While the tone keeps the wistful summer vibes of his earlier work intact, the Brooklyn-based Canadian also gets reflective on this dud-free second full-length.

Diarrhea Planet have always aimed for the rafters, but on Turn To Gold they crash through them.

The achievement here is that each song feels like its own distinct world.

Instead of imitating the manipulated loops of funk drummers that defined earlier rap, they make references to the more robotic feel of contemporary drum machine beats, which, combined with their nods to indie rock, puts them in a category all their own.

The Richmond, Virginia, metal five-piece churn out their most extreme record in a long time.

Somewhat self-indulgent, it's remarkably listenable considering some of the "instruments" used.

Starter Home is country music for intellectuals, but he still hits those classic country tropes: longing in Waiting and alcohol as a cure for regret in Drinking With A Friend. His voice is velvety and smooth with texture, vital for a mature sound.

Beautifully spooky.

City Of Refuge’s 15 tracks are uneven in both length and musical depth--one track, 'High Plain 3,' is just a minute and 31 seconds of quiet, droning ambient static--yet the record plays out like the cohesive score to a postmodern, post-apocalyptic western.

Case's overzealous self-production means there are layers upon layers to every track, which sometimes works to her detriment.

Those lyrics may seem slightly ridiculous, but between them and his thinly veiled metaphors for his need to perform cunnilingus (Sweet Tooth), Kelly's originality and talent for making instant club hits is un-fucking-deniable.

Energy flows smoothly from frantic sugar-rush highs to subtly beautiful, ambient polyrhythm experiments, and this gradual winding down effectively showcases the full spectrum of his vision. It shouldn't work, but it does.

Every few months, the members would meet up at their studio and play whatever they felt like without the looming pressure of album cycles or release dates. Eventually, these sessions became the basis for Waltzed In From The Rumbling, a record at once thoughtful and unwieldy.

Natasha Khan's fourth Bat for Lashes album is her most mature and cohesive yet.

Flourish // Perish sounds like an extension of Standell-Preston’s other musical project, Blue Hawaii. In fact, many of the songs could be interchangeable with that project, but this isn’t a fault.

They’ve become better musicians, better songwriters and better at expressing life’s frustrations without jeopardizing too much of what made them so cherished in the beginning.

Dedicated serves not only as an introduction to a criminally overlooked, pioneering pre-R&R group but also as a reminder of why Cropper remains so well respected.

Plenty of boldface names are assisting here, but with the exception of Kendrick Lamar, who continues his streak of scenery-chewing guest verses on Nosetalgia, they stay out of the way.

Whereas Xen had the odd, satisfyingly familiar beat pattern, Mutant is even more punk. It dives headlong into an emotional abyss and proceeds with a rhyme or reason that's up to listeners to determine.

He's turned the clock back to the Fun Trick Noisemaker era of playful psychedelic indulgence that was the Apples' stock in trade before the unsavoury aspirations of indie-rock stardom took hold.

Altogether, it offers a glimpse of what Parquet Courts could turn into. The future looks promising.

When Chenaux alights on something more typically songlike, he sparks both anticipation and memory: an interesting marriage of nostalgia and novelty.

Sometimes the best music happens when experimentalists indulge their inner pop music fan.

The sloppy rockers sound frozen in grunge time on their third release, and it works incredibly well for the dipso punks.

Some Machinedrum fans will find his newfound cheeriness disconcerting, but Stewart approaches the project with so much enthusiasm that it’s hard not to get swept up in the good vibes.

Nihilism doesn't even begin to describe the mood created by the skittering electronic drums, uneasy atmospheric noises and MC Ride's manic scream-rapping.

She’s often at her best alone with an acoustic guitar instead of ornamented with retro R&B references. It’s easy to want to dislike something that the UK press, Perez Hilton and Kanye West are telling you to like, but Adele shows some real talent.

With every album, Deerhunter strip away more layers of textural ambience and reveal what some fans knew all along: that they're a pop band.

Sometimes a sequel can out do the original. That's the case with Curren$y's follow-up to Pilot Talk, thanks largely to stepped-up production by Ski Beatz, whose beats sound like a minute hasn't passed since he worked on Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt.

Even naysayers can't overlook their second album's intelligence, uniqueness and ambition.

Vibes! is a disco-dappled, funk-fuelled electro-pop record. Each successive track brings a new and increasingly surprising 80s or 90s influence.

