No matter where TEEN decide to turn, they have to be commended for their creativity in conceiving such an other-worldly record.

If you were someone who felt stood-up by Yuck’s follow-up to their self-titled debut, Cheatahs will follow through on the promise that great rainy Saturday afternoon shoegaze isn’t all gazing into a rearview mirror.

As a debut and a fleshing out of Stelmanis' previous eponymous work, Feel It Break is a solid place to build from and a reason to expect good things from Austra in the future.

There are no throwaway songs about weed, women or cars here, just 11 separate streams of consciousness, each with subtle lyrical and instrumental nuances.

Electronica bands run the risk of entering an ethereal, psychedelic realm and never leaving, but Little Dragon always maintains its tie to the tangible world through Nagano's voice.

Kinshasa One Two's myriad of styles and motley participants never cease to criss-cross and collide, sublimely blending earthy tones with sleek production maneuvers to create one of the year's most unique records.

To hear the band members tell it, David Comes To Life is the record they've been working up to for the past 10 years, a grandiose statement that closes off the first chapter of Fucked Up's history. It's anybody's guess as to how they'll follow something like this, but we're already excited for chapter two.

he album is as much seductive as it is creepy, with hollow and haunting sonic gestures that together compose an alternate universe ambience.

Black Up is a wild ride, but Butler's songwriting is not haphazard. To be sure, his laid-black flow channels a vibe similar to the who-cares attitude of those on the opposite side of the left-field hip-hop divide, but don't let that fool you; his music is weird, but it's also deliberate.

This time around, the specifics are there. And though each isolated moment may not be immediately relatable, they create a universal portrait of our struggle with the loss of youth and the arduous task of soldiering forward while a part of us grasps for those milestones of the past.

The lyrics are undoubtedly tragic, but they are what give Brilliant! Tragic! its brilliance.

Burst Apart is smart and calculated without feeling as though you're being duped by artificial feelings.

Even with Mixed Emotions' tumultuous gestation, Emm and Cohen have overcome, with a lean, lighthearted LP of which Toto would be proud.

Deer Tick shows off a level of versatility on Divine Providence, making for a record that will please long-time fans and newcomers alike.

This is why Blue Rider is so enjoyable: even while it pulls you in, you’ll still feel like you’re listening to it alone. That might sound like an aloof move by Cale, but it’s really just an expression of that feeling that comes with being en route.

His heavy use of synthesizers might pin him to an era, but his tenor is timeless.

The songs here are too strongly crafted to be mistaken for the work of some teen slacker.

It’s not that Schoolboy Q is the best lyricist; and there’s not an immediately profound life lesson here; there are no mind-boggling internal rhymes; but Oxymoron is amazing mostly because it attempts to heal past bruises with more bruises. Schoolboy hides nothing and everything leaves a mark.

Shit, Laced is not. The debut album is a testament to Psychedelic Horseshit's incredible versatility.

While Marissa Nadler is more musically complex than earlier records, she maintains her overall aesthetic, both bucolic and tragic.

The music is unlike anything Cloud Nothings has done before, and that's a good thing.

While the new record represents a considerable leap in ambition, it retains the hand-made, intensely personal quality that defined Crutchfield’s earlier work.

Lerner released two solid albums of guitar-and-drum-led rock, but he grows on Dormarion because he is finally willing to knock over the boundaries he built for himself.

Whether he’s softly plucking away or spinning a complicated web of chords, Tyler’s music is transportive in the sense that it can offer an escape from just about anywhere.

With Sister Faith, their fourth album in nine years, Coliseum offers up its most palatable set of tunes yet, a continuation of the dirty-pop paradigms set in place by 2010’s House With A Curse, and the Parasites EP released the following year.

Although most of Careers chugs along with a sandy roadside candor, some tracks, like the churning, heavy Planet Birthday or the clinically pulsing Hong Kong Hotel, play with disparate textures.

In addition to featuring some creative tongue-lashing, You’re Gonna Miss It All expands on the musical ideas and tendencies that made Sports such a hit.

In all, this is a muscular yet not flashy outing from Gang Gang Dance, and its smooth confidence is a welcome respite from its self-indulgent neighbors.

My Night, My Time is a pop album that’s offbeat in its self-awareness and on point with the steep hooks and expansive beats that make pop music pop.

It's the motion of the album that compels you through it, leaving you with a need for some resolution in what the next track will bring.

This is very much her record-it's a fractured gorgeousness, with Garbus embracing her oddness in a gesture of self-love that results in an alarming, startling, fun and playful record.

Although GB City was powerful in its own way, the self-titled displays an impressive attention to detail that helps bring out some of the sound that was lacking in the group’s early work.

The album is at its best with "A Matter Of Time" and "From Here On Out."

