Vessel is not the first album I would suggest to an uninitiated Frankie Cosmos fan. Still, as with any great book or television series, you want to continue following along, even if the best place to start is at the beginning.

It’s darker than Roar, but also wiser, more mature in its conflicts.

An admirably cocksure debut on which Levi makes like a 21st century T. Rex-- which, our current retro-obsessed rock culture notwithstanding, is not an easy thing to pull off.

Earthly Delights shows their career is less a series of sprints than one exhilarating marathon.

Goodbye Bread is filled with such rich, breathtaking moments, and Segall, who plays every instrument here, sounds as though he's savoring every part of process.

It's as much the arrival of The Jicks as it is the rebirth of Stephen Malkmus: The band has become a grounding force he can push and pull from, a safety net allowing him to take risks.

Private Suit shows the band taking some risks. They continue to write catchy and cute guitar rock songs, but also experiment with backing vocals and strings, a noble ambition that raises the bar higher than "the little band that could" is able to reach.

A dynamic album with intriguing lyrics, a country/folk shimmer, and explosive pop moments.

Yes, it's "sprawling," "massive," "has lots of filler," "should have been one disc," etc.-- but guess what: It's cocksure and it works.

One would think that, coming off of last year's rich Snuffbox Immanence, the psych-folk collective would add profound depth and originality to Damon and Naomi's dreamy folk.... But, regardless of who's to blame, Ghost's role isn't large enough to alter Damon and Naomi's sound.

Playfully scatterbrained.

The album’s language is intelligent but wholly straightforward, rarely witty and almost device-less; Simz always says exactly what she means.

It’s a record so precise as to be sensory, whose arrangements of harmonies, guitars, and lonesome trills are like the intake of breath before a faltering step.

The album is a splendid hour of jams, both personal and political, that never sacrifices its bewitching groove even when it’s dressing down corrupt officials. African Giant is more cohesive, more robust in sound, and significantly broader than his previous music.

On the whole her performance throughout Begin to Hope exhibits new levels of control and direction, reaching a point where the song and the singing are inseparable.

With Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, she invites an array of collaborators to help craft pensive songs that grow out of moments past. While her instrument’s luminous tone remains the music’s defining characteristic, she embraces a darker mood than before.

While lacking the close mic’d intimacy of her early work, Out in the Storm is equally immersive, with songs that play like fiery exorcisms.

Less ferocious, more deliberate but in many ways more compelling, Everything in Between finds No Age matching a new, nuanced approach to their expansive noise.

Foxygen haven't so much produced memorable songs as much as cool, disembodied sonic layers that might one day coalesce into memorable songs in your head if you listen to it enough.

It’s a tremendous step forward, while still remaining an acquired, uncompromising taste.

They've given us something in the present tense that, these days, feels depressingly unfashionable: An Event--an album that dares to be great, and remarkably succeeds.

Whether Wreckless Amy represents a one-off collaboration or the start of an ongoing project for both musicians remains to be seen, but they sound pretty happy together.

Unclear messages and unspooled melodies break new ground for Hval, and she inhabits it with grace on The Long Sleep. It’s as penetrating a work as Blood Bitch and its predecessor, Apocalypse, girl, but more humble in concept and more suspicious of its own claims.

The subject matter subverts her inherent sensuousness, but this is still Charlotte Gainsbourg singing-- at times, she can't help sounding like the cooing French goddess her father helped popularize. It's dead sexy, reborn.

C'mon feels more like a collection drawn from throughout the last decade than a completely cohesive album.

Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color is more of a refinement than a deviation for Brother Ali, even though there's one prominent change that could set off questions.

The happy-music-with-sad-lyrics shtick has been done often, but rarely so well since the Lucksmiths' namesakes.

Even a casual listener could hear the spark--Staples' first fame came from getting the best of known mic terrorist Earl Sweatshirt--his production values have finally caught up enough to push him past the scrappy sidekick division into the big leagues.