Chicago's veteran alt-rockers haven't sounded this much fun in ages, their seventh album balancing their easy-going and experimental sides.

This second album (featuring Grizzly Bear's Chris Bear and Chris Taylor) is a sumptuous sequence of symphonic meditations on memory and loss that somehow manage to give a more expansive twist to the already elegiac mood of Arcade Fire's Funeral.

On this relaxed and cohesive set, Van's band fall into simple and graceful grooves and play like a proper group, not hired hands.

A cosmic, contemporary Human League.

A trippy marvel.

It's an undeniably impressive range of talent and, for the most part, Shock Value pulls off every trick it tries.

The Golden Mile is more substantial: a very well-made rock record of perfect length (about 45 minutes) and contradictory catharsis.

Female duo Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gangnes make stark, witchy electronica that's subtle and exciting, their mantra-like voices drawing you in like a sinister nursery rhyme, with melodies breaking through their oblique, half-muttered lyrics like beams of winter sunlight.

The closer you listen to the jazzy guitars, Beatles touches and easy, shuffling rhythms ... the more it transpires that Tweedy is simply allowing the songs sufficient room to speak up for themselves.

That The Crying Light vibrates with confidence will be no surprise to anyone who witnessed last year's remarkable shows at London's Barbican.

This is the sort of album which is destined to be talked about in hushed tones by people who can remember exactly which improbably funky Manfred Mann tune it was that Kieran Hebden once put on a compilation. But it deserves a much wider audience than that.

Easy Tiger is his most rounded creation.

It won't win them any new fans, but those that believed the truth last time will dig this.

The chatter of modern culture might make such a response to 7/7 unfashionable, but such a thoughtful voice, and so deeply felt a record, shouldn't go unheeded.

There's the odd jarring note but Bare Bones remains a work of high class, deep feeling and, let's not forget, magical singing.

The result, typified by the rousing 'Oh! Vanity' and emotive 'This is the End', is a melodic and hard-fought triumph.

Smith's rock poet muse is certainly alive on most cuts, her deep voice declaiming, yipping, soaring, and investing old lyrics with fresh dignity and rhythm.

With bands like Vampire Weekend so keen on appropriating the polyrhythmic thunder of their African peers, it's only fitting that these childhood friends should often sound like art rock sensations from Brooklyn.

Any fears that the zippy Afro-pop of these New York-based hipsters was a novelty--so very 2008--are quickly dispelled on this confident and completely entertaining second album.

The live clips of the Very Best on YouTube suggest an almost chaotic stage presence, and this very easy-on-the-ear debut may inspire many imitators.

Take one listen to the title track, accept that it's the greatest pure pop single of the year and everything you wanted from the Klaxons and didn't get, and you'll be seduced into wanting to believe that Midnight Juggernauts know what they're doing.

This is intoxicating psych-indie for heady days in unbroken sunshine.

With neither the sugar rush of "Hot Fuss" nor the blustery thrills of "Sam's Town," this is the Killers' most beguilingly strange record. As an accurate reflection of its frontman, it succeeds handsomely.

This album will make your life considerably better.

I Know You're Married... is a sure-footed, emotionally engaging step up the ladder.

A wonderful record that is flawed - that'll be those flatulent synths again - but by design.

A truly original, innovative, heavy-as-hell, interesting heavy metal record that you can listen to more than twice without wanting to smash it to a million pieces with an axe.

If this all sounds a bit heavy going, Crack the Skye offers plenty of simple pleasures as Mastodon heap on the musical melodrama, with a more-is-more approach to fretwork that's bound to see them liven up moshpits when they support Metallica this summer.

Terius "The Dream" Nash is the song-writer behind Rihanna's Umbrella and other more intriguing than average R&B hits. His second album continues the theme, with assistance from Kanye West.

True to form, this third record pootles around before, ultimately, achieving lift-off.

