If each track is taken on its own merits, it's apparent that these girls have real talent and there is some creative indie rock here.

The whole collection is bound together with such charming confidence and good humour that you’ll easily forget any of the limitations--real or potential--of the unaccompanied unplugged concept that could have been Colin Meloy’s undoing.

Despite including a few hallmarks of a groundbreaking record (experimentalism, eclecticism, ambitious), Wrath of Circuits is still not an easy listen for those people who don't wet their pants at every new Dischord or Touch and Go release.

A consistently heady and visceral shot of classic Mudhoney: angry, fuzzy guitars, propulsive rhythms, and sarcastically-jaded lyrics.

While tuneful and solid, [In Time To Voices] is not as spectacularly primal as their initial offering Box Of Secrets.

Blood Red Shoes still rocks out on most tracks, all riled up and restless, keeping the rhythms chunky and choppy on standouts like the defiantly-played and shouted "Light It Up," the revved-up guitar and drums of "Don't Ask," and the guitar jags and slamming drums on "Keeping It Close."

What Franz Ferdinand have proven is that not only do they make impressive albums but that they are capable of trying out new sounds with great skill. It’s still the same band we fell in love with, only they have incorporated more sounds into their arsenal and with songs as good as these, it’s a welcome addition.

All the Saints pound out lumbering hard rock. And it sounds good.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon Soundtrack is an excellent album of cool songs featuring some of today’s celebrated indie artists.

Big World can be counted on to deliver a handful of jangly ditties and ho-hum, dreary interludes that don’t demand much from the listener beyond a slow drag on a cigarette while it spins in the background.

The Joggers’ struggle against depression yields song after song of emotionally rending rock 'n roll, and the album tells the gritty tale of their fight against this epic beast.

Fans of previous M83 albums should still enjoy Saturdays as it doesn't veer too far from the template established on the past few albums.

Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid has enough substantive quirks amongst the tiresome new-wave signposts to make this album a reasonable yet flawed artefact that is more than just the sum of its quaint parts.

The North continues to show off their skill and while nothing earth-shattering will be found here, it's something to fully bask in.

Suuns have given us an unexpected bit of orchestrated but shambolic rock on this album, and because the band isn't afraid to try new things and put things together oddly we may be witnessing the birth of something grand.

Evangelicals certainly have the potential to push through and make amazing music--it’s just too much hit and miss here.

Fans of The Rhumb Line are unlikely to go head over heels for The Orchard, but Ra Ra Riot's latest is still among the most clever and thoughtful indie pop heard this year.

All we really want right now are some jams to soundtrack these days of eternal sunshine and oceanfront revelries. On these demands, Washed Out delivers in spades.

Honestly, there is no precedent for this album.

Out of its many blues like qualities the one that I see potentially defining the album as a whole is its rawness.

It’s a bit of a tightrope walk for any female rock stars though, retaining femininity while cranking up the amps and pushing the blues rock envelope right to the edge of the table, but Deap Vally sound and look like they know exactly what they’re about.

Despite the possibility for a scatterbrained collection, the album holds strong and each track maintains a certain commonality through the writing and the emotional build within.

And Then You Shoot Your Cousin is as brilliantly strong as Undun, with a multi-faceted story that slowly unravels.

Whether it's a fast-paced and crisply played rocker or a slower, aching ballad, Broken Records are adept at drawing us in with either style as Sutherland bellows with a coarse voice that can be both passionately rousing and intimately reflective.

Based on the simple songwriting and the nauseating lyrical content, This Addiction is sad, and to the die-hard Alkaline Trio fans such as myself, it will greatly disappoint.

Where the Aislers Set really create a distinction between themselves and their contemporaries is through the unpredictably imaginative arrangements, bolstered by Linton's truly enigmatic melodic sense.

It's clear that he and his band took a lot of time to nurture and develop each song, and the result is superb collection of affective and elegant pop songs.

For now Bundick has accomplished many great feats and with Anything in Return, the first great album of 2013.

Hippies is hardly song focused, the record's 16 tracks tend to mesh together into a blurry, tape-fueled haze--there aren't any obvious highlights here.

Grand Archives is still an impressively modern take on American indie; taking the best from Southern Indie rock and tossing over some modern effects and innovative musicianship to create a genuinely genre bending project.

While this most recent release does not equal the shimmering weight of Bows and Arrows, it has more than enough potency to stand on its own.

Get Awkward is mostly more of the same but with more hooks, more wit, and a hell of a lot more emotion.

“Something Hyper” and “Xian Undertaker” are exceptional and worth hearing. However, the rest of the album provides very little payoff.

While nothing on The Forgotten Arm is brand new for her, it's a natural evolution from what her fans have gotten used to, the minor-key laments and regrets of Bachelor No. 2 and Lost in Space.