Most of the tracks could be singles, successfully marrying a pop sensibility to country twang without sacrificing the best aspects of either approach.

Ti Amo feels like the kind of escapism Phoenix and their compatriots could use right about now. And the fact that it’s the most summery music they’ve ever made is like a big, red cherry on top.

The lyrics are earnest as all hell, but only once--on Hard To Tell--borderline twee.

Ab-Soul is still the third man up in the stacked TDE crew (behind Kendrick Lamar and Schoolboy Q), but this album establishes him as the group’s most reliable Swiss Army knife: deft in a wide variety of sonic and thematic situations.

It’s a remarkably consistent dance album in a singles-based genre that usually fails when it comes to full-lengths.

On La Radiolina, an unmistakable molotov cocktail of fierce resistance anthems, Manu Chao continues to do what he does best.

Their clear evolution in terms of talent and ability is more than evident on songs like Firebreather and The Whaler. Between that and some pretty sweet packaging and liner notes, this is likely their best to date.

You can sense that she's still a bit uncomfortable flirting with pop music, and hides the most accessible and melodic songs in the second half of the album. Then again, if you can't deal with a few dissonant free jazz horn explosions, you probably weren't going to pick up this record anyway.

It’s their most accessible release in ages. The Melvins hit the riff-heavy heights of their foundational 90s records while freewheeling into plenty of experimentation (like chimes and accordions on The Bunk Up) and straight-up curiosities.

Even at its most pieced-together and deconstructed, Califone's music feels organic.

When you consider that the first song is only a minute shy of half an hour long, this collection of epic ambient disco revisionism definitely counts as a full-fledged artistic statement.

A few tracks ease into each other too easily and are forgettable, but there’s still an overall sense of growth and fruition.

The album basks in sun-drenched classic rockisms while managing to sound leagues above throwback jam bands like Phish.

It's not always the most comfortable thing to listen to, but like the proverbial car crash, it's hard to tear yourself away.

Each performance bursts with unadulterated emotionalism as Hegarty's voice swoops and swells around the impeccable-sounding band.

hat mix of worldly and familiar references, moods and textures ensures that The Magic Whip buzzes with urgency, even at its most serene and existential (or when Albarn rehashes his banal reservations about modern times).

You’re Dead! is experimental and often ambient, but has so much attention to detail and raw talent (Herbie Hancock, Angel Deradoorian, Kendrick Lamar) that it could never be background music.

This is understated folk pop, and as a result, some may be disappointed by the lack of big pop hooks. However, for those of us who always found Diamond overwrought and too extroverted, this restraint is refreshing and welcome.

There's little sonic variation, but that approach puts the focus where it should be: on the raw emotion of his singing.

The more steeped Hozier gets in Southern influence the better: slow, hymnal Work Song disguises a love ballad as a spiritual to blissful effect, a perfect showcase for his rich, resonant alto.

Even with quick, dense and precisely rhythmic flows, his rapping is like verbal dancing. Its joyous and romantic moments make the album feel more like a thematic refinement than a musical one.

He’s still expanding his vocal range, but this hour of soulful, sugary funk will accompany your summer parties quite well.

Arriving ahead of a full-length, this five-song EP confirms our suspicion of the duo's pop genius.

A vigorous 11-song collection that keeps the lyrics and melodies straightforward, allowing the complexity and uniqueness of his guitar-playing to burst through.

The large cast of vocalists are quite upfront in the mix, and the quality of the songs tends to depend on their talent, but for the most part it’s a strong collection of bangers, with few missteps.

It's really only when you find the time to sit down and listen to it all that it starts making sense. Yes, this may require some patience, but you will be rewarded.

Moments of softness and even warmth make Ghersi’s debut album a more varied, mature and easier listen than last year’s unforgiving &&&&& mixtape.

Not everything works... but even the flawed experiments make for an enjoyable listen.

With help from bandmates Eric Fisher and Jenna Conrad, his eighth full-length could be the album to finally propel the little known guitarist to Arcade Fire-like heights.

Builds on the quiet drama of their warm, melancholic, sometimes creepy sound.

As always, the main appeal lies in how honest and real it all feels.

This is an album about feeling good, and the freewheeling abandon .Paak brings to his delivery is matched by Knxwledge, who keeps up with him by absorbing as many sounds, voices, eras and influences as he can.

Countless acts have shamelessly imitated the Velvet Underground, but DeMarco has come up with a new tweak to that formula, coming closer to a lighthearted Modern Lovers feel without sacrificing the edginess and darkness of the VU.

