An all-you-can-eat steak buffet for listeners. ... The musical arrangements are even sparser than Callahan’s last studio album, 2013’s Dream River, yet his foghorn voice remains intimately pushed to the forefront of the mix.

The band’s trademark solemnity and repetitive downtempo styles prevail in the final three tracks, making you feel like you’re treading in a swimming pool of honey--in a good way.

Singer Davey Havok continues to impress with his range and ability to quickly turn from a throat-searing scream to a bare-boned croon, as does the entire band's consistently exciting approach to songwriting and their music aesthetic.

The clever hook is keeping everything fuzzy enough to create a trippy mystique that makes it difficult to pinpoint what's happening or where it's all leading.

The weird, nuanced Rhode Island-based MC burns his references, punchlines and cold truths through a batch of X-acto-sharp beats, focusing his strong opinions, sense of imagery and lyrical abstraction inward.

It's almost as if, released from the role of playing less weird anchor to Spencer Krug's art rock savant, Boeckner's figured out how to maximize and expand what he does best.

With its confident, mature and meditative approach, his debut album belies his newbie status.

If neither the lyrics nor bass lines break your heart, you might not have one.

Using hardly any words at all, Deacon conveys the freedom, triumph and catharsis that can come from a journey across ever-changing yet familiar terrain.

It's an idiosyncratic, aggressively self-conscious and occasionally sentimental album, one that falls somewhere between languid, finger-snapping R&B and hip-hop braggadocio.

While there isn’t a chart-smashing Single Ladies or Baby Boy in the mix, the resulting 14 tracks (plus 17 videos) make her most complete album to date.

He [bandleader Anthony Gonzalez] masterfully weaves myriad sounds and structures--mainly late 70s- and early 80s-influenced--into a remarkably strong, cohesive unit.

The Alabama-born Houck knows his way around this music well enough to walk the fine line between respect and reverence as he delivers impassioned readings of 'Can I Sleep In Your Arms' and 'Too Sick To Pray' and kicks out a freewheeling rip through 'I Gotta Get Drunk' with the appropriate tinge of self-loathing.

Anticipation has been high for the album's official release, and Heady Fwends doesn't disappoint.

Musically, songs are altogether pleasant, ranging from languid to downright danceable, with undercurrents of the German art pop that influenced much of the 'Lab's sound.

He may not be reinventing himself with each album, but his songs are so rife with double meanings and flourishes, there's always a lot to unpack.

Lush, focused and well wrought in a way that channels the Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow as much as Stereolab's Emperor Tomato Ketchup without seeming too reverent about its predecessors or anachronistic in its execution.

While it took a little while for the magic to finally get laid down to tape, the results are worth the wait.

Everything clicks on Let's Stay Friends, from blasts of Rocket from the Crypt bombastic rock on The Equestrian to Fugazi-sharp guitars backing Tim Harrington's feverish, controlled vocals on Patty Lee.

The surging crescendos and improv freedom give his wordy songs a refreshing dynamic that could gain the 41-year-old folk troubadour an entirely new audience.

In 1995 at the Source Awards, Andre 3000 made an iconic callout: “The South got something to say.” In under 40 minutes, Solange re-asserts the claim on a grander scale: the South has still got something to say.

Alsina’s narrative-driven niche is criminally underrepresented on the pop charts right now. Judging by the way he effectively turns his wounded past into the catalyst for a bright future--he has potential to dominate the lane.

Focused, domestic, deep in thought. It's as anti-complacent as pop music gets.

It's still epic – and a bit grandiose at times - but in a charmingly human and believable way.

This is a sparse, minimal and unassuming record that's unlikely to hit anyone over the head with its innovation, but Gonzalez accomplishes much while sounding like he's doing very little.

The record is effusive but unsentimental, pointedly funny (Love Is A Bourgeois Construct) and occasionally subversive (The Last To Die, a Springsteen cover).

There are a few hot instrumental numbers, but most of this is your favourite undergrounders (add Ladybug Mecca and Z-Trip to the list above) doing their thing over bangin' live funk beats with ace production.

Wrapped up in a tidy 10 songs is an album full of kinetic exuberance, rawness and sweat that retains just enough of a pop sensibility to keep things both memorable and erratic.