projects since that's all he's delivered to us, but he deserves more than that after accomplishing a great EP by himself.