This is music that benefits from being heard loud and/or on headphones in the same way couches are best experienced by actually sitting down in them instead of just brushing your fingers against the upholstery as you leave the room.

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.

It is so fully formed and thoughtful that it feels like three or four lesser, noisier records should have preceded it. The xx didn't need a gestation period, though xx is nuanced, quiet, and surprising enough that you might.

Let Me Do One More is full of high highs and low lows, but thanks to Tudzin’s extensive experience as an engineer and producer (Pom Pom Squad, Weyes Blood), the two extremes—and they are often extreme—are meticulously balanced.

For all its psychedelic tendencies and marketing trappings, Goat's World Music feels as assured and unfussy as folk music.

Sigur Rós effortlessly make music that is massive, glacial, and sparse..... They are the first vital band of the 21st Century.

They’re not attempting to radically shift your notion of what their music can be. For those of us who have stuck around, that’s just fine; a Deftones album that effortlessly twists their familiar components into a few genuinely new shapes is plenty exciting.

The contemporary energies thrumming along the music’s surface highlight the deep connections the record effortlessly draws—a series of starbursts connecting William Onyeabor to Gloria Estefan to Loose Joints to Grace Jones to a beat that picked up before recorded history begins, somewhere in West Africa, and never stopped.

Even if you get the sense her best work still lies ahead, it’s refreshing to see an emerging star earn their concept album.

He’s still what everyone says he is: an Appalachian man with a penchant for storytelling. Snipe Hunter is his first record to capture and celebrate the depth behind that.

Their debut doesn’t skimp on outlining the horrors of being a youngish woman—but its giddy, wild-eyed pleasures are also a testament to creating your own reality to survive.

They've also outgrown the "garage," pushing things into the richer, more sophisticated outdoors.

The record will remain, something that channels the past but sounds like little else right now, an album about rediscovery that's situated in the constantly-shifting present.

With soil, serpentwithfeet deeply engages with the complex membranes between the self and a loved one, the self and the world. Few albums attempt this much nuance in articulating love; Wise’s success in his ambitions feels like a gift.

Although they've expanded their sound, the Arcade Fire's transition into extroversion isn't always smooth or graceful. Neon Bible is full of clunky lyrics, revealing Butler's tendency to overstate and sensationalize.

Tthere’s a palpable narrative here, a sense of loss and stillness, and it reanimates Dalton, if only for a moment. It’s good to have her back.

Thou are a blast even when Funck is digging into esoteric philosophy over the slowest riff you’ve ever heard, but it’s refreshing to hear them get real with themselves, jogging their music out of the enthralling but insular world they’ve created over the past 15-plus years.

That sort of state-of-society demonstration, which has always distinguished Dave from his peers in UK rap, is hardly present on his newest album. And it doesn’t help that The Boy Who Plays the Harp is considerably less dynamic when it comes to production.

Complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene, Wilco's aging new album is simply a masterpiece; it is equally magnificent in headphones, cars and parties.... No one is too good for this album; it is better than all of us.

It's among the most fascinating music I've heard and deserves a listen by anyone with even the remotest interest in the possibilities of sound.

On her elegant and complex fifth album, Lana Del Rey sings exquisitely of freedom and transformation and the wreckage of being alive. It establishes her as one of America’s greatest living songwriters.

This Is a Photograph succeeds not because of its nostalgic freight but in spite of it, and Morby’s dialogues with the living, not the dead, are when he speaks most clearly.

In these early recordings, Elton’s passion and dedication pleads to be heard. Whether nitpicking intros almost to the point of nausea or infusing vitality into each syllable like a mad scientist, a young Elton is constantly straining towards vein-popping perfection.

Phrenology completely realizes The Roots' talents and potential, maintaining its cohesiveness despite its many disparate elements.

Celestial Lineage feels like the contemporary American scene's defining statement after San Francisco group Weakling's seminal 2000 offering Dead As Dreams.

On We Are Always Alone, Portrayal of Guilt find a new level of confidence to express the pointlessness of existence. After all, what you consider to be “mood music” depends on whether you’re seeking counterprogramming or a chance to lean into the negative energy outside.

The resulting Shall We Go On Sinning carries itself with the strength of a soft prayer, masterfully fusing jazz, deep house, and minimalism into an enormous, featherlight shield.

If Empty Country is a shade less wondrous than Cymbals Eat Guitars’ final records, that’s more feature than defect. Those albums were grand statements, designed to resonate with a vast audience, even if that audience didn’t actually exist. What Empty Country lacks in wild swings for the bleachers, though, it makes up for with a rangy intimacy that buys it a different sort of goodwill.