Kairos represents a bold step for Dienel and White Hinterland, a re-imagining of the music-making process and an example of musical experimentation and evolution.

The album feels about five times larger with the inclusion of “Jordan,” its first single. Whereas the rest of the record sounds homey, “Jordan” surveys alien territory.

What sets Sentielle apart amongst Fell's work is the residual synth pools that tremble like oil on water. They are sparse and alien, but they reflect light in a way their host matter can't.

All 11 tracks are paced somewhere between 120 and 125 beats per minute; all of them follow pitter-patter house beats; all of them use the same palette of cool jazz samples and Chicago house basslines and warm, watery keys. But if you're a fan of this kind of thing, A Minor Thought proves that sometimes variety isn't the most important quality in an album.

The first disc is fine, containing most of the band's singles and a few key album tracks. The second is messier.

This album still stands out among his recent work, not so much for the leap of faith he took collaborating with Auerbach but because it turned out so damn well.

While the Good, the Bad & the Queen are skilled at providing a wide breadth of styles here--from the woozy, carnivalesque organ of “The Last Man to Leave” to “The Truce of Twilight”’s militaristic chants--they especially succeed at conveying a crumbling and isolated Britain.

With its handsome hard-cover packaging, clear-plastic paper-stock photo galleries, candid liner-note interviews (conducted in early 2007), and ridiculously detailed Pete Frame-drawn family tree poster, the set provides a handy opportunity for newbies to play catch-up on the band's history-- and for anyone who first came into contact with the Mary Chain via the closing credits to "Lost in Translation," only to be scared off by "Psychocandy's" torrential noise.

This is an inspired collection of songs, even if you do get the feeling Hopkins prefers to spend his late nights alone.

Perhaps some lo-fi charm has been lost along the way, but these are proper songs, and Trappes has centered herself in the narrative while solidifying a sound that was already spellbinding to begin with.

Songs like "Vesuvius"-- not to mention "Rambunctious Cloud" and "Gnats"-- have depth, a cagey charm, and an elusive mystery that demand not just repeated but aggressive listening. Chesnutt and his collaborators don't make that level of attention easy, but they do make it worthwhile.

Instead of a symbolic death, The Slip feels much more like a possible rebirth.

Rather than sounding as if they’ve been optimized by a digital studio, his beats tend to impart the illusion of different objects crashing to the ground at varying distances. They’re loose, anxious assemblages that leave plenty of space for the ear to play in.

Throughout Ripe 4 Luv you can sense that it’s taking every ounce of discipline Cook has to play these pop songs as straight as he does, so he can be forgiven for indulging a little kitsch at the finish line.

Remember Me keeps its mood light and its stakes low, and in the process delivers a much needed breezy counterpoint to all the knotty, fatalistic shit coming out of HBK’s downstate peers that’s every bit as true to Cali as the gangsters and the thinkers.

CHAI generously extend their wonder-filled perspective to anyone who will listen. In turn, they ask us to find our own joy, wherever and whenever we can.

The way she’s able to inject these quietly pretty, happy styles of music with an underlying weariness and a clever touch is what makes No Fool Like an Old Fool stand out among the many musicians currently borrowing similar sets of sounds.

Instead of a love letter to consuming blazes, Hoop's and Beam's collection appeals to our individual internal pilot lights: those softly smoldering flames that illuminate moments of beauty in ourselves, in each other, and beyond.

Different Talking doesn’t stray from Frankie Cosmos’ predilection for short songs—only two tracks of its 17 pass the two-and-a-half-minute mark—but Kline and the band make each feel like a universe in miniature.

Telas is not a culmination for Jaar, even if it brings his ambient strains closer than ever to the more crowd-pleasing facets of his work.

More than a simple clash of teen-angst noise and old-soul poise, Mourn’s debut album is a reminder that a big impetus for the former is the frustration of wishing you were old enough to savor the latter.

Until now, Okay Kaya records have often felt like a compelling viewpoint in search of a sound, but on SAP, Wilkins’ arrangements have finally caught up to her free-roaming mind.

Produced by Rancid's Tim Armstrong, the music here is predominantly a pitch-perfect versioning of 1970s reggae.

Here, her cut-up vocals ground both the album’s tighter tracks and looser moments—the same timbre that seduces on one song is, elsewhere, exasperated or desperate.

It is a strange and sometimes brilliant album—one that only Linda Thompson could have made, whether or not you can hear her singing.

As a standalone suite of songs, like a tuxedo you only dust off every now and then, it is beautiful, but only appropriate when the occasion demands it.

For those who haven't yet heard the band's delicate, experimental free-folk compositions, Hush Arbors is a great place to start and adroitly encompasses all of the Virginia based duo's most engaging qualities.

Night Music's rawness--Jaumet even manages to make a saxophone, that treacly emblem of kitschy synth-pop cocktail bar culture--sound visceral and disturbing on "At the Crack of Dawn"--is what separates the album from the glut of 80s jackers.