If anything, the grooves have gotten tougher and funkier on Game Theory.

Daniel Romano’s third solo album is steeped in the storytelling traditions of old-school country musicians like Hank Snow and Stompin’ Tom, featuring beautifully arranged travelling songs about lost mothers, lost lovers and lost hope.

It features top-shelf exclusive original and cover tracks by softer-side-of-indie acts currently riding a wave of relevance.

From the nimbly finger-picked Troubles Will Be Gone to the emphatically strummed King Of Spain, he provides instrumental variety that never overshadows his poetic lyrics.

She’s absurd, yes, but she also has an incredible melodic sense and can unpredictably weave trancey backdrops to brilliant effect.

Feist is now that rare artist in complete control of her talent.

The arrangements, though, are far more expansive, all gorgeously produced and delivered with subtlety.

It’s also the best Wilco album in a minute, and that’s largely due to its leanness (the run time is just over 30 minutes) and masterfully arranged pop tunes.

Have We Met is another new departure, yet it still has that familiar strange storytelling swagger that’s at the heart of Destroyer.

Despite the nostalgia-brightened compositions, a rawness adds a tinge of melancholy to the proceedings. Here's hoping they keep this up.

If there is a difference between albums one and two, its the slightly twangier vibes and a structural emphasis on keyboard and guitar breakdowns that could be extendable live. It’s not hard to imagine Something To Tell You translating well to Haim’s amped-up stage show.

Winter Wheat reminds us that Samson, with his plaintive, modest timbre, is a singular voice in Canadian music.

Ultimately, Aguilera's the only one of her peers with the vocal prowess to pull it off.

This album is full of bangers and achieves what so many hip-hop heads, old and new, are longing for: music with a message, loud and clear.

While Visions is unmistakably 2012 sonically in its references to R&B and hip-hop, it also fits remarkably gracefully into 4AD's impressive back catalogue of dream pop.

A contemplative but intense listen.

As on their previous two records, the rewards here are in the refinement, the well-wrought voices and the sublimely subtle performances.

The 10 songs are tense and commanding, loaded with nervy post-punk charge, ricocheting rhythms and electric guitars both zippy and busy and wild and bucking.

Le Bon's pop sensibilities are much more pronounced, yet they don't dilute any of her wonderful weirdness.

Lyrically, Beyondless is occupied with notions of excess, from the endless cycle of war, to switching one dependency for another, to indulgence and appetite. It works because the band fundamentally thrives in extremes.

Influenced by both the horrors of war and the looming threat of a nearby active volcano, A U R O R A is every bit as terrifying and brutal as those inspirations suggest, but also oddly hypnotic and contemplative.

If you're not paying close attention, it's the kind of music that seems pretty but a little too straightforward. But delve into it and the layers open up, making you realize how rich it actually is.

A diasporic pop beacon for those of us from neither here nor there.

As Stuart Murdoch sings with literary precision about illness, isolation and striving for human connections, their digressions into club music and klezmer feel as restorative as they do celebratory.

Now and then, as on Say, the bigness of the music prevents you from really hearing and feeling the lyrics through the trumpet blasts and huge solos. But then I've Been Loved comes along, sounding a bit like the Eagles and touched with seriously melancholy cello, and you sense the gravitas beneath the dizzying crescendos.

Their combination of new wave coldness and glam rock glitter is a formula that works well, and Haines has a genuine talent for walking the line between tough-girl swagger and fragility.

It's a lot to wrap your head around, especially given the brief run time, but it also hits with a powerful immediacy, even on first listen. Justifies the hype.

Despite Rae Sremmurd's rep for hyped-up celebration songs, the album's best moment comes when Lee and Jimmy eschew cranking up for something closer to cutesy romance.