While it may lack the aggressive and occasionally caustic momentum of "Playing The Angel," Sounds Of The Universe succeeds primarily because of its ability to make a nostalgic nod to past successes while still looking to the future.

It's sometimes hard to push past the (at times) seriously sappy lyrics and focus on the music. Fortunately for us though, Eels are the focused ones here and have proven once again their acumen for crafting quirkily moody pop songs that are impossible not to like.

Day & Age isn’t a masterpiece but it ends up being their most consistent album to date and it shows true promise of growth and strength in their music.

As a whole, To Where The Wild Things Are is very much a headphones-record, as its richest details can only be absorbed with closer-than-close listening.

The album would be yet another trademark Strokes outing if not for its glaring inconsistency in the later tracks.

Adamson is certainly adept at replicating the sights and sounds of the Bond and Blaxploitation films that inspired him in his youth. But is he celebrating his passion or merely mocking it in a hamfisted fashion? Sadly if feels like too much of the latter, even if it is by accident.

It’s the sheen and almost reflexive attentiveness to commercial accessibility that’s placed on a good handful of the songs that can make them sometimes fail or falter or seem weaker than they truly are.

They put together nearly perfectly produced and arranged songs, tight and precise yet still urgent and fast.

A bravely uncompromising yet often richly rewarding affair all told.

The results are far better than you'd imagine.

Common Era is remarkable for a variety of reasons that transcend textual directness. It defies expectations in ways most musicians don't even conceive, let alone attempt.

While Nocturnes doesn’t have the immediate impact or supremely sticky quality of Little Boots’, AKA Victoria Hesketh’s, high-caliber dance-pop debut, Hands, it does display a slow-growing (Or is that glowing?) charm that rings true to the album’s muted title.

Like the music, there is always a vast amount of territory enclosed and in that same sense, Alpers covers a lot of ground with careful trepidation. The meticulous feel of the album stems from its creator and the calmness of the music is a sheer result of it.

If you aren't at least a little cozy to the sound commonly produced by Whitney and company, you certainly won't be any more into Jaguar Love. Well, that may not be totally accurate, as I can see this being some of most accessible stuff spawned by any Blood Brothers alumni.

Rather than break new ground, Rademaker, Losielle, and friends have chosen to have some fun making a record that would have sounded fantastic 20 years ago. While maybe not quite fantastic today, somehow it manages to sound fresh enough in 2004 that you’ll be glad you gave it a chance.

Neck of the Woods may not be album of the year material, but it's the best album in this band's catalog by a long shot.

The album magnifies both Meloy’s core songwriting and the group’s gifts for bold ambitious arrangements. This brings out some dynamic juxtapositions between simplicity and elaboration that serve proceedings in a refreshing fashion.

These aren't the most outlandish songs but they also aren't the most invasive either; it's all about how much you're willing to let go and enjoy pop music in one of its most honest states. And even if it doesn't move you, Animal Feelings will definitely have you grooving and shaking for quite some time.

Like their name, Wires Under Tension's music is fraught with restlessness, and in a music industry that still generally rewards and promotes the familiar and commonplace, a little agitation might be just what we need.

The result is slightly overlong and occasionally repetitive, but it’s also a determined sounding reappraisal of the abilities of the three musicians and also an album that could slide unnoticed into the myriad of Indie releases of the last decade, raising only one or two significant ripples as it does so.

Each of these tracks will peel your face off and serve as the equivalent of hooking your brain to a nuclear reactor.

[It] would be a shame for you to miss.

This truly is a beautiful collection.

Overall though, this is quite a solid and fun debut EP.

He has composed devastatingly clever lyrics to go with music that completely rocks out, tugs at your heartstrings, or both.

It's by no means a progressive statement for a band long revered for its innovation and influence, but Earth Division is still a fine compendium of Mogwai's prowess with more sedate atmospheres.

Overall, what could have been yet another cash-cow milker actually turns out to be a curious and compelling piece of therapy for Frank Black as a writer and performer.

With a few shining moments, the band seems like they've given up. Rather than pine over an album full of memorable hits, Damnesia falls short in many ways.

Folds' wit is less biting, but it's still present. And he's still got style.

It's hard to dislike this album because it is capably performed and the sounds and voices work up a dreamy headspace, but it's also difficult to be really enthusiastic about it.

Whilst this self-titled Mice Parade set may struggle to push Adam Pierce’s envelope much beyond a well-sealed blue-print, it does at least keep the momentum of his low-key career moving along at a respectable and occasionally unpredictable rate.

Ringle is easily one of the few that can do it so well and lucky us, Thistled Spring is an exemplary example of what folk music is capable of when done right.

An entrancing, accomplished, and often uplifting record that will be heralded by the time the semi-tropics of a British summer arrive. A triumphant return.

Based on the music alone, No World For Tomorrow, like all their work, is a phenomenal accomplishment and remarkable introduction of Progressive Rock into the mainstream cannon.

