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.

Like many psych-heavy records today, the album doesn’t say much lyrically. The lack of deep lyrical content is an easy detail to overlook due to Pond’s complex execution of instrumentation.

Whether you’re going on four years steady or trolling OkCupid nightly, Exhibitionists will hit you like a guilty post-dream high.

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.

With a mixture of electronic guitars, field recordings and slight percussion, the album is extremely peaceful--maybe a little too peaceful.

Their sound is more pop than R&B or electronic, more domestic than futuristic, and more formulaic than innovative. But it works for them. It’s accessible electro-pop music that you can’t help but be smitten with.

Love Is The Law sounds like what would happen if The Memories took Lou Reed’s “serious musician” face and splattered it with neon-glow paint after a particularly inspirational train ride.

As depressing as it may seem for Defeater to tell a story with no happy ending, it’s only by confronting those feelings of disillusionment and hopelessness head-on that they achieve some sort of catharsis. Letters Home does just that.

The hype experienced by budding artists like Scott can be unsettling. Generally, it elicits polarizing reactions: listeners are either staunch supporters or fervent detractors. Seldom is there an in-between. In spite of that, after digesting Scott’s debut LP, in-between is exactly where I feel.

It’s that ability to toggle between the doom and gloom of post-punk and the restless energy of fuzz-pop that makes Jinx such a gripping, vital listen.

Now we have Street Punk, less than 30 minutes of raw, hasty, goof-garage, with not so much as a coy wink.

This is the first Fuck Buttons album that feels like post-invasion music. Victory lingers, but it also stings.

It’s an album for a seductive but thoughtful loft party.

Home Life follows Andrew Cedermark’s displacement in this world, searching for answers as he rides a train with no set destination in sight; and along the way he was able to create a rollicking, bemused album that highlights his skills as a lyricist, allowing us to join in on the journey.

It’s a darker, angrier album and it shows that the duo is adventurous, but the experiments don’t quite cohere.

It’s exciting to listen to an artist just go for it, and that’s obviously what Me Moan is: an attempt to synthesize genres of music that don’t quite belong together.

The album has an easy-going pace to it, opening up a little more with each graceful transition and quiet revelation.

Aside from pushy cuts like “95 ‘Til Infinity” and “Amethyst Rockstar,” there are moments when some of the songs on Summer Knights are so uniform that they end up feeling like one exhaustive freestyle with much ado about nothing. But whenever Joey’s delivery gets a little stagnant, he’ll quickly fill a track with a winning bit of introspection and his signature throwback ‘90s flow comes to rescue.

Major Arcana sounds like a girl’s (or dude’s) animated beer-soaked bar vent and its crafty delivery makes it entertaining, therapeutic, and universal.

Killer Mike gets the most quotable lines, turning simple statements into punchlines and investing each syllable with a sense of rhythmic possibility; you’re never sure exactly which word in a given line he might decide to pluck like a stray beard hair.... Despite abandoning some of the more layered and mannered production flourishes of his solo work, El-P still packs these songs with stray details--the roar of a tiger, those gorgeous organs, the squeal of a dolphin--that can be jarring on first listen but gradually reveal themselves to be essential.

Of the two rappers here, Killer Mike gets the most quotable lines, turning simple statements into punchlines and investing each syllable with a sense of rhythmic possibility.... Despite abandoning some of the more layered and mannered production flourishes of his solo work, El-P still packs these songs with stray details--the roar of a tiger, those gorgeous organs, the squeal of a dolphin--that can be jarring on first listen but gradually reveal themselves to be essential.

This may not be as exciting as people expected, but it’s detailed, coherent, and worth a spin.

In addition to sharpening the lyrical content, Soft Will has some of the group’s complex and multifaceted bits of rock assemblage. There’s a confidence and control to the playing on this album.

Lightning Dust finally sound like what the scientific matter of something called “lightning dust” should sound like: a lull after a thunder clap, a sharp beam of light, something that sprinkles down after the heated rush, something organically beautiful. And in its beauty, it hurts.

In his honest debut Id, Chris Laufman, the mind behind the joyous noise-pop project Wise Blood, nobly outlines the neurotic impulses of those of us who don’t have a seat at Miley Cyrus’s lunch table.

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.