The disc sometimes lacks sonic oomph, and the mid-section is less unique, borrowing new wave staccato guitars and sing-yelping styles from fellow Victorians Hot Hot Heat. Things pick up again at the end with three slices of relaxed indie pop.

It's a downtempo album, especially its sleepier last third, but unlike its title suggests, it's not even a little depressing.

As much as Kaytranada seems to be referencing genre staples and styles, his constant flights of rhythmic fancy make his music seem genre-averse. And when he connects with a vocalist or drummer who shares that sensibility, 99.9% really glows.

Garage punk hero Jay Reatard has grown up, and, surprisingly, this has turned out to be a very good thing indeed.

Never Were The Way She Was is stunning, understated and poignant, evoking isolation and yearning for some unnamed thing. Despite some less successful detours, it's a monster of a journey that calls to mind a windswept, brutal white North fraught with life.

Here twigs sounds even more poised and self-assured.

The band's heavy, high-octane assault gets an extra kick of power from MacNeil's throaty growl, making their third LP their most direct and pummelling yet.

The greatest strength of the album is that you don’t think of the original artists while Ndegeocello is singing. Some will feel she’s been reckless with beloved jams, others will fall in love with them all over again, and many will discover a new side of them even if they’ve heard the original a million times.

None of this stuff sounds the same, proving grime to be a borderless hinterland populated by some of the most gifted, uninhibited, maniacal musicians.

The results are surprisingly engrossing.

Linkous's vocals make only a few brief appearances, but so much of his personality is in the songs that it feels almost like a tribute album he had a hand in recording. A proper coda to a storied, tragic career.

There’s still an indomitable punk fury, and A Productive Cough is the most hopeful Titus Andronicus record yet.

Some will long for Oldham’s minimalist era, but Beware is still an engaging record from one of the indie world’s best songwriters.

On Hot Dreams he’s wisely pulled back from that horror film soundtrack vibe to let the songs breathe.

It's not particularly deep, but it's energetic, buoyant, fun and more than a little infectious.

They sound like one brain playing machine-gun rhythms and echoing chords on a multitude of instruments, and their incredible fusion makes even the tunes with the simplest, most standard structures... exciting.

Conveying so much harrowing detail in such a brief time is no small feat – one reason why his music lingers long after the album ends.

Blissful and vibrant, Dark Days is a party album, but one with a soothing, trance-inducing quality. Best listened to loudly and in a communal setting.

It's that classic Beastie Boys sound, and a reminder why they've set the gold standard for posse rap.

Holter confidently and impressively takes her music wherever she wants.

Embracing a wide palette of sounds helps, but beyond the occasional crunchy guitar or unexpected synth, it’s the arrangements that make this album work.

The record’s simple presentation and briefness make for an engaging change from the epic crossover attempts of his prior LP Darkest Before Dawn.

Tillman's voice sounds sublime delivering lyrics about sexy graveyard encounters, ex-girlfriends and the dark side of California living.

If In the Vines isn't a record that impresses at the level of individual songs, neither is it something you throw on in the background and forget about.

The album’s last bit kind of peters out, but what comes before it is amusing and fun.

Art Of Doubt shows that you can still find comfort in the sounds of your past, especially if the bands who shaped you have adapted and evolved along with you.

Occasionally Half Free can sound dense to the point of being vexing, but its vivid imagery and striking melodies keep Remy’s more self-indulgent tendencies grounded in a classic pop sensibility.

Expo 86 feels divided down the middle, and both writers deliver some of their best work to date.

Yeezus isn’t his masterpiece, but it's an integral piece of an eclectic collection that will one day provide a window to an artist who will either become an insane Howard Hughesian eccentric or mellow into reality TV Kardashian fatherdom.

If the Replacements were to release an album stuffed with vital performances of stylishly crafted roots rock like those on Three Easy Pieces, it would be hailed as the comeback of the century.

You'll want to let the whole record play, but Refill, Land Ahoy! and Mekons' anthemic Beaten And Broken (sung by Fulks) are highlights.

Yes, there are some jazz and soul influences here and a few earnest lyrics, but this is way more dark, futuristic and cutting-edge than you'd guess.

In terms of writing and production, this may be Interpol at their best.

Mike Cooley steps up with some much-needed light contrast to Patterson Hood’s darker lyrical impulses, which are well represented here, sometimes with touching poignancy and others with blunt force trauma.