It's an irrefutable example of boilerplate rock and roll, and it feels completely awesome.

The brightest spot of this release comes in the form of the upbeat “Jinx,” where the band almost cracks a smile despite the subject matter. Even though the band comes from Brooklyn, the Sleater-Kinney vocalisms on “Jinx” only further Golden Triangle’s Seattle leanings.

Don’t relegate Inside Your Guitar to personal music players such as your PC or mp3 player. Make sure you give it a couple of attentive spins on the big stereo in order to fully enjoy it’s resonant beauty.

Those who enjoy his new approach will like the album, and those who long for his old days of guitar-driven power-pop will find some highlights that prove no matter how old Mould gets, he still is one of the most brilliant musicians and lyricists ever.

It’s a multi-layered album constantly shifting in mood and sound offering the listener much to explore.... The band struggle, however, to distinguish themselves from their influences and constantly fall under the shadow of Can, Pink Floyd and The Flaming Lips.

It’s clairvoyantly obvious that Ghostface Killah’s ideas are abound. Forever flourishing, there is so much to love about an album as playfully awesome as this one.

The sonic pastiche of certain songs can be unwieldy and perplexing, with unsubtle shifts in musical styles or tones, an erratic rhythmic pace, and flat aural space. What sounds right though is Caroline’s mutable vocals that run the gamut from the eccentric, exclamatory delivery and word-twisting of Karen O to the soft drift of a subdued Polly Jean Harvey or Chan Marshall on the more serious numbers.

Origin Vol. 1 could be [a] guilty pleasure album for indie-rock fans, mainly due to the high-quality production.

Taken as a whole, this strangely captivating cowboy-themed album is certainly not all hat and no cattle. Whilst ultimately it will probably not reach much beyond the shared bubble of Dean Wareham and Cheval Sombre’s respective fanbases, it’s certainly a curious and welcoming bubble to get stuck in.

It is instrumental rock music that is experimental, emotional, colorful, and engaging, while skillfully blurring many musical boundaries.

Jay has stepped through the mirror to the other side to bring us Slow Dance, and he has triumphed like the best pop idols, engaging our imagination while being simultaneously cool and strange, tender and tough, arty and poppy, traditional and innovative.

Fortunately III is an aptly titled, continued sign of excellence from one of electronic techno music's prominent leaders.

Melodic post-punk rarely sounds as beautiful, exciting, or emotionally connected as it does on Two Thousand.

It's definitely worth checking out if you're into noisy, low-key rock and inventive guitar work.

It makes for some delightfully fetching quirk-rock when it’s all clicking, but there are also moments when the songs never quite develop this alchemy and fizzle into the mist, albeit a fine cool mist on a bright, sunshiny day.

The Only She Chapters is yet another confident addition to Scott-Herren's collection as Prefuse 73.

Brokeback And The Black Rock reveals itself as a flawed yet still sporadically rewarding long-player.

America Give Up is a fantastically-promising debut album full of charm and potential. So, until the Strokes release their next masterpiece or pack it in altogether, enjoy this bunch of upbeat, tousle-haired tunes.

Whilst Songs and Other Things may still attract loyal aficionados of Verlaine’s idiosyncratic solo work, it’s certainly unlikely to win over any sceptics.

Through all of the missteps along the way, Face Control is a good album that with some more attention and ingenuity could have been so much better.

There are so many female singer songwriters making their presences known but Emmy The Great has a niche entirely of her own today, and that is all down to her songwriting and an elusive personality that avoids overlaying her actual charm.

Varshons II canters along as a casual grab-bag of songs plucked from largely obscure locations. Whilst the results are mixed, there’s no doubt that Dando hasn’t fully lost the reinterpretative knack that previously served him so well on likes of Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” or Mike Nesmith’s “Different Drum”.

By eschewing the instrumental grandiosity and working into a clean cut sound of their own, Work moves you to great feelings of warmth and a feeling of great joy.

Suitcase 2 is a necessity for the hardcore Guided by Voices fan.

The music is consistently fresh, fascinating, and evocative... the band’s best album to date.

Malcolm Middleton's position as Scotland's premier musical prankster is more or less entirely cemented by the time the final notes of Human Don't Be Angry fade off into the ironically romanticised Caledonian sunset of Malcolm Middleton's wryly expressed musical imagination.

Drums Between the Bells is by no means an embarrassment, but don't look for it to be lumped into the upper echelon of Eno's output either, where triumphs like Discreet Music or Another Green World reside.

Once the songs on Lion the Girl are over, they are as difficult to remember as those wisps of dream that dissolve upon waking.

Roadkillovercoat, though possessing several arresting and infinitely entertaining moments, lacks the overall effect and a certain cohesion to render it an instant classic.

Black Clouds and Silver Linings is, obviously, a mixed bag from Dream Theater. Fans like myself will enjoy it, but again, you can’t deny how familiar it all feels.