Vertigo is another compelling chapter in their evolution.

La Luz takes a big day-glo colored leap in News of the Universe, expanding a spooky, surf-rocking, girl-group sound into psychedelic overload. This is a full-on, trippy symphony, evoking baroque late Beatles, Os Mutantes and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.

My Light My Destroyer is a transformational record for Jenkins. However daunting the path forward may seem, she has a lot to say as she overcomes successive challenges.

An album on which the odd lyrical infelicities barely detract the duo’s breezy musical confections. Brijean still reside in a pastel world but the shades of gray have become harder to ignore and Macro is a homeopathic remedy which works best when they make you believe.

Both performances are lovely and odd (and they are rendered distinct by flourishes from other musicians recruited into the sessions: Zak Riles’ unobtrusive banjo picking in “Hear the Children Sing,” Ned Oldham’s gentle, pellucid electric guitar in “The Evidence”). But it’s Oldham’s singing and Higgs’ lyrics that make Hear the Children Sing the Evidence so memorably discomfiting.

Though there are no weak links in the 10-song, 30-minute track list, Cohen tucks the album’s finest moment midway into the second half. “Night or Day” is such a catchy, perfectly executed song that it deftly snaps everything into focus, prompting the realization of just how odd and sneakily exploratory Paint a Room can be.

Eiko Ishibashi’s soundtrack skilfully and subtly complements the film’s themes, capturing stillness, beauty, sorrow and uncertainty in such a way that the album succeeds on its own terms as a nuanced listening experience.

At various points during the second half, the music threatens to take off into a more fiery, chaotic realm, only to recede into questioning placidity. Much like the rest of the music on this album, it goes nowhere and everywhere all at once, creating and re-creating a space that feels intimidatingly boundless.

Yes, this is a heavy album, but luxuriously so. It’s music that stares death in the face and instead of running, hunkers down and gets comfortable.

Listeners wanting a somewhat more traditional metal record experience may find those tactics more comfortable to engage. Listeners wanting a SUMAC record will be happy to know that the band’s tendencies toward intuitive sonic conflagration are not entirely domesticated. .... Harsh, but beautiful. Bruising, but full of care. It’s a really good record.

As Cunningham pans across the channels, his sound design strikes the ears and creates synaptic leaps that draw pull the listener’s focus. Many of constituents will be familiar to fans of Boards of Canada, Two Lone Swordsmen and Aphex Twin and if the early tracks of Statik sound more challenging in their discordances, you will feel borne along by the idiosyncratic juxtapositions Cunningham creates.

The Decemberists fill the album to overflowing with sharp, catchy songs, Colin Meloy’s idiosyncratic bookishness well-turned for emotional resonance without relinquishing energy or wit

In Hex’s 34 minutes Mckiel ventures far and wide, but always brings you back to the strangeness of seeing something familiar in a new light, wondering at the possibilities.

“Fences” is a fine arrangement, with layered backing vocals and keyboards. While Houck often hews close to indie-rock, one of the best songs on Revelator is “All the Same,” a traditional sounding country ballad with pedal steel and a beery vocal. “Impossible House” also channels country of a more recent sort, and Houck’s often understated singing takes on a sense of urgency.

Deerhoof fans won’t be surprised by the sound here — it plays much like you’d expect a side project from the band to do — but they will likely be taken by Saunier’s multi-instrumental prowess and songwriting glee. .... He’s witty and funny and while some of these lyrics may push toward the absurd, there’s a deep seriousness running through the album.

“The Song Before the Song Comes Out” seems to be Keenan sketching a possibility with her voice and whatever device she had at hand. This kind of intimacy is evident on a number of the collection’s tracks.

DIIV have synthesized a bunch of fresh influences, including guitarist Andrew Bailey’s penchant for hip-hop, plus the band’s new-found fascination with sampling and tape loops, to craft their most diverse and perhaps finest album to date.

Though there’s no question that this is a wrenching record, Gibbons and co-producer James Ford have rendered a three-dimensional listening experience that is as immersive as it is forbidding.

This is for certain, no time is wasted listening, likely again and again, to Rosali’s compelling emotional journey on Bite Down.

There’s a pleasing friction between the grainy or otherwise affected samples and the polished music around them. Whether they air the frustrations of pioneering artistic transgressors like Dilla and Bruce on “Poor Cops,” or propel the bombastic “Joyrider” with an echo chamber of exclamations right out of Ye’s Rick James sample on “Runaway,” they give the album an imminent sense of cacophony, of a messy world that can’t but intrude on McMahon’s thoughts. It’s a collective sound, and a haunting one.

Final Summer is as sharp and exuberant and fierce as anything this band has ever done.

The trio skilfully carries the track ["Fyra"], and the record, towards a gentle dissolve into the clouds as the drums fade out entirely, leaving the dulcet bass and guitar tones to play off one another in the closing moments. Sublime.

There’s a light-footed joyfulness in these tracks that’s far from insubstantial, and in fact, borders on the profound.

Hey Panda is a rich, meaty stew combining all of O’Hagan’s influences and several sides of his persona: it’s witty, wise, humorous, quirky and adventurous. Often, it’s all these things at the same time.

Camera Obscura’s comeback album is a thing of real beauty. Campbell writes movingly about memory and friendship. Looking at what was rather than regretting what might have been with an honesty that goes directly to the heart of things. Look to the East, Look to the West is one of the most poignant albums of the year so far.

The album’s first half is its best half, a rollicking set of surf/rockabilly/garage rock ragers, all tied loosely to Powers’ awakening to gayness, to underground music, to drugs and to a very alternative lifestyle. .... After that, things get slow and weird and, honestly, a little dull, though there are spooky, mystical, reverb shrouded moments in “The Smoke Is the Ghost.”

There’s something very moving about Pupul’s attempt to understand his mother by vacuuming up the sights and sounds of Hong Kong and fitting them carefully into his Western-style DJ art. It works on a human level — we can all relate to losing people that we love — but also as music. Letter to Yu is poignant and powerful.

Time Is Glass is lovely music — that much should be no surprise to anyone — but beyond that, it taps into something invisible, deep and important. Is it too much to say that these songs manifest the divine? Maybe so, but let’s stipulate at least that they’re trying.