Cost of Living revels in the gleaming, multi-tracked expanse of a professional recording studio. It’s a richer, fuller sound; the stereo imaging is wider and the saxophone (they’ve stripped down to just one, now played by Joe DeGeorge, who also handles keyboards) has more presence in the mix. The bigger, brighter sound often serves them well.

Haymaker! is a typically witty, rambunctious album that shuffles up the band members like a deck of cards.

The lyrics can sometimes sit at the surface of a feeling, and you wish the stories said more. Still, Shannon in Nashville feels humbly victorious.

The songwriting is distinguished by its bite and brevity.

Stylistically, Strychnine Dandelion is all over the place, but that pan-60s diversity may be one of its most winning traits, as the Gifts make everything sound lively and modern.

A decade ago, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were a modest, rickety band bearing the albatross of hype; today, they’re an amorphous, musically adventurous entity basking in the freedom of no expectations.

Heavy Heavy sweeps its listener along, churchlike, and conveys the feeling that resisting the urge will always feel worse than rising up and pushing the air from your lungs. And then, after a brief 10 tracks, it’s all over—as if the procession has marched on, out of earshot. But the invite is still there extended: It’s up to you whether to accept it or not.

What you have with Tender Buttons is a Broadcast album that listeners might need to spend more time with than expected. That said, this is still a Broadcast album, meaning it's one of the better things you'll put in your ear this year.

Super Extra Gravity is too deft to be too dark, though-- there's joy in its catharsis.

It’s fitting that this slightly convoluted, sometimes generic offering largely delivers on its promise, much like the larger comic world it now occupies. A fun, rap-centric album is now Marvel canon. In their first roles as bit players, the TDE roster delivers a product benefiting the whole. Their effort is one befitting the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and its blackest entry.

While Free Company and Wayfinder were rife with wry one-liners and observations to offset the otherwise emotionally knotty writing, Art Moore is a bruising and remorseful record that aches without reservation.

By putting old sounds into different contexts, Nite Jewel’s albums work as an exploration of a happier nostalgia. Because she takes a specific sound as her point of departure this time around, Real High is her most focused work yet.

Baldi muses, “Can you believe how far I have come?” Anyone who’s been listening since Turning On won’t either. Cloud Nothings have never sounded so committed to going the distance.

When one year gives you so many different options, a fun record that doesn't take itself seriously like Cool Uncle feels like icing.

Lana Del Rey’s sixth album dials back the grandiosity in favor of smaller, more intimate moments. It carries a roaming spirit of folk and Americana without losing the romantic melodrama of her best work.

So while Pinch might not have moved on from dubstep completely, he's definitely moved somewhere, and it sounds like an exciting place to be.

Smith may have abandoned his trench-coat persona in favor of a more honest self-portrait, but the line between the authentic self and the larger-than-life character remains provocatively fuzzy.

Open Arms to Open Us is adventure writ large, a rhythmical hymn to boundless possibility.

As she’s shed the trappings of distinctly 2010s R&B for something less easily time-stamped, she’s revealed a new and very telling set of inspirations.

It's an enjoyable detour, one that affirms how well these producers have honed their approaches to sound.

Instead of merely contrasting the tunefully heartfelt Barlow with the more erratic, irascible Loewenstein, the new album finds them mining common topical terrain—namely, the emotional toll of perpetually wading in a sea of misinformation—through their respective personalities.

Man Made Object is tailor-made for laid-back enjoyment, to be consumed at a moderate volume without much fuss. It marks a nice step forward for a group that lives comfortably beyond artistic restraints.

As often as the band has pushed in new directions, it’s never abandoned the core dynamics of its songwriting, a fact that Lonely People With Power underlines. Fifteen years into their career, having long transcended any given genre, set of influences, or fan expectations, Deafheaven sound, more than ever, like nothing other than themselves.

Anyone expecting a revival of the Delfonics sound we all know and love very well may walk away disappointed. Taken on its own terms, though, the record works.

A byzantine, feverish album that unravels and pieces itself back together song by song, a mind gradually turning inward on itself.

Beat Pyramid proves to be an affirming and promising first step.

These 11 songs may be meant to chronicle a pointedly personal inner voyage, yet he’s wound up with a warm, collaborative record that feels like a balm for fear and loneliness.

Pre Pleasure takes its time unwinding and occasionally leaves too much unsaid. Some songs drift away, setting a mood rather than communicating an idea. But when Jacklin allows the two to work in tandem, she excels.