While Adventures In Your Own Backyard can't be described as instantly catchy, its songs wend their way into your memory as if you've always known them.

His sixth album proves that his ability to make grown-up hits is stronger than ever.

Hero Brother is a beautiful collection of experimental instrumental songs.

Make no mistake--that Jersey (GA's home state) vibe still lurks in the corners. It's just that his writing style is more distinctive here. It's also the sound of a band pushing itself while capitalizing on its strengths.

It's early morning or late-night music, and more than capturing a specific place and aimless time, A New Place 2 Drown is a soundtrack for a slowed-down pace of life.

Working again with pop Svengali Richard Gottehrer and the Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner, DDG find a nice middle ground between their signature detachment and a classic pop sensibility.

His latest disc could be his best yet.

Yes, the melodies are all bubble-gum lightness, but don’t worry, Raveonettes are still very dark and won’t be making inroads into top-40 radio any time soon.

Front and centre is impressive guitar work; the band’s got a knack for writing spring-loaded hooks that build into beautiful shoegaze-inspired swells.

As usual, Jones’s powerful voice box hogs the spotlight, but the simple, strong arrangements do a lot of heavy lifting.

Most of its 10 songs last just two or three minutes. It's too good to be a mixtape and too short to be an album, raising the stakes even higher for the album proper.

His push toward “real” songwriting is aided significantly by Canadian expat and multi-instrumentalist Jason “Gonzales” Beck, who spins a Parisian pop spell on the track Luxury and grounds Tiga’s high-camp inclinations on Shoes.

The production has been updated for a new, not so distant future, but retains its mechanical crunch and metallic din.

It took me a few listens to accept the trance synth riffs that dominate, not to mention Alice Glass's increasingly melodic screeching, but the apocalyptic undertones are surprisingly effective with some sugar on top.

Levi pulls off his flamboyant persona because he has the meticulously structured songs to carry it.

Slippin' And Slidin' on Harlem River Blues, probably the 28-year-old's strongest album yet, hints at that tendency. Slippin' And Slidin' on Harlem River Blues, probably the 28-year-old's strongest album yet, hints at that tendency.

For Los Campesinos! to come up with such a strong follow-up not even a year after their last is an amazing feat.

There are moments when the sweeping melodies verge on the grandiose, but they successfully walk that difficult line between obnoxiously extroverted and too restrained.

Performing live in the BBC studios affords the group the ability to stretch out and test the new song ideas that made these one-off recordings so sought after by the group’s most ardent sweater-clad fans. Regrettably, it’s not a comprehensive collection of their entire BBC recorded output.

Many will hate it, but those willing to give it a chance will be impressed by the naked humanity West reveals. He’s gone way out on limb, and for that alone it deserves open ears.

A stellar, necessary batch of smart rock songs.

King Animal doesn't sound like a nostalgia-fed cash grab, nor is it poisoned by the desperate commercialism of Cornell's post-Soundgarden projects.

The result is a uniformly pleasant selection of peaceful, easy feelings that wouldn't sound out of place sandwiched between the similarly smooth tunes of Loggins & Messina, America, Gerry Rafferty and, yes, Christopher Cross.

Bloodsports is exactly what a Suede fan wants, and it also sounds remarkably less dated than anything their old rivals Oasis are up to these days.

While all the West Coast blue-skying might seem naive, the laid-back vibe makes you want to focus on the positive, at least for the album's duration.

The first three songs are so energetic and impassioned as to be rivetingly unhinged.

The mood is still dark, druggy and claustrophobic, but this time Tesfaye is channelling a pain that's less about cold emptiness than it is about more traditional heartbreak and longing.

Despite the limited instrumentation, arrangements are thoughtful, and the 10 songs build slowly and hypnotically through repetition. Just when a sameness begins to set in, a handful of tunes near the end ... tip us off to the fact that we've glimpsed just a fraction of Mares of Thrace's capabilities.