Emily Alone is a landmark LP, recorded swiftly to perfectly capture urgent beauty and raw authenticity in its purest forms.

Heavy Heavy may be a little too sweet for long-time listeners, but its massive choruses, strong hooks and ecstatic sound too timely and too powerful to deny.

Nightmare Logic showcases Power Trip at their strongest yet, and packs its 30-minute runtime with songs that push everything they have done right so far to an entirely new level.

Roísín Machine is among Murphy's best works, a showcase for one of dance music's most endlessly fascinating figures

This is the kind of music that, in 20 years, we may look back on as a pivotal point in changing the trajectory of the pop music sound.

With Bécs, Fennesz achieves the near-impossible, crafting a musical sequel that retains the energy, vision and flow of its predecessor.

From Jagger's playful banter ("Everything alright in the critics' section?" he asks sardonically) to the band playing quite tightly around Charlie Watts, as he messes beautifully with time and space so that the Stones can transcend them both, the band innocently gave Toronto and the world something incredible to talk about for four decades and counting.

Remind Me Tomorrow is not only a reminder of the power of love but also features some of Van Etten's finest work to date.

Her strongest body of work to date.

Natalie Prass is a beautiful record that does best when it prods the sweet ache of failed romance.

Sturgill Simpson has been running in a different direction for a while, and with A Sailor's Guide To Earth, he's finally arrived in another world.

Are We There cuts deep into the skin of its creator and finds Van Etten more exposed than ever.

This is eclectic, bold, inventive, masterfully played music conceived with a refreshing sense of curiosity and wonder at the potential of sound to invigorate the spirit. Fans of BADBADNOTGOOD should cue up to have their minds blown by this profoundly deep fusion of jazz, world music and hip-hop sensibilities.

Smith is vague about where he lands on his quest for contentment, but Where’s My Utopia? manages the old trick of making the personal universal, while hanging on to the righteous fun that drew so many in in the first place.

He and his band are making truly tremendous guitar rock in a manner that is peerless in this era, and from anywhere on the globe.

It admittedly spends a lot of time in a downer mode--a more light-amidst-the-dark feel would feel nice--but this sophomore effort remains affecting and affirming in its own quiet way

The Longest River sounds like it wasn't written to impress anyone, but impress it does. It's an intriguing debut.

The band have played it relatively safe, changing little from the upbeat pop-punk formula established on 2014's Wishful Thinking, but have still managed to cram some undeniably catchy moments into this new set.

Kacy & Clayton craft timeless and detailed folk songs on Strange Country, an album that more than promises the duo's staying power.

Elaborating on the foundations that have propelled Four Tet through his 20-year career, Hebden allows the sonic palettes from records Pause and Rounds to bleed into textures born from transfigured field recordings and sonic artefacts that epitomize the producer's discography while refining his sonic identity.

Lucinda Williams is an artist with the confidence to say what needs to be said, and the power to back it up. On This Sweet Old World, she might be repeating the words, but she's hardly repeating herself.

On the rich, rewarding Sparrow, the singer has found the perfect marriage of songs, arrangements and performances. In the process she has also crafted a captivating Southern Gothic country-soul masterpiece, one that can stand proudly next to the timeless works that inspired it.

While there are certainly moments of outright noisy abandon, Richter incorporates enough subtlety and tension into the proceedings to make these diabolical sound sculptures bleed with a raw beauty.

Mint Condition is an incredible country-folk album, not only due to crisp and clear storytelling, but Spence's mesmerizing vocals, which have a unique sound of their own, with a hint of Dolly Parton, Lee Ann Womack and Ashley Monroe mixed into one.

Guitarist Reine Fiske joins them, fitting in seamlessly: the power and energy they work up on "Skink/Fugl Fønix" could power a train. Despite some slow spots, the two volumes of Psychedelic Backfire show Elephant9 as an engaging and exciting live act, a dazzling mix of rock rhythms and jazzy interplay.

The band have put a lot of work into refining their sound and making it bigger, fuller and bolder. There's more harmony, texture and structure in every song, and the choruses are huge and uplifting.

Outside Child as a whole exhibits a lust for life in spite of its trials.

If there was ever any acquiescence to the particularities of one or another mode of creation on the part of Davachi, The Head as Form'd in the Crier's Choir is a sign that that is now over, and that she's freed herself to fully embrace the impulses that have made her work so rewarding all along.