With Love is by no means a terrible album, but the bar that Dedication set was in no way reached. It’s worth giving a listen, but be prepared to edit it into a condensed and sensical format.

It doesn’t push boundaries in the same way that Feel It Break busted up notions of genres, but its smooth production stabilizes the lyrics’ emotional bombast.

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.

It’s clear from even the most half-hearted listen that Spectrals have found their niche space on Sob Story.

Half Of Where You Live sidesteps the dreaded sophomore slump by staying true to the impulse that guided Gold Panda’s initial recordings: honesty.

There’s no twist ending here--just another excellent Boards Of Canada album.

Sunbather is every bit as explosive and engaging as any metal album you’re likely to hear all year.

Nothing on Settle is left wanting. Disclosure’s debut full-length, after a series of tight and well-curated EPs, has high points as high as any record this year.

The record is engineered so that he never has to. Listen past the last track and be introduced to Acid Rap all over again as a voice promises on loop that it’ll be “Even better than the last time.”

As always, the darkness is cut with moments of mirth, even though no one will mistake this for a dance party soundtrack.

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.

Everything feels full and complete, with each song taking a life of it’s own, while still contributing equally as much to the larger concept.

The lyrical and musical content of IV Play doesn’t stray far from the Top 40 standards of mind-numbing repetition and stories about getting high and having sex.

They’ve clearly set out to be innovators not duplicators, and Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is yet another one of their projects that crosses electronic music boundaries and produces something extraordinary.

They make albums that make you squint and stare at the floor and convince yourself you like it, maybe. And somehow, you’ll find yourself listening until you’re sure you do.

While many artists choose to play it safe on their debut album, Doldrums has decided to take us on an untidy journey into his own headspace. Lesser Evil is an unflinching and unashamed document of that trip, like a travelogue of a doomed vacation through Woodhead’s brain.

This is the aching beauty of Obsidian: its ability to be so matter-of-fact and reposition the taciturn as commonplace.

If there’s something holding the album back, it’s that the band is almost too efficient and unforgiving in its editorial choices.

On a superficial level, Trouble Will Find Me, the National’s latest full-length LP, probably won’t convert any listeners who’ve written off the band’s music as boring.... Of course, the power’s in the poetics, and Berninger concocts some truly heart-wrenching images this time around.

Unbound by convention, Daft Punk seamlessly included whatever the hell they wanted on this record. Not just because they’re musically sublime robots from a future of hovercrafts and Judy Jetson discotheques, but because Daft Punk knows when to edit and when to fall free.

This is a remarkably self-assured album, precise in its themes, particular in its language and modest in its ambitions.

The album lacks one basic fundamental of general pop music: lyrical hooks. The primary reason why they’re lacking though is because Wasner’s voice blends so well with Ehrens’ synth hooks that she is at times barely distinguishable from them.

Although the dark, pulsing beauty of “Katla” feels like an appropriate close, somehow No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers feels too brief in relation to the depth of its emotions.

Vampires Of The Modern City stands to become the group’s Paul’s Boutique, raising the bar from being a fun but safe band to breaking ground ahead of their peers.

The album jumps all over the place, showing little interest in staying true to a single genre or style, but even in the darker, heavier moments these songs are unified by an urge to please and the untamable desire to move onto the next thing as soon as possible.

[A] sprite, beguiling collection of songs.

Pure X may not be particularly pure anymore, but it’s a pleasure to have them down in the muck with the rest of us.

While maintaining her space as neither and sexpot diva or a grossly doe-eyed ingenue, Little Boots remains unapologetically sincere in her words, and the crowd will still mainline the disco beats and, save for a few lulls, dance until we die.

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

His ability to craft and tell stories in a captivating way has not gone unnoticed, and while Prisoner Of Conscious will not go down as his best album, it does display how versatile of an artist he is.

Deerhunter wins more than it loses on Monomania.

You may find yourself cringing along to these missteps, but the album also a pretty fair split between between good and bad.

This new album of old ideas hits hardest at its softest, most melancholy moments.

Elephant Stone is a thoughtful and concise album that showcases not only precise musicianship from all members of the band but a distinct growth in songwriting.

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.

By teaming up with the visionary mastermind Adrian Younge he’s created an inventive and thrilling album that will go down as one of his best.

Having spent so much time racing from one experiment to the next, it’s fun to hear the band settle in and take stock in its own legacy.

