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.

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

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.

Too Bright is a near immaculate work. It’s bold but vulnerable and finds Hadreas taking risks in structure, content and sound.

Harmonicraft isn't just the best Torche release: It's a contender for one of the best loud rock releases of the 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.

Hauschka’s ingenuity to rework his instrument into a entire orchestra is astounding. But his ability to avoid the usual, overtly romantic notions of forgotten cities and instead replace it with a portrait of refined desolation is equally impressive.

Where For Emma, Forever Ago thrived on its sparseness, the new record's sound is richly and carefully layered.

Blake and Childs have no need to prove why they're considered some of the U.K.'s best songwriters and musicians, but Jonny does just that.

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.

You’ll be hard pressed to find another album that’s this much fun to crawl inside.

It will give you, near exactly, what you put into it. That’s what makes Nepenthe relevant: its masterfully complex compositions come across as simplistic; they’re accessibly intellectual.

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.

With her experiences and experimentation, she has combined and refined her sound to make it something that is similar and yet totally separate from anything she’s done before. St. Vincent isn’t afraid of being different or taking risks, and thinks we shouldn’t be either.

The Dap-Kings prove once again to be an almost mind-bogglingly crisp backing band, with tickingly taught percussion, sticky bass lines and sweat-inducing brass. But it’s Jones, of course, who holds together every song with her now-classic vox.

The perfect concoction of guitar riffs, synthesizer wails, the mullet, 1980s reverb and two awesome animals, the dinosaur and the walrus.

It's a wise, mature labyrinth of an album that's both filled with vibrant life and haunted by death.

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 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.”

Luckily, Picture You Staring does deliver on the promise of its lead single.

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

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.

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.

July’s strongest points come when Nadler has the most room to stretch her vocal muscles.

The songs are catchy and celebratory in every way we could hope, and what’s more, this album itself is a cause for celebration.

On the whole, So It Goes covers a wide range of ground musically, sometimes making it hard to comprehend as a cohesive piece in its entirety. By doing so however, Ratking has made a rap album that is truly fitting for the modern New York.

A passive 12 song set that toes the line between nostalgic sadness and bright optimism with remarkable ease.

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.

While Light Up Gold's re-release is quite literally nothing new, it's sure to garner a rash of deserved credit this time around, opening Parquet Courts to a wider audience that can further foster the appreciation of this excellent album.

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.

Space Is Only Noise is a paradox. It's a dance album that can't be danced to, a lounge album that you actually want to listen to, but most importantly, it's an electronic album with emotion.

We Come From The Same Place is an album that often opts for the direct over the obscure, but taken as a whole it evokes something difficult to articulate about life and love. Both musically and lyrically, this album serves as definitive proof that this band is on a roll.

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.

More than ever he seems to accept his differences and embrace them, making an album that is more a solid work of art than anything previous.

Zoo is a bleak record, but through prolonged exposure it can begin to feel like a place you want to stay.

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.

Foxygen is never overpowered by its influences.

This album is clearly not one you would want to put on in the background of your next party. In every aspect (its forms, melodies, instrumentation, etc.) it is a challenging and engaging hour of music.

Tear The Fences Down is open and inviting, and it's hard not to be pulled in by its verve and genuine sincerity.

Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave will do more than satisfy existing fans of the band; new fans too would do well to start here.

Some of the best parts of The Lion's Roar are when the Söderbergs harmonize together.

It may have taken three years for Go! Pop! Bang! to see the light, but fortunately, in Rye Rye's case, she has only gotten better with age.

You can enjoy Salad Days for its unadorned flow and easygoing weirdness, or you can stop, reflect and be moved by its fresh honesty. It’s worthwhile either way.

Despite a new sense of freedom, Ebert carefully crafts the album to keep a good balance between a full sound layered with an array of instruments and vocals to simpler textures that showcase just one element of the music.

I Am Gemini marks a brave and experimental turn in a new direction, but at the same time it's a nod to the old-in the best and least wallowing way.

The group's stab at human emotion is a smashing success because it's coming from a real place: the death of former band member Beau Velasco.

Black Lips puts on a hell of a show on Arabia Mountain, and it doesn't even need riots and stage diving to keep you interested.

The album’s 15 tracks don’t quite reach the 40-minute mark, but each track has a unique identity that both stands alone yet slips into the narrative of Xen.

With No Mythologies To Follow, MØ has established herself within an emerging circle of powerful pop dominatrixes but with her own distinct sound full of versatility and vitality.

Man Man has an image to uphold, and it does that while refining its focus. The group has moved forward conceptually but at times still sounds like the trained animals and clowns from the circus that ambushed the orchestral pit, and that's just fine.

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.

A clean, laid-back production and ambitious lyrical themes.

The result is honed and sophisticated, unique yet smartly referential.

It’s a cracked, smart and surprisingly powerful album, you just have to listen a bit closer than usual to hear what it’s trying to say.

Montonix's latest installment is just as spirited as its live shows, but doesn't include all the sweat and fear of burning to death.

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.

