Despite not taking any drastic leaps, he’s once again delivered another wide-eyed, hypnotic set that finds a satisfactory compromise between quasi-ambient soundscapes and headphone-nodding grooves.

For all of the melancholy, it's far from a depressing experience; if anything, it's an oddly uplifting album, one that manages to find a great deal of beauty lurking just beneath the ugliness we sometimes find ourselves confronted by.

Holy Ghost just resonates because it’s so deeply felt and passionate--with hardly a wasted moment throughout its brisk 28 minutes--to such a degree that it’s easy to dismiss its songwriting flaws.

By taking various elements from not only their collective past, but also the work they've done separately, Radiohead has created something wholly new and utterly entrancing.

It’s the adequate album to write when you’re on a quest to become something, later to realize that you’ve no idea how to carry on fulfilling that need. It’s a transition that Toledo perfectly captures, one that he’s relieved to have outgrown.

White Hot Moon doesn’t really vary much from their last full-length Feast of Love, though it does showcase a still-promising band that’s one step closer to finding their true identity.

It leaves the impression that The Last Shadow Puppets are principally a conduit for Turner and Kane to demonstrate just how suave they are, and while it’s hard to find many faults with the record, it’s lacking an edge to make it a great one.

Willner continues to move into more exploratory territory, though in taking his music to a denser, more obtuse place, the divine simplicity that’s defined his entire body of work suffers.

Sleep Cycle represents, and unintentionally so, a creative rebirth that goes against Animal Collective’s increasingly evanescent creativity. It took long enough, but the investment was worth it.

The result is a convoluted but accessible record that is perhaps Wilkinson’s best to date.

At times, the irregular rhythmic contours they employ get woefully tiresome, especially in its rigidly monochromatic second half. But Autolux’s dogged pursuit in doing things their way, and without an hourglass by their side, is worthy of admiration.

Brilliant Sanity is occasionally brilliant, but it could greatly benefit if it let go some of its sanity.

There are areas, in the likes of Instrument, where the creeping grooves are compelling and the tension is perfectly poised, but time and time again these moments are lost amongst reverb bursts and toxic swells that go past the point of creating a metronomic cue to something sinister, and instead appear vexatious in their oppression.

Over time, Morby should outgrow his occasional Dylanesque vocal quirks and redundant baroque embellishments. Still, Singing Saw will be remembered as a breakthrough moment from an artist who’s now more comfortable articulating his own visual language.

If Anything was good, but this is the work of a band who are well on their way to establishing themselves as key cogs in their category.

If it were not for Katy's distinctive voice--which she gloriously wields with an Aguilera-like ferocity during the last forty seconds or so of each track--Honey would not survive its own sweetness. At certain moments, however, the energies between Katy and the producers mesh just right, resulting in alchemic varieties of urban pop that glow brighter after each listen.

Aside from dubstep-resembling "I Don’t Love You Anymore”, a breakup song that doesn’t really mesh within the political context of Hopelessness, there’s hardly any fault to find in Hegarty’s incredibly imaginative portrait of a world that’s in dire need of some reformation.

It makes for something of a experimental jam session where its members are trying to perfect a unified sound alongside different lyrical approaches, which strike a fine balance between campy sci-fi imagery and silly, doom-laden metal tropes. And yet, once it’s fused all together it comes across as one big slab of raucous, careening psychedelia. King Gizzard are still grounded to their garage roots.

Gore is a listen as complex and engrossing as we’ve come to expect from Deftones, and they continue to be a band that matures organically, becoming more and more fluid in their own craft.

It tempers Frightened Rabbit’s invigorating merriment in an attempt to turn them into an inoffensive, poker-faced troupe.

The strongest songs come at the very end, where Harvey most effectively puts us in the setting she's describing and has the melodies to keep us there.

Varmints is a playfully delirious listen that constantly rewards with new ideas at every corner, one that sketches an idealized pop landscape without recognizing that it actually touches all of its requisite pleasure points.

From the thumping, industrial charge of I Exhale to the sublimely hypnotic techno of Low Burn, Underworld are in full form, giving meaning and substance to every single minute with hardly a wasted moment.

The hastiness and outlandishness of the swerving soundscapes are the album’s strengths and it’s weaknesses, simultaneously keeping a listener enticed and running them ragged. Such zeal keeps Krohn’s final destination on the horizon, just out of reach.

Kendrick Lamar’s talent is superficial in the extreme, plumbing his own creative depths with an unerring attention to detail. With untitled unmastered., he has found another way to sheathe people in his compelling vision.

Weiss is a smart, heartfelt performer whose stories rarely veer into overwrought territory, though the lukewarm acoustic fluff that occasionally lingers throughout Standards bogs down an otherwise affecting and perceptive listen.

The sound HÆLOS have refined is the perfect foil for truly spectacular things to happen, but with the exception of the album’s centerpiece, Oracle, Full Circle consistently gives the impression that the tools aren’t being used as efficiently as they could be.

If only she would’ve toned down the unnecessary sensual flourishes to cultivate more of what she does best: amiable, pleasant songs with outwardly simple, yet weighty underlying truths.