serpent has crafted a spatially attentive album centred around representation and reverence, inclusivity and acceptance.

It’s hard not to see Playground In A Lake as the most ambitious Clark release to date, an adventurous collision of different musical worlds that also carries an important underlying environmental message. It offers a bold pointer towards the future, both in terms of Clark’s own ongoing musical journey and the broader fate of the planet.

Tune-Yards are always going to be an acquired taste for some people, and while this album mixes the accessible with the avant-garde, there will probably be people who are left cold by the restless energy and sometimes overtly meandering melodies. There are more than enough moments on Sketchy though to show that Garbus and Bremmer can strike musical gold when they want to.

After such a traumatic few years, it’s a minor miracle that Silberman is now back in The Antlers fold and sounding as good as ever. What’s more, for a band who made their name playing epically sad, often emotionally traumatic songs, Green To Gold sounds positively sunny and mellow in comparison.

Embracing the participatory rather than lurking in personal mistrust, and supplementing their formerly disconsolate narratives with unusually contented flourishes, these diverse new manifestations substantially demonstrate that Xiu Xiu still exist in a universe of their own design, but that maybe they’re ready to temporarily negotiate ours once more.

Songs From Isolation is a gorgeous collection that hits home in these bizarre times. Intense and distinctive, it’s the sound of someone finding solace in music – and that’s something we can all relate to right now.

It’s an album that’s easy to feel intimidated by at first listen, due to its sheer scale and ambition. However, after a few listens you’ll be in no doubt that Genesis Owusu is one of the most exciting names of the year.

Philips is very much the band’s driving force. Her musical persona is a collage of punk-rock heroines and sliver-screen starlets. She has the rebelliousness of Kathleen Hanna with the lusty charm of Poison Ivy.

It probably won’t be to everyone’s tastes – at times, it all becomes a bit too doomy and inaccessible, such as on Theme From Muddy Time – and newcomers to his music may be best pointed towards Your Wilderness Revisited instead. Nevertheless, this is another fine example of Doyle’s talent – and, considering he only turned 30 earlier this year, indicates a lot more to come in the years ahead.

Japan would go on to at least one better album than Quiet Life, but they would never again capture the same kind of nervous youthful energy they display here. An essential album from an essential band.

Expansive and unified in its character, Future Times is a considered album, actively concerned with the spontaneous expansion of boundaries, be they geographical or psychological.

These intense, dramatic songs are the perfect companion to these times – at long last, The Anchoress is stepping out of the shadow of her famous friends to show that she’s an almighty talent in her own right.

The upshot is a record freewheeling in scope which unfolds tastefully, never once losing sight of the forest for the trees.

Poster Girl, although far from perfect, is an encouraging sign from Larsson, indicating her adventurous spirit and perhaps paving the way for future triumphs.

In an interview once, she admitted, “I see things in my head. I dream in colour”. This posthumous addition to her near perfect catalogue confirms that statement, expertly revealing how attuned to the universe she was and how vibrantly her imagination shone in the dark.

With Carnage, Cave and Ellis have successfully balanced introspection and self reflection with the tumult and confusion of the wider world. It’s a hugely powerful statement.

At best, When You See Yourself is the finest collection Kings Of Leon have put out since their peak years, and at worst a collection of good tunes to listen to this spring and never hear again. That’s a win-win, no matter how you look at it.

Avid listeners have known all long just how funky, playful and revolutionary she’s been, a genuine musical magpie, but sat barefoot on the cover in the centre of a tenement of abstract coloured birdhouses, her eyes closed, on this record this Liver bird’s calling any stragglers back to the roost.

As Days Get Dark is a remarkable return, a new Arab Strap that updates, deepens and re-energises their sound.

The album comes to a far too sudden close with a rendition of the old Warner Brothers standard As Time Goes By, Aphek distractedly strumming her unplugged instrument as the tracks air of optimistic wartime reverie prevails. Giving a cheeky wink to those who’ve found themselves silently swept up in her thrall, she leaves everyone hoping that’s not all, folks.

This compilation, the fourth and possibly final in their Switched On series, collects some of the various EPs, compilation tracks and tour 7″s they made between 2000 and 2005, along with some deep cuts that stretch back to the Mars Audiac Quintet era and proves the critics wrong.

They inch ever closer to the boundaries of the mainstream with this simmering assortment.

Banane Bleue is a contrast of blissful pop music and highly contemplative soundscapes, juxtaposing our ideal version of living and a difficult outer reality. This record captures the essence of ‘the blue banana’, a place too vast to navigate and too complex to fully understand.

It all confirms Believer to be a suite of disaggregated, miniature sonic tapestries from a pair of young Scandinavian polymaths that delivers a welcome reminder of music’s endless capacity to surprise and delight.

In lesser hands this mélange of vocalists and styles would be an unholy mess, but with experienced mood masters Raymonde and Thomas at the tiller In Quiet Moments is holistic audio balm to soothe, hug and give hope in these ‘unprecedented times’ and beyond.

This is sensitive, heartfelt and resolute rock music that shuffles its feet while looking at the stars.

With this fun and obnoxiously reverent album, they should get the inmates rioting.

On this outing, greater rewards arrive from a more engaged, active approach to listening, one that helps ensure that nuances and small details are appreciated. It might not ultimately have quite the impact of their earlier work but it still has much to offer, showing them still capable of responding to new creative surroundings and edging forward with small refinements to their sound.