Mount Moriah remains committed to a sparse, skeletal vein of Americana that values precision over ambition. That’s not to imply the album isn’t a rich and varied listening experience, but its ambiguities and complexities are shaded in charcoal, not paint.

Listen to this album with the volume cranked.

Lese Majesty is a seriously weird album, but it succeeds in calling the genre’s current established order to question and challenging what it means for something to be considered a hip hop record, all while remaining sonically pleasing enough to keep the listener engaged with the ambitious message that Shabazz Palaces is adamant at getting across.

The simplicity of the instrumentation is what perfects the record.

Under Streetlight Glow is a collection of intimate songs written by Spencer during film school when she aspired to place her music in her film projects.

[Beware And Be Grateful expertly fuses] the complex rock of the band's early EPs with elegant, polished pop.

That all changes with Nursing Home, as production legend Steve Albini sharpens the group's teeth into the fangs Let's Wrestle was always meant to bare.

Ten years into their career, Psychic Ills have tamed themselves, refining into a form, but the result remains a hypnotic set of songs that consistently achieve an introspective and cerebral kind of psychedelia.

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.

This is a record that reminds us of one of music's most overlooked, modest--but perhaps, most sensible--aesthetic couplings.

Telling The Truth is an hour of purely enjoyable songs that could have been, and are luckily not, lost gems.

As Hauschka takes his orchestral style into this new musical sphere, his music demonstrates the constant evolution ignited by combinations of diverse musical influence.

Goodbye Bread shows Segall's calmer side, but the frantic instrumentals, heavy guitar riffs and rough-around-the-edges sound remain, betraying his decidedly harder roots and showing that Segall hasn't gone totally soft.

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.

The results of these bursts of levity are as stark as Quran verses scrawled on Vegas brothel walls and recall why Sumach Ecks remains a rare, unsettling voice.

It has continued in the same direction and spirit in Songs From A Zulu Farm, reinvigorating the soul of its isicathamiya (a sort of Zulu a cappella) harmonies and style, while also reviving the songs that leader Joseph Shabalala grew up singing.

Positive Force will uplift you.

Every move on the album is intentional and nothing is unchartered territory for Zammuto.

Despite the heartbreak overtones, Belong is not a depressing or down-tempo album. It remains upbeat and concludes in a manner that ties up the loose ends of the story, all while raiding your new-wave album collection for inspiration.

It’s good right away, but it doesn’t make sense until later. Gist Is might take patience, but it pays off.

Throughout DSU, Alex G fills in gaps and layers over his songs’ simple backbones with shy yet enthralling tweaks and shuffles.

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 home stretch of the album is where the band really opens up, unleashing haunting melodies and intricate movements that create a soundtrack for a virtual fever dream.

An album that's incredibly incendiary and challenging (while still entertaining).

There might appear to be a hodge-podge mish-mash of genres here, with artist credits ranging from U.K. funk producer Lil Silva to hip-hop’s heady Ghostpoet (who’s Season Change with Doucoura is another album stand-out), but the blending of these somewhat disparate sounds is seamless.

Thank You has made an intentionally heavy album that provokes calls for more than a passive ear looking to fill silence. Listeners should expect to involve themselves in music in order to truly find what lies beneath the fuzz and distortion.

The chemistry is electric, but Hair's most rowdy, rewarding moments occur when Segall and Presley's respective genre sensibilities clash instead of compromise.

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.

[A] fine new Joanna Gruesome record.

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

Shriek is a refreshing dive into the ambiguous depths of the indie-pop pool, made possible by two musicians who have shown great conviction in revamping their sound without ditching the fundamentals that have made them such a powerhouse.

David Byrne and Annie Clark (and to an undetermined extent, St. Vincent producer John Congleton) achieve a remarkable symbiosis on Love This Giant.

Listening to Galore kind of feels like growing up, as it perfectly balances a combo of bittersweet nostalgia, hopeful optimism and an impending sense of something bigger and better to come.

Working again with her loyal producer Richard Swift, they master what many think is impossible and maybe even contradictory; they create a serious and intellectual pop album.

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

His luxuriant loop-based instrumentation on display is easy to lose yourself in, making your life seem, for just a moment, much more epic than it actually is.

In fact, a lot of the album may be confused for being from another time period. But nostalgia works in the band's favor on this first release--even though it wears its influences right on its sleeve.

Those looking for simple, safe rock probably won't like The Plot Against Common Sense. But if you want to think while you thrash, give this one a spin.

The Dirty Projectors are still fantastic weirdos making fantastically weird music, but Swing Lo Magellan humanizes them by letting you see through to their heartstrings.

Thrice's latest, Major/Minor, is one of those elusive, much-needed types of LPs: urgent, aching and filled with heaviness-like pouring-liquid-steel-into-a-cast-iron-mug-and-chugging-it-straight heavy.

The sedation blurs the transition of space and time, and Mangan skillfully plays with the passing of each to create unexpected pacing that adds to the overall feel, giving the album moments that range from subdued melancholy to impassioned rock.

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.