The Bed I Made is a lovely introduction to their orbit.

A sense of cosmic ambiguity permeates Bad Witch. These are neither his most inviting new songs nor his most immediate, but they rank among his most urgent.

The music’s relentless complexity, insularity, and high drama can be challenging even for a listener predisposed toward those qualities. The band seems to understand this, and they are more willing to meet you in the middle than you might think.

A Man Alive's great virtue is that Nguyen can still sound like she's having the time of her life even as she's recounting the darkest moments from it.

This collection isn't for fans, but for those who haven't dug deeper than Ships, or for those wrongly convinced Ships was a blip in an otherwise dense and unrewarding discography.

A uniformly strong collection of sharp-eyed, sardonic allegories.

The songs are viscerally anguished, but they don’t wallow. There’s an essential, breezy levity to the music; the parts require one another. The whole of II moves forward and on.

Incidentally, this is what the title Innundir Skinni translates to loosely in English-- "under the skin"-- an apt description for Arnalds' gentle, peculiar and powerful music itself.

The sound throughout--as ever recorded and mixed by drummer John McEntire--is gorgeous, and a nice reminder of how thoughtful simplicity can still carry a lot of weight.

It's not often that padding out an already hefty album actually improves it, but in the Queens' case, the revised tracklist provides a more accurate portrait of how the band molded its mercurial Desert Sessions experiments into chiseled hard-rock monoliths.

Though the songs on Rose Mountain were tighter than ever, the record felt like it was gritting its teeth, waiting for a fever to break. On All at Once, it does. Bayles is back, and so is the band’s storehouse of killer riffs.

Uplifting music can tend to grate rather than inspire, but Koffee hits a satisfying midpoint, free of didacticism and never forced; she’s simply inviting us into her world.

This is some outlandish stuff, to be sure, but in a sense-of-adventure kind of way that feels in keeping with the vague, in-title-only themes of futurism and space travel that Orbits centers around.

“Blowing Kisses” serves as the emotional anchor of Castle’s stunning seventh album, Camelot, which feels like the sort of bold breakthrough that her peers in U.S. Girls and the Weather Station respectively experienced with In a Poem Unlimited and Ignorance.

Glory is rich with beauty, but the band—Hadreas; longtime partner Alan Wyfells; producer Blake Mills; and drummers Tim Carr and Jim Keltner, bassist Pat Kelly, and guitarists Meg Duffy and Greg Uhlmann—twists it just enough to let in flashes of the strange and idiosyncratic.

Although Floating Coffin does quite well with its searing powerhouses, the quieter moments add a much-needed sonic diversity.

A six-track, 51-minute album that feels bigger and more consequential in every way, folding more ideas, intensities, moods, and dimensions into its freeform sprawl.

Mostly, though, the LP does a good job keeping Gucci's culty selling points intact on a larger stage.

Pl3dge is constructed simply as a sturdy platform for one of rap's fiercest and most incisive voices, and it achieves that goal completely.

His masterful way with configured elements provides the illusion of a story without dictating the narrative: Here, you decipher the tones and rhythms, and conjure your own ideas of good and evil.

Listeners of Black Terry Cat will have no doubt: Rubinos is a unique presence, with a sharp ability to make pressing issues about identity and society into funky, exhilarating music.

She finds new ways to bring her words to life, backed by a band with more urgency and energy than ever before.

Feed the Animals helps to solidify Gillis' role as the supreme 80s-baby pop synthesizer.

Expertly paced, Cubehouse's highlights are judiciously spread out, its occasional down note always quickly offset by something more boisterous. It's the Spaceships' most consistent listen; with no lows to speak of, it's easy to see this becoming the go-to for fans.

“Un Peso” captures the appeal of Oasis; frothy music made by serious talents. ... It’s goofy, but incredibly fun—a soundtrack for beach BBQs and ad hoc fire-hydrant water parks, summer vibes made manifest.

There is nothing quite else that ties together such imaginative incongruence with ease, a quilt of scraps that cannot be replicated. What should be a hot mess is a marvel, a constellation of sounds shining bright and mysterious.

Cold of Ages is a big leap forward for a band that had already started out a few steps ahead of the pack.

Scratch It buzzes with a chattering methamphetamine sleaziness, as much Vegas as it is Nashville. The TNN studio lights that frame this record are so hot, they make the music sweat.

Read & Burn is still Wire, and without even retreading the past.

Plenty of artists put their every fiber of being into a record, but there’s rarely the overt drive to exceed one’s greatness that’s so insistent, it threatens to earn indie rock's most unintentionally revealing slight: try-hard. For most bands, it's an epithet. On Nearer My God, Foxing flaunt it like an Olympic gold medal.

Zeppelin's most singular record, if far from their best.

The terrain is familiar but Tyla is playful within it.

On Unfold, they’ve wondered aloud if the spell of their long-form magic works when stunted by the limitations of physical media and shuffled by the will of the listener. It does.

In These Times is more elegant, and more ambitious.

