Her supple singing and the lively production keep Jupiter from being a slog, but the hazy symbolism sours the experience.

Locks lets the past speak by keeping the grit and the grain in his samples, conjuring the dust of the archives. Like Madlib, another jazz-influenced samplerist, he leaves the seams in his loops and builds meta-rhythms from the clicks of his edit points.

There’s no harm in taking inspiration from others. But here, it sounds like McRae and her writing team hopped on the left-of-center-pop bandwagon without building out something new and wholly Tate—and it’s hard to make leftovers taste as enticing as when they were first served hot and fresh.

Saya is more of a restoration: filling in the cracks of Gray’s music, redrawing her in bolder shades and more vivid hues—indigo, flesh tone, spring green.

Horror lacks some of the DIY immediacy of Strange’s first two records. A new degree of studio polish is palpable. .... But with Antonoff’s blockbuster-coded fingerprints on the record, the hooks also go bigger than before, and Strange’s heart and fierce desire for connection bleed through.

Powers narrates these vignettes from a distant storyteller’s perspective, and a gap emerges between his authorial point of view and the intimacy of the home video material. This dissonance is certainly haunting, but when the album’s final track arrives in a montage of the VHS clips strung together over heartfelt piano, its affecting ambience feels somewhat abrupt. But the record’s final moments remind us that these songs still spring from a singular voice.

In an effort to make everything sound as massive as possible, the team obscures some of Fender’s more pointed moments.

The lucidity and beauty of this music feels hard-won, something to revere and cherish.

Like a Ribbon is lush and engrossing, the rare Big Indie debut that outstrips its own hype.

“Mayfield” barrels out of the gate like a runaway Arctic train—the 2025 mix adds propulsion by removing a flanged drop-out section. As vocalist Paula Kelley winds black ribbons around Ackell’s melancholy topline, sheets of guitar clip overhead: proto-blackgaze. The two other EP tracks included here are dreamier, but no less impressive.

Here, Horsegirl learn how dazzling it is to instead pull back and feel the invisible touch of what was once there, a fizzy tingling on the palms and cushion of silence around the ears. That growth is the most memorable part of Horsegirl’s new album.

His singing voice isn’t nearly as tender and smooth as once it was. .... Sometimes the effect is monotonous and emotionless, which might suit his headspace, but ultimately it’s just boring. When he adds a little spice to his voice he can still sound expressive, like on the album standout “Small Town Fame,” which, if you ignore the shamelessness of the Brat summer bar, features him at his most earnest.

Drawing out stories across generations, Dawson captures the way memories loom large in the present.

Squid’s most wide-ranging album yet, and somehow still the one that hits closest to home.

More than his previous records, Lay Low focuses on the clarity that arrives with age and time. You can hear the proof in Chacon’s songwriting, which has sharpened to an impressively minimalist degree.

Even with this shared billing, Van Etten remains the album’s undeniable highlight, though she explores a range of vocal approaches outside her trademark wail.

Your tolerance for freeform and frequently harsh-sounding guitar music determines whether A Shaw Deal will make it into your regular rotation or slot into the lesser-played ranks of the band’s catalog. But its funky, egoless spirit is infectious.

It all amalgamates into a fine late-career achievement for the master bandleader.

Not every intuition bears fruit, but more and more it is becoming clear that the iconoclastic rapper’s impulses are to be trusted.

The group effort renders Humanhood’s songs lush and circuitous, seemingly propelled by an internal logic that’s being pieced together as you hear it.

A record with infernally catchy dance-pop hooks and the nutritional value of cotton candy.

Hiatt’s candid emotions feel earned; her open-hearted melodies and punchy hooks play out like a series of unguarded moments.

The result is an opulent, elegant, and occasionally exasperating farewell. This is the Weeknd’s most expansive-sounding album that’s also narrowly focused.

Showbiz! is the young artist’s greatest accomplishment thus far, the product of a passionate, creative journeyman fully making his home in music.

If this is an album about growth and greatness, then it’s the kind you see depicted in charts on an end-of-year earnings report. It is precision engineered to stream big, and all the duller for it.

There’s a freewheeling spirit to the music they created together, a punchy camaraderie that connects these disparate songs from the agitpolka of “Guns Are for Cowards” to the Celtic dreamfolk of “Downstream,” and from the rambunctious ramble of “Turned to Dust (Rolling On)” to the despairing chorus of “Boise, Idaho” (which contains one of Oldham’s loveliest and most forlorn melodies).

An album that pushes Minus’ musical vision outward while burrowing deeper inward lyrically.

Listeners who come for the record’s novelty will stay for the class. Seldom do musical fusions sound both so perfectly weighted and utterly irresistible, a cartoon hit of delirious joy.