The result is a beautifully poignant and cinematic album, a post-hardcore masterpiece.

The group took more time crafting these songs, and because of that, the album seems almost effortless.

Sonically, it's on par with the rest of his discography: meaty instrumentation, multi-layered vocals, winks and smirks.

In between the soul-searching, Fleet Foxes cranks out some pretty great singalong songs. And that's what it's all about, isn't it?

For Mogwai, it works; the sound's grandiloquent and goddamnit, loud.

This certainly isn't music to hit the beach by, and it's also not as concerned with maximizing texture as chillwave is, creating some of its most intriguing moments with negative space.

While Mean Love is his most experimental album to date, it’s also his most precise.

As a whole, the album is charming, but deeply moving. The instrumentation is often simple, as are the lyrics, and the result is a rewarding, slow-building work of serious depth, and a long overdue solo debut for one of the genre’s finest songwriters.

Mind Bokeh signifies a union between sonic exploration-typically condemned to musical isolation by being defined as experimental -- and the consonances of modern pop music that are readily accepted by mass listeners.

With all its messy emotions, unfiltered memories and contradicting revelations, Anxiety shows that it’s not only possible to write a self-conscious record without the protective shield of anonymity, it can be just as thrilling.

Rilo Kiley always had the ability to acknowledge the bad without letting it suck you down. That got lost on the weirdly glossy, distant and jaded Blacklight, but RKives restores the balance.

Though the Stepkids themselves seem undecided on their signature sound, they boast a refreshing reluctance to limit possibility that ultimately translates into a truly original style of their own.

This music has deep roots, but Nabay's version of bubu is more contemporary and club oriented than folksy.

Whether you are listening to the album for its monetary-political messages or just hoping to enjoy the band's indie-punk sound, Local Business will sate both sides.

Strange Weekend takes on the lofty task of musical multitasking and succeeds.

The group has not only improved on the directness of their music, but this album flows in a more continuous stream than their previous effort.

Although the majority of the record is devoted more to synths and vocals than to beats and bass, the sound of Personality speaks loud and clear.

An audacious compilation of carefully arranged instrumentals under reflective lyrics.

Their lyrics of heartbreak, being pissed off and the eventual willingness to admit when they make mistakes has made us feel all the while, they’ve just gotten better at saying it.

The Horror is a highly effective album because of how its sense of doom infects you.

Deeply rewarding and slyly addictive, Channel Pressure is an uncommon gem, a difficult record that really isn't difficult at all.

Instead of feeling like a testing ground for a series of wild experiments, White has crafted a collection of hushed character sketches worthy of Randy Newman or Bill Callahan.

YT // ST is not subtle, yet it’s still simultaneously visceral and generally accessible, while maintaining its unique voice.

What makes Paracosm unique from Greene’s previous endeavors is that Paracosm is like the voice of John in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, asking for balance in a world inundated by the synthetic. It gives us a little breathing room from all the heavy drops and synth-pop without totally giving the technological age the slip.

If you can get past the (New York-ishly cynical?) temptation to corner this band into an indie frame, you can revel in the depth and intricacies that the band has managed to unearth from and on Manhattan.

Written and recorded herself, Are We There, her fourth full-length, is a Sharon Van Etten record through-and-through.

Confidence and a greater level of comfort can be felt all throughout Cosmos.

While some longtime fans may find Just To Feel Anything's retreat from the cosmos a disappointment, the album's relative conceptual restraint actually allows it to be even more emotionally accessible, inviting the listener into the trio's interstellar clubhouse instead of only letting us peak in from the outside.

Through it all, the energy and attitude is unchanged. And although the band’s themes seem even more specifically focused, this album is really for anyone who’s ever felt held back.

On Low's ninth full-length album, the slowcore trio from Duluth creates its most inviting work to date.

Although there aren't any obvious standout hits here, that's not what FlyLo intended to create. Instead, Until The Quiet Comes blends together into a lush electronic soundscape you can daydream to.

At 19 tracks, Old can get a little taxing, as if Brown, in an effort to be expansive, just decided to be everything all at once.... But you’ll forget about that once you realize that Handstand‘s beat is a dizzying tornado of synth and buzz that’s unlike anything you’ve heard before.

There is a blood on the dance floor at this party, and it sounds so refreshing.

They may not be particularly youthful anymore, but there's plenty of transcendence to be found on this record.

By relying on their talent and confidence, the fivesome takes the listener to a futuristic setting, one where '60s British pastoral music fuses with electro in order to fill a hole in the musical landscape.

It's a real relief, then, to hear METZ's self-titled debut, a tight set of 10 gut-punch punk songs that, in 30 minutes, delivers the type of catharsis we've been lacking.