Thematically, the album is rich and varied, but there is a slight inability to maintain a through-line musically that can prove to be jarring on occasion.

If Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was the band hitting its stride, then it’s likely that Bankrupt! is the music playing during its medal ceremony. It’s not a radical step forward but it’s not a regression either.

It unravels itself while unraveling you at the same time. It’s happy-go-lucky on the surface, more mellowed out underneath.

The sounds are bigger on Junip, but it’s the audible give and take among the performers this time that makes the album intimate.

After so much rapid reinvention, he’s found himself stalled in the middle of a transformation. In his constant quest to learn new tricks, he’s only ended up chasing his tail.

Floating Coffin sees Dwyer and company pulling off another successful paradigm shift, a step toward the sinister but with ample amounts of the flower-power charm that made them such favorites among psych snobs in the first place.

Charli XCX isn’t smashing any glass ceilings in pop; she’s perfectly roughing up the edges of a long-standing mold.

While the band’s return to its gruffer roots on Desperate Ground has its redeeming qualities, the reliance on pop-punk catchiness feels like a crutch.

For all its ambitious digressions, conceptual gambles and silly experiments, it’s that spirit of adventure that makes the album so visceral.

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.

It would be incorrect to say that the duo is pushing “weird” to its sonic limits; “curiosity,” mostly in the space of the extremes of human personality, would be most apropos.

Despite the length of the album, it’s gratifying to cup your hands over your eyes and squint into Vile’s self-effacing and self-reflexive world. There’s something invigorating about hearing a mind loop back on itself in constant pursuit of a question it never even knew it asked.

Blake’s best moments on Overgrown occur when he finds that balance between the upbeat hip-hop rhythms and the down-tempo acoustics that so brilliantly parallel his voice.

This album has the potential to appeal to imaginative listeners with a wide range of tastes.

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.

On their full-length debut, Milk Music keeps those influences intact with raw, warm sludgy rock that brings them out of the fuzzy shell of 2010′s Beyond Living EP helping to secure a unique personal identity that respectfully builds on a classic sound.

The emphasis on reacting to criticism and persona-maintenance occasionally overshadows the significant developments and leaps Tyler has made as a producer and musician on this record.

Although it meanders for periods, Caveman’s self-titled is a well-crafted collection of songs that feels assured of itself and captures a consistent temperament of joyful exploration.

Bradley’s sophomore album, Victim Of Love, burns hard and slow.

Bonobo has given us a great collection of interlacing melodic songs that have real depth and distinction.

Still branded with his punchy, pop-punk melodies, as well as venturing back to the fuzzier roots in several instances, the real issue with Afraid Of Heights is a lack of constraint.

The trio’s past experiences may explain how it manages to exercise a seasoned talent for both variety and control.... The two “Recover” remixes, by Austria’s Cid Rim and U.K.-based Curxes, are filler. They’re pleasant on their own, but neither can hold up to the original.

They expand upon the thrills of the last record with acerbic aplomb, catching us unaware with hooks and then relentlessly, lovingly, plugging away at the daily, death-y grind.

They’ve tossed a simple, solid album in our lap, thrown up the deuce and strolled out the door, take it or leave it.

The Invisible Way may not be the most significant brick, but its sturdiness is something to be admired.

A bright artist displaying skill and youthful eagerness--no shtick.

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.

The emotive howls of their pub rock provide catchy blasts of energy that are more familiar than groundbreaking but who’s quality should not be discounted for failing to meet the hyperbole that preceded them.

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.

As Phosphorescent continues to evolve as a project, widening its range and sharpening its lyrical acumen, that commitment has become more apparent, culminating in his best album yet.

Full of memories and unanswered questions, Wyoming asserts a sense of limitless depth, as the duo’s members seem to have developed a greater understanding of one another than on their debut.

Despite its upbeat personality and general happiness, the album doesn’t have a distinct personality or identity.

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

Powers is going all in on this one, inviting you into his Wondrous Bughouse and daring to pour light into an often dark place.

Smoothing an epochal shift with a sonic mix of new and old isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Arguably, the band did the same thing when it cast aside the spacey sounds of Leave Home for the alt-leaning Open Your Heart. But on New Moon, the transition is rocky, more of a cop-out than a compromise.