For a trio that has reveled in building its own little worlds for three decades, Body feels newly reflective of our space and time, a stark and jarring statement about the precipice of modern life.

The album projects a firm sense of place, and it’s not just because Charles’ accent is prevalent whether he’s talking, singing, or shouting. This is an English band, with English influences singing about English places—specifically, London.

The best moments on this record arrive when Harding’s playful approach to words syncs up with her playful approach to sound. The logic driving the end result may remain hidden, but its allure is undeniable.

They're still doing what they've always done, but Fantasy Empire is the best they've done it in a long time, and the new sheen makes everything seem magic again.

The FEELS we hear on Post Earth sound more musically focused and emotionally unsettled, with producer Tim Green (ex-Nation of Ulysses) helping sculpt the playfully shaggy sound of their debut into taut post-punk precision.

Finn has already built a sturdy legacy, but his solo records yield their own durable pleasures: I Need A New War shines like a beacon of light in a dark time.

By the time we reach the slow-burning title-track closer-- a quiet plea for eco-sanity propelled by tense, tightly coiled acoustic strums-- Wire have successfully reinvented themselves once again.

You may not love all the moves Orcutt makes, but together they quicken your pulse and pressurize the atmosphere, much as a good horror film makes even calm moments seem one second away from shock.

Even if Red Yellow Blue overstays its welcome for one song, it still counts as one of this new year's most engaging and endearing indie-rock debuts.

Its pieces are beautiful and always different, and yet always the same, generic without losing character.

Strummer’s career was a testament for open borders and open hearts. While such compassion may have fallen out of fashion, Strummer’s messy, impassioned music now sounds even more urgent and necessary.

[Guitarist Dave] Chandler's prowess as an axeman cannot be given enough emphasis: his writhing, twisted, screaming solos, and devilishly heavy riffs funnel blood and mercury into Saint Vitus' heart, as Wino's pipes lay down the soul.

He hasn’t lost a step: WHO WATERS THE WILTING GIVING TREE keeps his signature storminess intact while seeking new contours to his breathless style.

Twilight Override is comprised of only strange, beautiful, and threadbare originals, but the sense of glorious indulgence is straight 1970 Dylan.

[Robinson's] kind of soft rock-- closer to "I Want to Know What Love Is" by Foreigner than I'm comfortable with-- probably isn't going to score many points with the indie crowd, but it's not going to throw off your concentration for very long.

Layered and smeared and cut up into melodies, the vocals chant and enchant, and at times it’s difficult to tell what’s what. ... For a little over an hour, the past and future spin, dissolving in fields full of chatterboxes. It’s a world not unlike the present one.

Nonagon Infinity is overstuffed with so many stomach-tossing thrills that you’ll actually be jonesing to ride the roller-coaster all over again.

Their latest is their most consistent yet, and it stands among their best.

Joy isn’t merely happiness felt, it’s happiness earned, and Wild God is a remarkable portrait of a man putting in the work required to cross the threshold.

Given all the technical ground Cenizas covers, Jarr is an impressively meticulous guide. Every pluck, ping, buzz, scratch, and whistle is intentional, a bump in the tunnel as you slide down the rabbit hole. Once you’re there, he makes even the most discomfiting sounds—a frantic glissando after a tirade of keys, the squawk of a bow dragged across muted cello strings—feel natural.

Due to the narrow artistic parameters of Shriek (mostly: no guitars), every song on Tween has this quality of a gem rescued from the cracks.

It’s the most passionate batch of love songs you’re liable to hear in 2015, and they’re all about a specifically anthemic form of punk rock.

Chorus, Herndon’s new two-song EP, essentially amplifies the extremes of her musical personality and pushes the tension almost to the breaking point.

It’s the kind of record that would be called “triumphant” if Boucher was in a position to enjoy any of it.

These songs pull their power from slow reflections, from a series of sights that have been seen and pondered during long drives down open roads or quiet nights of deep thought.

By embracing the expanse, his music has gotten bigger, and more universal.

They don’t reinvent the band’s image so much as carefully muss its hair a bit, unfasten one more button on its shirt collar. They are still a good dinner-party band, but now they’ve made the album for when the wine starts spilling on the rug, the tablecloth is rumpled, the music has imperceptibly gotten louder, and all those friendly conversations have turned a little too heated.

Cabral explodes our ideas about texture and terror on Mazy Fly as she snuggles into a deeper connection to her own songwriting, making an album that connects on a more concrete wavelength.

This one finds them starting to pull all those ideas into something a little more focused, something easier to digest.

Woon's managed one assured and beguiling hybrid of UK bass pressure and slick blue-eyed soul.

A rotely rollicking, backward-facing fuzz assault.

While these melodies often feel familiar, Toral puts a mysterious spin on them, warping them enough to make them feel otherworldly. His instrument wavers; his drones have a sparkling, celestial sheen. In the process, the poignant songs start to feel less like themselves and more like a dream.

