For the first time is usually nonsensical, frequently transcendent, and compulsively listenable. Everything that sprung to mind is on the wax here, but BC, NR don’t forget to make it catchy and groovy. In nailing that balance, they’ve given us the year’s first capital-G Great record.

It shows a refreshed band, back on the chase to find new ways of songwriting, with strong melodies and intriguing lyrics remaining a constant. I’ll Be Your Girl is the start of this new chapter, and it’s a wonderful place for them to begin again.

It sounds like a labor of love through and through, and its painstaking process of development only augments a desire for something exclusive. In all accounts, your satisfaction is most certainly guaranteed.

Despite Holter's all-around meticulousness, Aviary never comes across as careful or rigorous. She engages in artful replication, seeking to understand those voices she successfully reconstructs with a feeling of apprehension and anticipation. And in the process, leaving her own imprint for others to also discover in centuries to come.

It feels carefully tailored to a fault, making it practically impossible to find its flaws—especially if you find the interchangeable poetic sing-speak of Hard Drive endearing. Nevertheless, this is solipsism of the highest caliber: gentle, hypnotic, fastidious, but above all else, hard to resist.

Lime Garden isn’t shy about their influences, sure, but what many of those artists lacked at the time, soaring choruses that linger for days, they deliver in spades.

Ctrl is a languid, cavernously soulful debut that is never anything but assured--a collection of delicious jams that are equal parts fragile, cozy and piercing.

It’s not that Diamond has recorded a masterpiece, since quite a good portion of this is decidedly B material. It’s that the good stuff represents Neil at his best, exploiting his considerable knack for melody and structure to the fullest.

Soused, with its impenetrable construct and heavy ambition, delivers on many fronts, most notable of which is in its thoughtfully composed immensity.

Unusually for an EP, each track warrants its place on the record and the title track never overshadows anything. It’s well worth listening to, especially if like me you tend to get gushy at the mere thought of probably this country’s greatest living musician.

There are additions to her guitar-pop foundation here, but they’re mostly limited to the occasional keyboard line or an anomaly like the dreamy synth outro of Outside with the Cuties. Met on its own terms, however, it’s a record that plays entirely to Kline’s strengths and confirms her as a worthy successor to the legacy of indie modesty.

Key Markets doesn't disappoint. Their commitment to their aesthetic and their ability to use it to say new things is unflagging.

It’s the ultimate sample platter for a band who defiantly refuses to meet your expectations, and for everything it lacks in consistency, it more than makes up for in offering a heart-bled moment that will burn bright for someone.

Because they write interesting but still enjoyable songs, as they do consistently on Change Becomes Us, they make their music worth coming back to again and again.

Realism strikes a compelling balance between cringing honesty and organic chemistry that comes through in its crystalline composition as well as its more rugged manifestations. Complete reinvention isn’t necessarily reached, but isn’t quite the ultimate goal either.

While many of these ideas aren't particularly sexy, especially for artists who've recently turned forty, the band wisely keeps their grand, romantic gestures in check while making them thoughtful and relatable.

Portrayal of Guilt’s songs become so chaotic and overwhelming in their bipolar brutality that almost every song needs an ambient comedown to cool off, though even these are just as lurching and ominous as each riff is impeccably tight and terrifying.

Throughout Emotional Mugger’s 39-minute runtime, Segall is comfortably out of step, abandoning the pop refinement of Manipulator to creative self-sabotage with some of the more album’s more electrified moments, which, while highlights, don’t constitute the bulk of the album.

I guess I'm the contrarian here, but I think Interpol deserve a significant amount of respect for taking the risk and mustering the sheer talent to create something so deeply submerged in melancholia you can't even see light.

The performances are muscular and attention-grabbing, and the melodies built around her distress take new and zestful contours.

Get Color goes by fast and leaves the listener satisfied but begging for more wonderful, eardrum punishing noise.

Giddy and tuneful, the band feels more at ease as a tried-and-true guitar pop band, reminiscent of how a band like Los Campesinos! captured the hearts of many an indie rock fan.

Weaving in dustier threads to Beach House’s ever shimmery fabric proves that the cyborgian approach of mixing the organic with the mechanical is an increasingly winning formula.

With such masterful creativity and an ability to connect with listeners emotionally, no matter what language they are singing in, Ibeyi may have already released the debut album of the year.

With Journal for Plague Lovers, it feels like Manic Street Preachers have finally closed the door on a painful chapter in their career and, rather fittingly, they’ve done it with some aplomb.

Mvula has written a hypnotic record that provides a congenial embrace, but it also isn’t afraid to take bold action. A new star is most definitely born.

Their best full length yet.

All these songs stand out for their craftsmanship and collaboration, not only between three artists but also three friends.