Throughout we’re treated to bold and buoyant basslines, slick vocal harmonies and vocalist Cristal Ramirez’s crisp delivery of deliciously millennial lyrics .

A seven-track album (it’s Kanye’s current obsession; both ‘ye’ and ‘Daytona’ ran to the same length) can hardly help but feel slight, though the brevity actually suits this collaborative record. It sounds, suitably, ghostly and supernatural.

At times joyful and at others surprisingly moving, Bad Contestant sets Maltese on the start of a path that marks him out as a true prodigious talent. This is the voice of a true original. The future, it seems, is schmaltz.

Smith’s made the grade on this serviceable first record Lost & Found, and the path to her becoming Britain’s next global export is looking pretty clear. If only it was made to feel less of a drag.

It’s a smart, self-aware and compellingly imperfect record with a pretty unique point of view.

This is how you really do summertime sadness.

They pick a traditional genre and do everything in their wicked power to leave it a broken, quivering wreck by the time they’re finished with it.

It’s a record riddled with questions, while refusing to offer answers. In remaining tight-lipped, this taciturn new aspect to Father John Misty might be his most genuinely sincere, and his most profound.

Nobody can deny this mini album flirts with brilliance, and feels like a pop cultural moment straight out the gate; we just wish there was a little more to it.

At times, it’s truly gorgeous; but at others: it’s bloody hard work.

Oftentimes, Davis dips his toes into this new realm of instrumentation, only to return to his heavy comfort blanket, twisted riffs drowning out any tentative experiments. You can’t help but wonder just how interesting Black Labyrinth could have been if he only dove a little deeper.

Yes, there are lows: the mawkish ‘Why’ is as sticky as treacle and slushy ballad ‘Perfectly Wrong’ is an unwanted lull as the penultimate track on the album, but these are in the minority. In general, Shawn Mendes is a bright and bold new direction for the 19-year-old singer, as he leaves behind sickly choruses for brazen, guitar-ridden anthems; he sounds all the better for it.

Over length of 12 tracks, the soul/G-funk stuff becomes a little one-note, while the Disney-fied material lacks the charm that makes Prass such an engaging, idiosyncratic performer.

Confidently expressing vulnerability over woozy nocturnal soundscapes to create comfort and intimacy in a lonely, quiet place, LoveLaws will be your fireside companion.

Love Is Dead manages to balance hopeful, utopian pop with a darker, gloomier undercurrent.

Thankfully, closer ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ is a sumptuous country swoon capable of wiping clean the record’s hoarier moments, and we end embedded once more in LaMontagne’s misty mystique.

Sure, sometimes it verges into the sickly saccharine (‘Through It All’ nicks a piano line from Randy Newman and some Disney strings, and drops a sticky vocal line on top of them, and collab with American folk singer James Taylor ‘Change’ is a dreary cliché) but then there are the moments of pop brilliance.

It’s all accomplished and well-produced--as an introduction to these sounds, it’s absolutely on the money--but perhaps too scattershot to really gel.

Islands is as ferocious and catchy as ever. And while it’s undoubtedly a record of consolidation, a return to familiar home ground, it also gently scouts new territory.

Far from softening Parquet Courts’ edges, [producer Danger Mouse] has enhanced everything that makes the quartet great--sound, imagination, style. The Beastie Boys, Black Flag and Talking Heads are all here in spirit.

Tell Me How You Really Feel is Courtney Barnett at her angriest and most vulnerable, but being a drinker of details means she can also blow the beauty of life’s little things up to full-size.

There’s not much variation between the melodies of ‘Defender’ and ‘V Formation’--and the closing title track feels like a bit of an anticlimax--but the album’s nine tracks are mostly enveloping soundscapes. There’s a distinct journey through Murmurations, and you might get lost--in a good way--in the middle.

They may not have been perfect, but Plan B’s prior albums have never been disjointed. Heaven is. But, by his own admission, this is a songwriter in transition.

Though it boasts hard-hitting moments (see the supple uppercut of ‘Been A While’ and the dizzying double-jab of the JME-featuring ‘Call the Shots’), this sequel lacks the punch of its predecessor.

[Silverlined is] a glorious peak on an album that, save a couple of weaker links (‘Angel’ and ‘Just A Ride’) is hard to fault. Thank god Peace are back, and on breathtaking form.

Lost Friends is a set of pile-driving anthems that demands your undivided attention.

Though Singularity's 62-minutes can get extremely heavy--Hopkins fondly calls its gargantuan centrepiece ‘Everything Connected’ a “massive techno bastard” – it’s still a near-perfect trip, and one that confirms Hopkins’ status as one of the genre’s brightest talents.

There’s plenty more evidence here that Frank remains one of our most consistently punchy, stirring and chaff-free songwriters.