On Marauder, there’s a new kind of emptiness, of hearing an Interpol album that doesn’t really seem concerned with doing better than “good enough.”

Slippery and cryptic, Negro Swan blurs boundaries between the finished and the unfinished; between focused deliberation and thrown-together spontaneity; between fly-on-the-wall conversations and self-contained songs; between indie experimentalism and overground pop; between insider and outsider, black and white, straight and gay, trans and cis; between taxing depletion and invigorating replenishment.

Like Orc before it, Smote Reverser can’t help but lose some of its power as it approaches the hour-long mark. ... But by that point, Oh Sees have put forth more than enough Progasaurus gusto to rightfully earn their capes.

Slime Language captures one of the most boundless rappers of his era operating near his peak. That it has a bill of goods to sell does little to diminish its accomplishments.

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.

Throughout their self-titled album, Sink Ya Teeth prove they can convincingly handle a plethora of styles--but it remains to be seen whether there’s more to their retro-modern aesthetic than capable replication. Their debut is enough to spark curiosity about where they’ll take their sound next, though, and that’s no small accomplishment.

Like much of Sweetener, the song is musically sparse but encompasses a kaleidoscope of vocal tones. It is here, four albums in, that the true multitudes of her voice, and by extension herself, blossom.

Mulberry Violence isn’t ugly music by any stretch--all of the bleeding, shrieking noises are undergirded by rich chords, and Powers drops little moments of untouched beauty for us to get our breath.

Future Me Hates Me is more than proof that she and her bandmates made the right choice on refocusing their musical concerns--and it’s an absolute thrill to think about where this young band will take their talent next.

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.

Thank You for Today isn’t as uniformly bland as Codes and Keys--if anything, it’s the strongest Death Cab album of the 2010s, a dubious achievement that nonetheless deserves recognition. But there’s moments that suggest Gibbard and the rest of Death Cab are still struggling through the beige malaise that has cast a pall over their more recent work

It isn’t 03 Greedo’s magnum opus. But until he’s free of the deprivations of an unconcerned carceral state, it’s close enough.

At Weddings remains remarkable for its grace, candor, and composure. For now, with or without religion, Tomberlin seems equipped to keep her demons at bay.

The Diet would benefit from more breezily subversive sing-alongs like that—as the album rolls on, Omori’s predilection for mid-tempo, mid-period Oasis starts to take over, and a certain uniformity of style, scale, and seriousness sets in.

These 14 complex compositions warp the pop textbook into something more knotty and internal, creating a unique zone where the 27-year-old thrives: She’s never sounded so large, even in the record’s quietest moments.

An unusual mixture of hard funk and soft pop, like Zapp and Burt Bacharach stuck in an elevator together, Cole's is a sly, jubilant sound; it makes good use of the way funk also thrives upon a sense of wrongness, a screw-faced delight at things gone awry.

Without Panda Bear on board, Animal Collective lose the pop edge that has resulted in their most commercially successful music, but this isn’t a project for scoring hits. It’s a meditative, hypnotic experience, and it’s not without the sense of playfulness that has driven Animal Collective throughout their career.

The two musicians have tasked themselves with bridging generational and genre gaps between black music’s multitudes, but The Midnight Hour finds them still fiddling with how to do so.

With sharp lyrics and copious breathing space, Amici lands somewhere between Flying Nun-style jangle and the extreme minimalism of Young Marble Giants, all while sounding uniquely of Melbourne’s current, thoughtfully witty art-punk moment.

On Dissolvi, Hauschildt breathes new life into the subgenre by taking it off the dancefloor--and reveals an unexpected facet of his artistry.

On Bell House, it’s sometimes hard to tell when the band is being too precious and when it’s consciously using self-deprecating humor to subvert that self-seriousness.

The connections between past and present, between style and form, make Queen feel like her most creatively honest album. She remains a force--whether you’re willing to bow or not.

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.

The record runs 35 minutes and features almost nothing but the sound of his guitar: no overdubs or guests, no mid-album experiments, no singing. You will know within the opening notes of “Timoney’s” whether this music is for you--and if it is, you will feel instantly at home.

The problem with Kane’s emulation of past performers is that he remains a tourist lost in his time warp, lacking the originality and vocal grit to elevate fandom into innovation.

Nothing about Devotion feels like a burden. Instead, it’s so personable and candid that it feels like a privilege to spend a few minutes hearing what Tirzah has to say, imperfections and all.

Jake Shears is a breeze, with members of My Morning Jacket and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band gathering to lay down the tracks in single takes. The result is pretty irresistible, as long as you’re not looking for authenticity, and if you don’t mind vocals that sound like a honky-tonk take on jazz hands deployed in the service of lyrics like “Cuz baby I love you/More than the trash can.”

Baby Grand would be enough to make you jealous of McLamb’s contentment, if his generosity in bringing listeners along on this transformative trip didn’t elicit such gratitude.