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

The album lags a bit on a few songs where it sounds like one half of the group had the majority of the say during the writing process. These instances are few and far between though, leaving the rest of the album as an intriguing concoction of two bands coming from polar opposite sides of the musical spectrum and meeting in the middle to make something new.

Certain moments, like the opening and closing tracks, reach a little further past doo-woppish hippie funk into Ravi Shankar super-hippie sitar and ambient electro, suggesting a potential for experimentation in the second year of the Stepkids' existence.

Sun Airway may be losing some of its psychedelic characteristics that attracted many of its original fans, but the new sounds allow its lyrical creativity and musical experimentation to grow without confinement.

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

Putrifiers II is not the masterpiece TOS fans may have been hoping for. But it is another piece that let's Thee Oh Sees maintain the role of reigning masters.

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.

The past four albums have focused mainly on the singer/songwriter. On Tripper, Johnson turns that formula around and focuses everything outward-the lyrical themes, the more-involved instrumentation and the mood.

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.

Musically the album is a quick burst of 11 bubbly songs that never take a dark turn or venture into a minor key.

It’s an admiringly unorganized attempt at turning it up to 11, where both digits are represented by a middle finger.

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

The tracks are truly hidden gems, kept from mass appraisal via DIY distribution methods in the '80s, home-recorded cassettes and vinyl. Vasicka and Peanut Butter Wolf's efforts here revive and catalog some truly infectious would-be synth classics.

But because of its uneven idiosyncrasies and its cheeky self-flagellation, At Best Cuckhold sounds like Avi Buffalo’s coming of age story.

The vision of Southern California terrain Barfod molds in Salton Sea seems strangely undead and haunting even at its most jubilant moments, creating a chilling sense of something epic and part-human.

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.

The album, titled Grace/Confusion, offers the chillwave sound that Hawk is known for but with a fuller, crisper and more melodic take.

Instinct is an electro-pop album, but it's got that New Order-style darkness that gives it a comforting weight; this is that kind of bummer music that will make you dance.

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.

Sunshine shows a strong working dynamic between the two members of Talk Normal that can only continue to strengthen.

His delivery is raw, at times off-key, almost too rugged. Despite those lapses, the song retains the album’s overarching concept, which favors music in its most natural form.

If you're fording a desert highway at dawn, these songs will get you across. They're consuming and expansive, steady and constant.

The Family Sign finds Atmosphere back on his old level of sharp self-criticism, but the album is also a step forward for the whole group.

This album has an eccentric palette and shows off Streten’s wide-ranging tastes; if you can’t find something to enjoy here, you’re not looking hard enough.

The album seems like it had the fat trimmed off in the studio and leaves the listener with a leaner-than-usual, but still enjoyable production. You’ll leave feeling full, but not stuffed.

Not exactly a massage, but a wind-down from the tumult that is Ultima II Massage.

Surrender To The Fantasy is a reminder that Magik Markers is sort of an absurdist band at heart, willing to moon their audience and then have an intellectual conversation about it.

The band aims for epic heights but all too often goes with the assumption that grandness is necessitated solely by noise. That said, there are glimmers of great things to come all over this record.

It's hard to tell if the seemingly random, incoherent screeching and shouting from Siegel is meant to be a gimmick, a cop out or a totally genuine mode of expression. Whatever it may be, it's working.

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.

What was once an instrumental electronic project has now, in the hands of Joseph Mount, become an inventive, layered, modern pop act, perfectly capable of standing on its own and defending its place among the genre’s very best.

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.

On an album so concerned with straddling the invisible borders between the material and the spiritual, Wexler's disembodied voice becomes most powerful when seeping through space like a ghost in the machine, mysterious and ubiquitous as the existential questions he sings to life.

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.

Despite the loftier academic allusions, the band’s music is most affective when dancing on the peppier side.

There are more standalone tracks here, ones with memorable melodies and sing-along choruses coexisting with the band’s fatalistic lyrics and jarring instrumental twists.

2009's Dark Rift had its grating, overarching qualities, but Thee Physical sounds more streamlined; however, this album isn't polished to perfection.

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

Aesthethica is jugular-grabbing black metal-startling, complex... and also quite long.

Over the course of 14 songs, when the emotional range is the difference between singing, "I just wanna get really high" and "I feel like shooting up," the content [getting wasted and having a good time] can wear on you--or, much like Andrew W.K.'s party music before it, it can fuel you.

Both aspects of the album exemplify great music played by great musicians and should be anything but a disappointment.

Even at its most far-out, the songs on Culture Of Fear always seem to know where they're going, even if they choose to take the scenic route to get there.

CSP original tracks like "Mean Visa Kmean Bai (Have Visa, No Have Rice)" are a testament to the groovy (and peaceful) "golden age" of Khmer pop.

An unequivocally excellent record that never bores. If you've yet to explore this strangely intoxicating genre of music, I would suggest Sidi Toure's latest album as a perfect starting point: accessible enough for immediate appreciation, yet complex enough for repeat listens.

Though Loyal is a nail-biter at its core, the journey Alexander takes you on with this album ends with calm.

III is an album so methodically arranged yet lawless at times that even its more flatlined moments play an integral role in its rebellion.

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.

The meat of Still Living isn't its quirks or vibes-it's the songwriting itself, and since the album fills two LPs and almost an hour of play-time, it has a whole lot of that.

In the end, the album proves that it is the night that is the king of the dark.