While artists such as Dam-Funk, Onra and Krystal Klear resurrect this sound some 20 odd years later, Back To Reality establishes that Tony Cook was, and still is, the real thing.

[Slaughterhouse is] a master's thesis of reverb, crafted by an electric orator who, more and more, finds the pithiest ways to worship the guitar as instrument, drug and weapon.

They haven't lost a bit of the cheeky lyrics and determined instrumentals that made them who they were; they've just tweaked it all to suit who they are now.

You may categorize An Album By Korallreven as background music. That's by no means a bad thing-if anything, such a distinction solidifies this album as an intense experience: a wintry escape to the wilderness with a slight detour to the dance floor along the way.

There is something refreshing about an artist that tries to create well written and well produced songs instead of ones that smack you in the face with the frying pan made of catchy hooks, beats and shout-along choruses.

Sweet and thoughtful but not without edge, Lemuria knowingly toys with us on The Distance Is So Big, reveling in the loops of the lyrics and the strength of their unique saccharine force.

Wondervisions, its lyric-less debut full length, does not fall short on its abilities to stir emotion.

Hurricane Dub is the original album chopped and screwed and recorded at the bottom of the sea, all murky bass, Jones' deep voice and rasta-twangy guitar.

Sankey and Warmsley still have a lot to offer on Welcome To Condale, with Sankey's large vocal range that easily adapts to the feel of each song and Warmsley's ability to match her perfectly in background singing.

While frontwoman Jehnny Beth’s theatrics take up most of the listener’s attention, it’s the rhythmic duo of drummer Fay Milton and bassist Ayse Hassan that keeps the band on track

I Hate Music isn’t a missive on being an aging rocker as much as it’s reflective of the wisdom and maturity garnered as a touring band in what is too often--and outright mistakenly*--only considered the realm of the young and starry-eyed. Only Superchunk does it with the same unstoppably jaunty bounce and screaming guitars that defined (No Pocky For Kitty) and redefined (Majesty Shredding) their still palpable sound and made them leaders in their genre

It will take repeat listening to capture the total gist of the record, as well as digging into McCombs' back catalog to get the whole story.

The new record finds singer Paul Banks and company reorganizing old reliable, post-Joy Division moves to deliver a fresher (more cheerful even?) atmospheric post-punk plate.

For now, it is refreshing to hear a band mining the searing sounds of ’81 as a cold breeze that kind of shakes you awake rather than making you want to run back indoors right away to cower under your own fears.

These songs seamlessly trickle from one to the next in a perfect collection of sounds, showcasing both complexity and musical depth in this mostly instrumental music.

It's an album that takes Rogue away from the familiar efforts with Rogue Wave as it harbors eloquent and delicate melodies that pioneer a soft-spoken but and delightful album.

From Africa With Fury: Rise is a solid sampling of Afrobeat, and if Kuti's goal is to show that his father's influence was not wasted on him, he succeeds brilliantly.

For the Chicago trio, comprising Nate Eiesland, Alissa Ricci and Ryne Estwing, its haunting yet beautifully bare album is a textural journey over new terrain.

Weirdon is stacked with some hefty singles guaranteed to bring this band to an even wider audience, and it succeeds because it ups the ante in terms of songcraft and production, but never at the cost of the weirdness.

More often on the album’s 10 tracks than not, Nielson keeps the balance, giving each part equal time in the foreground and using understatement to his advantage.

It strikes you that the band’s songwriting, Battle’s vocal command, and the musical muscle is effortlessly melded. Which then has you heading back to the beginning of the record and realizing they’d hooked you from that very first tune.

Palladino and Church may drown their sorrows in a pool of gloomy effects, but they still make even the most heartbreaking sentiments sound sweet.

By existing at their own preferred pace, PHOX’s wonderful inability to conform to anyone else’s standards is what forces listeners to slowly digest their subtly multi-layered sounds. PHOX may be self-sufficient enough to do without your love, but it certainly deserves it.

Deerhoof Vs. Evil is a stylishly composed work done from four gifted musicians who are more than happy to be sarcastically snarling at you the whole time.

Despite these retro touches, there’s something modern about the album’s ability to shrug off heartbreak, to grab victory from the jaws of defeat and then kick defeat in the jaw for being such a dick.

Feel Something is never anything less than enthralling in its mushy melodies and gossamer vocals that’ll have many crushing on this record through the cold months.

Songs will reward repeated listens, and firmly establishes Deptford Goth as a talent to keep an eye on.

An hour-long exploration of the group's first full-length work that is every bit as diverse as the artists chosen to work on it and as iron-dense and deeply bassocentric as the original.

Sahel Folk is a steadily moving work of clean sound not typically found in live works.