This collection is simply a joy to listen to, with great singers lovingly rendering great songs with a talented producer at the helm.

If you can distance yourself enough to judge Franz Ferdinand on its merits alone, it’s an impressive yet inconsistent debut record from a promising young band.

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.

Fohr details her cathartic experience with a smothering array of droning textures and clashing orchestral elements, where she succeeds at making sense out of her cosmic encounter.

Tillman becomes one of the great diarists of our generation in Honeybear, possessing a keen, merciless intelligence within a sophisticated melodic sensibility.

What it does manage to do, however, is function as an engagingly visceral work of provocation, on balance interspersing his trademark beauty with enough challenging moments to reward repeated visits, even if listening to it never exactly feels like a pleasurable experience, and maybe that’s enough.

For her, it’s filtered through the attitude of the cowboy, her power coming through in her music and her words. Under these guises, she finds layers of emotional truth that are messy, confusing and often conflicting, but no less honest because of that.

xx is a fantastically innovative album, and this band is exploring new territory.

Let Me Do One More teeters betweens knowing jokiness and kindhearted vulnerability. And though she's shown these qualities before, Tudzin carries the weight of these emotions with a masterful command—embracing change and figuring things out as she fumbles along the way.

Is Ohms the return to form that meets expectations? Well, yes, even if the tunes haven't changed so much as the vastly-superior production has (with producer Terry Date back into the fold). But it also reinforces the fact that Deftones have stuck to a back-to-basics formula through all these years; the only difference now being that everyone else is taking notice.

Its authenticity is what makes it so addictive, so accessible.

What Daft Punk have done on Random Access Memories could be seen as a methodically curated, musical museum of the future, rather than a conservatory for experimental collaboration.

The music is beautiful, spiritual, intense, fun and, as Lester Bangs once called the Clash, righteous.

It's a remarkably sharp pop record that retains her fascination with pop-culture iconography and the rosey simplicity of a post-war America where classic rock and blue jeans ruled and takes them to much deeper places. ... Think of it as an hour-long car ride peeling down the highway with classic rock blaring out of the radio and no real destination in mind other than where your impulsive nature might take you.

Celestial Lineage may be well crafted and even (relatively) accessible but by eschewing the ideas that coloured their previous work, Wolves in the Throne Room have ended up creating something that's not really black, but rather quite grey.

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.

These songs work as an extension of himself—coming from one of indie rock's most literate songwriters—delivered with thoughtful compassion and no shortage of ambition.

As activist hashtags #MeToo and #TimesUp bear weight and stage heavy resistance against a significant and still increasing population of men with power, Remy’s words prop up the cause, not quite providing the movement its anthem(s), but certainly offering its reason(s) why.

Each moment on Is Survived By is a hotly tempered emotional assault that leaves no closet-bound skeleton unaccounted for an un-torched.

This mind-expanding record will inspire a more inexpressible connection: you will carve your own niche within its deep and absorbing textures, and you will find new things upon every listen.

Cocoa Sugar is an invigorating listen from beginning to end, and it's hard to imagine any other band making a musical work of art that's as visceral this year.

The Suburbs is about a search for home, for a place in the world when the home you knew is gone.

In Colour is one of the best albums of 2015 and one of the best dance albums in recent memory, simultaneously a moving homage to London rave culture and a realization of the potential of one of the most exciting and original minds in music today.

When it's all said and done, Tesfaye has presided over a mind bending, drug induced tour through an underground world of debauchery that only leaves him hollow. He commands the mood better than artists who have been in the game for years and yet this his first release.

This latest offering from Fleet Foxes embodies their entire catalog of folksy sounds, seasons it with some jazzy elements, and pares down some bloat (only one track over five minutes). Perhaps the only surface flaw of this album is that certain songs build too quickly and fade too fast.

What Freedom reveals is McMahon's ever-evolving tapestry, as it affectionally chronicles the human condition with candor and open-hearted curiosity.

With such a wide-ranging collection of retro sounds blended into one record, the fact that the album’s near 45-minute runtime avoids any real stale moments is another triumph from Uchis.

These songs are chaotic, unexpected and jarring. Samples, vocoders, and shambling synths crash together in an unstructured soundscape. But if you listen through the anarchy, you will find a stirring, masterful odyssey.