That it lacks any obvious singles hardly seems to matter. Viva La Vida is an assured return that should go some way to restoring Coldplays wilted critical stock.

It starts out inchoate and hard to put your finger on, then coalesces into something wiry and unshakable.

It would be disappointing if this turned out to be the best debut album of 2007 - there's nothing particularly original here - but Hats Off to the Buskers is nonetheless a record that re-energises melodic guitar music in the most irresistible fashion, recalling the euphoric punch of Oasis' Definitely Maybe or the Strokes' Is This It as it does so.

Tankian has always got one more surprise up his sleeve. But his scatter-shot approach does not detract from the acuity of his polemical insights

Happily, Slipknot can pull in these directions and still maintain a new standard of bone-crunching intensity . There are louder metal bands in the world, for sure, but the Iowan nine-piece continue to make the most noise.

Forget hi-life vibes: this psychedelic trip takes you from Jo'Burg to Brooklyn and way, way beyond.

It is also a sound that on this, their fifth album, seems as resistant to change as the forces of nature and while seemingly limited in palette, is as expansive as it is inventive.

This live double album, recorded in July 1998, offers another take on those great songs.

[It has] an unexpected depth, unity and resonance.

Beck, at last, is back.

If we are going to go, the magnificently mournful title track of this EP may as well be the soundtrack.

Not just a dignified salute to an absent friend, but a cracking album in its own right.

A warmer, more linear record than their debut... Spellbinding, frustrating, wonderful.

White Denim somehow manage to cover all points of the musical compass without ever losing their overall sense of direction.

Far from venturing further into the polyrhythmic interior, four long tracks find him drawing closer to techno's primal pulse, until celestial finale 'Wing Body Wing' squares the Afro/Detroit circle with a single dramatic power-chord.

By the time he closes with fittingly open-ended encores of 'Listen to the Lion' and 'Summertime in England'--neither of which is on Astral Weeks--he is truly gone. And in a triumph as unlikely as it is complete, Astral Weeks is reborn.

Fantasy Black Channel is a tour de force comprising glam, techno, and rave, all of which he twists into unimaginable shapes.

A perfectly summery blend of Krautrock, prog rock and more danceable grooves.

With this second album cementing the union between Mariam Wallentin's impassioned gut-bucket vocals and Andreas Werliin's busy percussion, they are on their way to becoming the White Stripes in reverse.

Once it hits its stride, it just keeps on getting better.

Yet far from heralding a more obviously commercial taint, major label backing finds them ever more extreme. This album may not be quite as bleak as The Bairns, and the sound is more sophisticated, but they still sound like nobody else.

This album proves that when Earle reconnects to the sheer joy of making music the results can be powerful.

Mason's latest solo guise is endearingly odd. Who else, after all, would dream of welding Tubeway Army to lubricious RB and house and pull it off?

A welcome return for this premier Leicestershire combo, who specialise is substance over style.

The result is an album that, unquestionably, marks him out as one of the UK's most promising new producers.

Beware is one of the more playful entries in the Bonnie "Prince" Billy canon. It's also one of his fullest sounding records.

Khan is a fantastic package and a good, if not as maverick as some believe, songwriter. In a year when no one wants to sing about making a cup of tea, she's just the ticket.

As with the conceptual aspect, knowing the peculiar provenance of the noises on The Rose Has Teeth is actually supplemental to one's enjoyment of this suite... which stands alone as an enthralling aural experience.

Our Love to Admire fleshes out the dark edges of Interpol's sound to create a polished, muscular-sounding record that teems with life and bristling potency.

If hippie leanings and a penchant for image-dense, nature-inspired poesy make Oberst a kindred spirit to Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, he can also be hard-nosed.

By virtue of its sheer irreverence, Guns Don't Kill... seems to encapsulate everything you always loved about reggae, and perhaps thought had disappeared.

In a musical climate awash with just-above-average singer-songwriters, Elton is still among the brightest exponents of what can be done when you combine piano, voice, melody and heart.

