One of the best things about the Album Leaf is the mental imagery that comes naturally with the music, and Between Waves provides a fresh canvas.

Mac DeMarco may assume a trashy façade, but beneath that lies a genuinely talented songwriter who writes what he knows and keeps us entertained while he does it.

As the Love Continues is one of them. Already an enduring album, it will surely solidify Mogwai's venerated status as shamans of our collective consciousness.

This Working Girl's Guitar is in top form here.

If you're a long-time listener, or someone that was tuned in to AM, you might be prepared to change the dial. But before you write this off as exhausting or pretentious self-indulgence, give it a listen or two. Peruse the lyrics, dissect them and have a laugh. Commitment isn't as scary as you think.

At the end of the day, this project shows Megan Thee Stallion in her most refined element--confident, powerful and never submissive.

Cult Following manages to be danceable, fun and impactful, all in a tight 45 minutes.

Rae feels light here, no longer weighed down by her past and suddenly able to address pain with emotional wisdom. The Heart Speaks in Whispers is a summer record that reveals the warmth in silver linings.

Despite a three-year hiatus, Claro Intelecto continues to generate quality, masterful releases.

It's a joy to bask in the glow of one of the world's best producers leaning into his strengths.

"pamplemousse" and "which way" serve as the purest evidence of the freedom achieved on this mixtape. These experimental sketches are delightful in their rejection of seriousness.

Thirty years deep into their career, Superchunk throw yet another left turn into a career full of them, offering up a protest record about the people for the people. What a time to be alive, indeed.

Time & Space is Turnstile taking what worked from their prior material and seasoning it with a modern, diverse zest.

Unique and dynamic, this is what Clutch do--and do best.

The record is comfortably balanced between different periods of Shepherd's work, derailing expectation surrounding followups, all while still obfuscating the line between analog and digital. For Floating Points, it's business as usual.

Shore finds them exploring vaster range than before. No longer do they sound burdened by the need to commit to a particular mood; Pecknold sounds freer than ever to be himself.

In the Lonely Hour is a mostly fantastic debut that is more than deserving of a double dip.

He's as strong a songwriter as always, but it feels like there's a deeper sense of purpose this time around, and it makes for a beautifully gratifying experience.

As a third album, it's an interesting station on the way to potential greatness, and it will definitively put the group on more than a few radars. Above all, on this album TOY makes us feel really excited about Brit-pop again, which itself is no small feat.

At only eight tracks, it's the shortest Smashing Pumpkins full-length and it feels less grandiose than most of their work simply due to that brevity, which makes it harder to measure against their other LPs--although it easily blows the last album out of the water and is more immediately catchy than Zeitgeist.

With 12 tracks and a runtime of barely more than half an hour, any flaws are minor and the album breezes by. The arrangements may be ambitious, but there's very little pomp or grandeur here; this is just another low-stakes success in a long and varied career.

Spiritualized have delivered yet another great project with Everything Is Beautiful, an incredible mix of genres bringing forth truly impressive instrumentals with compelling lyrics.

It's clear from listening to and watching Way Down in the Rust Bucket that this was a truly special occasion that now lives on, in this remarkable new document of Crazy Horse in all its (ragged) glory.

With Moths, Chairlift make a strong claim to being one of pop music's best songwriting teams, with the production and vocal chops to bring their compositions fully and vibrantly to life.

The Private World of Paradise is certain to earn Wake Owl a legion of devotees among the late-night headphones crowd.

It's a meeting of musical minds, and the resulting electro-traditional dialogue is fascinating.

Drake aims to come out stronger, more focused and more righteous than ever. ... He goes hard at addressing his industry ops on Side A, and it's full of the effortlessly cut-throat Drake we've come to love. ... Drake gets all the way into his feelings on the second half of Scorpion.

Where All Mirrors pushed at the sky, Whole New Mess explores the vastness of the mind and peculiarities of the heart. It may take repeat listens to hear these roughly hewn songs as more than demos for their gilded twins, but once you've waded deep enough into the record's shifting, disintegrating twilight, it becomes something wholly new.