Throughout Flatland, Objekt reclaims his genre's all-too-familiar affectations by making us hear them for the first time all over again.

What sets Woodland apart from the rest of the duo’s remarkable catalog is its quiet adventure and clear empathy, qualities that give the sense that Welch and Rawlings are building a new structure upon an old foundation.

Parry's writing is shimmering, jewel-like.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard reaffirm their status as the house band for post-Trump geopolitical tumult, but in lieu of conceptual suites about barfing robots and intergalactic colonization, K.G. feels much more grounded, even personal. The album’s vigorous peak-hour standouts, “Ontology” and “Oddlife,” each ponder the meaning of life from opposing macro and micro angles.

Where his solo debut, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, was a relatively subdued, Welsh-only affair, its successor takes unseriousness as seriously as any official Furries effort.

It would've been easy to let The Sound cruise from there, filling it with solid also-rans. But the energy level and commitment continue unabated.

Liturgy have always brought a proggy, sprawling ambition to their music, but rarely have all the pieces locked into place so elegantly. 93696 can be pulverizing, but it’s also gentle, and amid the brutality lie some of Hunt-Hendrix’s prettiest and most ornate songs yet.

In a couple of decades, when you're looking for an instant hit of what electronic pop felt like in 2011, you'll be able to throw on Glass Swords and get a dose of that feeling in its purest form.

Her voice, raspy and harsh against the gently ringing acoustic guitar, makes you expect a gloomy, even maudlin disc. But that can distract from what makes it great: its ambiguity, the way she expresses herself in such strangely personal terms yet never settles on an emotional tone.

A huge success, a fresh-sounding record that doesn't feel too obviously indebted to anything that's come before it, much less like anything Out Hud have made before.

On Something About April II, Younge emerges as someone more interested in creating new classics than new samples.

With regularity on The Car, Turner will begin an idea that he does not finish, or he’ll introduce something totally different just when you start following along. He has become a master of turns of phrases that don’t necessarily cohere but still feel right.

His sparse yet driving music and the trenchant visual work accompanying are noteworthy elements of Allen’s four decades as an artist, but what stands out in revisiting Juarez now is the stunning poetry of the lines themselves. Allen’s words are a piquant kick throughout: raunchy, pithy, and richly redolent.

Defying all bureaucracy, borders, and strife, this concert and this orchestra proves that art at its very best is a grand gesture of empathy above all.

Being Funny is as sincere as the 1975 have ever sounded, and also as hopeful. Without the thematic discursions and stylistic detours of past records, Healy’s glamorous love songs finally take center stage, their message as convincing as ever.

The band have finally mastered the monstrous proportions of their diffuse talents and arranged them in ways that are wholly satisfying and distinctly unique.

Marnia isn't the single touch that shatters, it's the long, steady stare that gives way to embrace.

The result is a captivating, dizzying record by a band aware that they can do anything--so they’re doing it all.

Light Up Gold finds Parquet Courts looking to breakout through any available means: intense reflection, resin hits, or rock'n'roll.

It’s a remarkably assured statement of purpose.

Scott fully inhabits her loudest moments by inching towards post-rock and synth-rock.

Way's most compelling moments on Sorry are those in which she's particularly hellish, strong, and lyrically bold.

Rejecting escapism and celebrating invention, Does Spring Hide Its Joy is equally compelling and uncompromising. The music and the feeling of being absorbed in it is its own reward.

Me First proves to be a remarkably consistent and memorable listen.

He went big on HELLMODE by going smaller. It’s the prettiest album he’s ever made, but it still gets you riled up. That level-up is most audible in HELLMODE’s punk-rock tracks, which offer a dialed-in but not dialed-back tone.

Mushonga glides effortlessly between synth pop and dubstep, interlacing flute samples and vocoder flourishes without gilding the lily. Here, the intricate details embellishing her music do more to enrich the whole than draw attention to themselves, just as individual stars complete a constellation.

The subtlety of their music, and the underlying confidence that brings it forth, lies at the core of their appeal.

Rossen brings to this EP the meticulous craftsmanship we've come to expect from his work, but in Silent Hour he's created something rare: a rendering of isolation that feels sincere but never maudlin.

Let Me Do One More is full of high highs and low lows, but thanks to Tudzin’s extensive experience as an engineer and producer (Pom Pom Squad, Weyes Blood), the two extremes—and they are often extreme—are meticulously balanced.

When you view the tracklist for Springsteen on Broadway and evaluate it from the perspective of one night’s performance, it’s an impressive list of songs. But when you look at it as representative of a body of work spanning four decades--which this production decidedly cannot escape representing--it is a more than suitable tribute to what Springsteen himself refers to as both his service and his “long and noisy prayer.”

Y Dydd Olaf is a crucial minority language record, but Saunders' beguiling melodies and execution also make it one of the best British debuts of 2015.

Gold Record captures both sides: The yen to collapse the spaces between people, and the acknowledgment that some spaces are too cold to cross.