On Long Way Home, she delivers these in spades.

One of his strongest bodies of work to date. It’s a richly textured piece of work which sees him expertly display his ability to make listeners find intimacy in vast soundscapes.

In 12 songs, they make it pretty clear which side they’re on, and it looks like the winner - smart, engaged, and willing to crack a joke with the faith that their musical dexterity will speak for itself. Love them or hate them, dismiss them at your peril.

Transforming troubles into huge disco-pop bangers, these may be difficult times, but NZCA LINES will be throwing the greatest party ever nonetheless.

A surgical dissection of a full decade of influence, Merchandise pay homage to their upbringing without ever breaking eye contact with the sprawling future set ahead of them.

It’s a record that does more than just pitch him just leagues ahead of anyone else in the game; it’s a portrait of a man who’s more than happy to invent a whole new one.

It’s not a record likely to shift anyone’s needle on Dry Cleaning, but for those on the fonder side, it’s a whole new set of treats to explore.

By balancing the mastery of her nostalgic sound with universally relatable lyrics, Mitski turns the unlikely into generational truths.

Turning the lens on himself, it’s more introspective, touching on relationships and self-worth without ever losing that smirk and shrug in his delivery.

While ‘Painted Shut’ saw Hop Along forcefully establish themselves as a band to be reckoned with, LP3 shows they’re just as enticing and attention-grabbing when practicing restraint

With layer upon layer of vocal, groove, and percussion, Jaakko Eino Kalevi is a reminder that pop can be both for your head and your feet.

The group expand on the sorts of themes and sounds that have made them so distinct to the ear while incorporating new layers of heavier krautrock, as well as melodic folk to further engineer their trademark sound.

Woman’s Hour have created something truly special in these final throes.

There’s still those effortless signature guitars and plenty of light to counteract the shade, but overall Francis Trouble is a more risky counterpart to his earthbound sibling.

There’s a real energy emanating from mini-album ‘Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep’ that very much echoes the artist’s sentiment. A glorious trip through all facets of Mykki’s musical personality.

The musical accompaniment to the installation works perfectly as a concept album, where heady instrumentals and psychedelic pop nuggets are intertwined with swelling strings and a nursery rhyme story narrated by The Clash’s Mick Jones.

For all its unoriginality, Clarietta more than makes amends with the proficient psychedelia of its groove-based jams.

‘The Gloss’ might not hold a candle to the Television-esque majesty of ‘Sun Coming Down’ - an era firmly in their rearview mirror - but it shows that, together, Darcy’s wit, Stidworthy’s precision, and Cartwright’s skeletal rhythms create something special. It’s not quite a reinvention, but they’re still seeking new horizons.

Ultimately, Kali’s intention to create a timeless album about love is met with expected ease.

It’s all teeth, blood and bones, spit, grease and sweat but it’s a snarling yet intelligent beast of an album that stalks the landscape of British music like the unstoppable monster it threatens, and with a certain bloodlust, deserves to be.

This is intelligent dance music (with no capital letters)--clever and warm, sophisticated and joy

While the emotions are big, the choruses are even bigger: ‘the good the bad the olga’ begs for a cathartic moshpit, while ‘pardee urgent care’ is a definitive phone-torches-in-the-air moment.

By the album’s end - thanks, in part, to the droning noise and scuffed beats on closer ‘Dream Dollar’ - there’s a definite sense of the walls closing in. Here the distance Kim Gordon has forged, both across the album and throughout her career, is falling away - and the gap between music and art seems smaller than ever.

By embracing all sides of his 50 years in the game, ‘Every Loser’ is Iggy throwing out the late-career rulebook and having a whole bunch of fun. Which is, of course, what made him so brilliant in the first place.

‘To Hell With It’ is a heady mix of ’00s genres and references that only seem to work together because it’s delivered with just the right amount of earnestness.

Swim Deep have written a youthful, entertaining debut that it’s hard to find fault with, and they graduate from B-Town with a first class degree.

Packed with powerful guitars and guttural vocals, the quartet may be over thirty years into their career, but they still know how to pack a devastating punch; with or without their original line-up.

While ‘Endless Rooms’ chronicles a darker period in RBCF’s time as a band, it’s an album that paves a sonically brighter and broader future ahead.