Probably the most exquisitely integrated single listening experience the Chemical Brothers have yet come up with.

It's Elvis (or Mr Diana Krall as he's also known) in fine, lovelorn country form.

It's more jaunty nouveau Traveling Wilburys than folk rock summit as Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, My Morning Jacket's Jim James and M Ward join forces.

So here they are, doing again what they've done before: mostly slow and sombre songs, sometimes delivered with a wary hesitancy that can be endearing but is occasionally frustrating.

This might just be their best record in a decade.

Join With Us's classic radio pop unveils a band so accomplished, so guilelessly in love with the joy of a good melody, that they now sound like no one but themselves.

The music's Pharrell Williams-assisted dancefloor pop; the words entirely Shakira's. Preposterously brilliant.

Eschewing the Incredible String Band nostalgia of Espers et al for a more complex hybrid somewhere between the Kinks at their most relaxed and the Band at their most committed, Vetiver have made a record that's as summery as a field full of butterflies.

Inevitably, Vieux Farka Toure is not in the same league as his father. But he has still managed to make a very impressive and enjoyable debut album.

So here's what's brilliant about this band: the 11 songs here offer no solution, no way out and very little hope, making We'll Live and Die in These Towns as bleak in its own way as the Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible. The songs are brilliant, too.

While Britain and the US are succumbing to a very retro take on the US's R&B heritage, the original queen of neo-soul has taken a giant leap forward.

Her voice, dark, nuanced and full of mystery, shows what a class act the singer has become.

The tumescent, endlessly inventive songs are seldom less than exquisitely performed.

The songs are deeper and richer than on 2006's "12 Songs," but still naked and raw.

A weary, beautifully realised work.

Never has a pit of despair sounded so inviting.

The good news is that the ninth album from these inveterate melancholics is a burnished pleasure.

It's much darker, more contemplative territory; the songs are like intimate nocturnes located somewhere between classical and soul.

There isn't a duff or thoughtless moment.

This muscular follow-up ratchets up the internal tension until his exuberant toy-town techno becomes a shot of pure musical adrenalin.

Their joyous hooks ensure Donkey is as fun as its predecessor.

Inspirational stuff.

Rhys has made both his wildest and most accessible record to date.

Magic is a record aimed squarely at radio, stadiums, open car windows and the solar plexus of guys who don't notice passing musical fashion. Magic sounds big. And it sounds great.

This, their fourth album, feels like a breakthrough, more polished and poised to build on cult 2006 single 'Lloyd, Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?'

Lunatico won't alienate fans by having evolved too fast, nor disappoint by excessively rehashing old themes.

This set has 21 unreleased folk and pop tracks, their conventional framework unable to contain the childlike dreaminess that marks their creator's best work, whatever the genre.

Born Like This finds DOOM back to his scalpel-tongued, scatter-mouthed best.

A perfectly executed debut as might be expected from a band championed in OMM53 for their mathematical precision.

This is a daring, crisp modern soul album rich in ideas and star quality.

John Frusciante has carved out a parallel world as a solo artist over a series of intensely personal and brilliantly realised albums. His 10th, The Empyrean, is his most ambitious to date.

Somehow, though, it soars, the title track especially.

Scars on Broadway offers up the tastiest smorgasbord of bite-sized pop-metal delicacies since the last time Cheap Trick recorded a Queens of the Stone Age tribute album.

Trumpeter Mathias Eick has a sound that gently beckons and, like softly spoken conversation, you instinctively lean forward to catch every gesture. One you'll listen to on repeat to fathom its subtle meanings.

Unlike the calculated, humourless thump of Razorlight, this is stirring, ecstatic and - just sometimes - brilliantly OTT stuff.

Best is the title track, a roll call of compassion that embraces the darkness of 'Frankenstein technologies' and the hope of "a safe place for kids to play/ bombs exploding half a mile away." Both sombre and defiant, it's Mitchell at her finest.