It's the headphones album of the year from a producer with a long history who has come into his own.

The album sounds ridiculously heavy, with many songs-- including the gurgling "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" and the Dusty Springfield cover "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself"-- easily trumping their studio counterparts.

The combination of the music's essentials-- jackhammer riffs clipped from punk and metal, mid-tempo beats from hip-hop and electro, and supremely catchy sing-song melodies-- is striking on its own, sounding remarkably fresh and unlike anything else right now. But an even greater source of the record's appeal is how it doesn't sound especially referential.

A Seat at the Table, her third full-length album, is the work of a woman who’s truly grown into herself, and discovered within a clear, exhilarating statement of self and community that’s as robust in its quieter moments as it is in its funkier ones.

Her music never sounds alone. The record glows with this strange self-sufficiency, an instinct to push forward against bad odds.

Less concerned with outside forces than internal balance, Golden Hour stands as an assured, artful snapshot of a particular rush of feelings, but its wisdom speaks volumes to Musgraves’ ongoing evolution.

The Cutting Edge is music of the present, but not the '60s present, an eternal present; the songs are about observation and they exist in a place where it's always now, in sound and word.

Death Grips appeals to the knuckle-dragging troglodyte and the smirking smart kid in us: thick-headed goonery and bookish, viscera-free nerdiness, making beautifully misanthropic music together.

On Rest, Gainsbourg doesn’t just reveal her pain, but monumentalizes it, lays out a red carpet, and invites people to watch. Her refusal to be sequestered by grief is, quite literally, a death-defying feat.

The new deluxe edition of New York contains live versions of every track, glizted-up arrangements of the Reed standards “Sweet Jane” and “Walk on the Wild Side,” one non-album instrumental, a long-out-of-print concert film, and a number of demos and rough mixes. These works in progress largely serve to show that Reed got it right with the album’s final version.

The whole album is bolder and brasher than previous L’Rain records, every harmony, loop, and skit engorged with verve. Cheek has figured out how to maintain her slippery, impressionistic style while also letting it be known she’s got that dog in her.

GOLLIWOG masterfully uses that spooky proximity for self-reflection and thrills. Like the late MF DOOM, who he interpolates twice here, woods is perfectly intelligible despite his layered lyrics and elusive public profile.

The least bullshitting, most accomplished and first consistently great release from Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton.

If Brighten the Corners signaled a turn to the serious, the 32 outtakes and radio-session cuts compiled here give Pavement plenty of room to, as one B-side aptly puts it, "fuck around."

It is more songful than anything Lopatin has done.

The album has the particular aliveness of music being created and torn from a group at this very moment--tempered, but with the wild-paced abandon that comes with being caged and then free.

Love Remains, because of its construction, feels like music that comes from inside, as if the act of listening completes it.

Weather Alive is a testament to her conviction, an eerily physical experience with the power to make believers of the rest of us.

It helps that Labor Days is as terrific a record as anyone could ask for, really, and you should buy it.

Never before has his music possessed this much majesty, this much command, this much power.

While it might not be as substantial a record as we're used to hearing from him, it is his greatest leap forward, and further proof that few are as skilled at tracing out the complicated contours of pride, success and ambition as he is.

An astonishingly good late-period record from Of Montreal that's as uncomfortably savage in its depiction of breakup psychology as it is relentlessly catchy.

If Broken Dreams Club is indeed an honest glimpse of what's ahead, it sounds as though Girls have much more to give.

The production on the album is sumptuous and varying. A record daring enough to produce the buzzing “Bartier Cardi,” the R&B-infused “Ring,” and the quiet prowler “Thru Your Phone,” Invasion of Privacy never shrinks away from a potential risk, delivering hugely satisfying payoffs.

Cupid's Head is a dark, exquisitely detailed album that rewards patience and further cements the Field's reputation as one of modern electronic music's most satisfying auteurs.

Nothing to Fear might be the surprise highlight of this collection, even accounting for all the classic stuff on the first disc.

Despite the wide scope of her project, Herndon’s ambitious efforts are appealingly multifaceted and personal, and Platform may turn out to be the most thought-provoking experimental electronic music release of the year.

Saint Cloud is something far bigger. It isn’t just talking to Lucinda Williams’ 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, it pulls up right beside it, a vivid modern classic of folk and Americana.