This lack of clear signposts can make navigating the nightmare-laden second half of Dream On a bit more difficult as the sound effects pile up and the tracks get denser.

All three members take to the LP's nine tracks with post-punk minimalism and as tracks draw on and the elements begin to take on a cohesive shape, it appears that by attacking with less, Little Joy inevitably comes together as more.

Ultimately, under the unifying sound of Casiokids' youthful pop, African, Asian and Norweigan influences combine in blissful harmony to create the ultimate musical expedition.

The Slasher House is like going to one of those haunted cornfield mazes around Halloween time. As you sneak through the maze, things are a little scary, and you’re not always sure what will happen next. But it’s exciting, fun, and once you realize you obviously will make it out alive, you want to keep going back in.

By not exerting himself, Hynes manages to craft an easy-to-listen, easy-to-enjoy album that will be spun as a change of pace.

Earle's tendency to wander might be more of a problem if the accompanying music wasn't so intimate and alluring.

Whether sweet, creepy, epic or hilarious, all 13 tracks on the album represent Faust's ability to dismantle the structures inherently embedded in our musical expectations and free us into a world of unique and thoughtful organized layers of sound.

Sucre Du Sauvage portrays the contrast between the two sides of Quintron's musical identity but ultimately unites joyful songwriting with his darker mad scientist persona.

This is a strong indie rock release that further establishes PS I Love You’s sound, improving upon it but not really do much to shift it. Maybe that’s a good thing though, because this album is a great listen.

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.

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.

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.

Can’t Love is a sonic semblance of moving from a bustling warehouse in gentrifying Brooklyn to wandering around alone on a culdesac in the rust belt and wondering what the next stage is.

Despite its excesses and missteps, the album gives Big Boi room to be Big Boi.

The unpredictable mix incites some strange transitions, occasionally cutting off promising grooves to the album's detriment ("Groundskeeper Rag," especially, peaks prematurely). But what Family Perfume lacks in momentum it makes up for in brevity.

Though Hemsworth’s style tends to favor chirping cheeriness, Alone For The First Time is solidly a winter album, and it’s just what we needed right now.

This latest iteration of gauzy grrrl garage rock does the sound right by tightening the hooks and adding more forceful rhythm.

For the eccentric young artist, James Pants once again makes the statement that Pants' music has made many times before-he creates to celebrate his bizarre style, carefree of the expectations of mainstream audiences and trends.

They leave Soft Moon's second album on a multi-faceted, adventurous note, though one that remains dark and eerie.

Attention Please could not be further away from Heavy Rocks. The album is characterized by elegant violin, delicate vocals and dreamy guitar distortion.

Twin Sister has a sound, a well-produced, dreamy, indie synth-pop, slightly funky sound, and In Heaven sees the band blend teaspoons of different genres into that mix.

Kimbra's voice is strong, her beats are catchy, and after listening to the full 55-minute album, you're not quite sure what just happened, but you know you kind of liked it.

While the production and moodiness of the record are strong, the emotion that made much of their previous records such a pleasure has been a bit sapped.

Despite its party-hard attitude, Natural History has a thoughtful, searching soul.

[A] sprite, beguiling collection of songs.

It’s equally as innovative as it is mundane, equally as ambitious as it is safe, and equally as fun as it is tedious. Well, the last one isn’t quite true, this album is a ton of fun.

The Flower Lane is a testament to Mondanile's growth as an artist that translates a prolonged history of potential into a complete and well-crafted work.

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

The songs on Champions might not add up to the best record proper, but those guys in front of the stage probably could care less. They've got some more fuel for the party, and at the end of the day, that's all that really matters.

Without giving up its commitment to obfuscation or its sense of mystery, the band has crafted a fun, playful and eclectic collection of songs that reveal a more focused, melody-driven approach to writing and a surprising level of thematic coherence.

Too much of the album feels as if she’s chosen the comfort of being back home, retreating from the brief spotlight she’d been slowing stepping toward since 2008.

Even though After The Disco lacks some boldness and experimentation, the record most definitely has its strong moments and, like its predecessor, it’ll please fans from either party who will most likely feel content from the first listen.

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.

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.

With few exceptions, these are a solid collection of dance-rock songs and rock-dance tracks-Zonoscope represents the evolution of a band that knows what it's doing.

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

Ontario Gothic is an amazingly precise, contextually aware work that’s very easy to listen to as just beautiful music, but it’s also an album that asks the listener to try for more.

After a year-long medical hiatus, the band returns with Outside, an album that shows the group putting much more effort into melody and song construction but holding onto the same energy and dark mood as before.

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.

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.

It’s altogether more synchronized, an album that pulls you along into its wonderfully mixed-up world without getting lost.

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

Within what the Black Lips claim is the their most rootsy release are sly, glam-tastic details dished out with a sometimes laggard energy. It makes for an album that digs in deeper with each listen, like cool new boots trudging through mud.

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.

By blending past and present (and future), Daft Punk has created an album that speaks not only to the movie it scores, but also to the evolution of music that has allowed them to create the album in the first place.

Having developed feelers on both ends, the partnership's combined strengths via production chops and band practice really lend to the record's debut maturity.

That's the type of music that the band knocks out of the park: music for lovers to do romantic things to. On Codes And Keys, those lovers are encouraged to be happy-an emotion that sometimes has evaded Death Cab.

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

Most tracks on Larceny aren't exactly catchy, but the band's incessant enthusiasm and punchy delivery show that there's more to good music than earworms.