Look Up Sharp, dal Forno’s second album and her first on her own Kallista Records, doesn’t depart from her past work so much as coalesce the haze into more of a shape.

Decide is a fun, off-kilter synth-pop album that proves Keery’s talent, but by its conclusion, a clearer picture of its maker fails to emerge.

Owens has created a leaner and more direct record that uses ultra-crisp and gleamingly bright production to find a whole new way to dream.

Unlike the other reunited groups of their generation, Medicine doesn’t sound nostalgic at all, and in fact they sound more contemporary than the majority of young guitar bands playing right now.

It's a placeholder album from a man who has already written 20 songs that are better than the ones here.

She doesn’t shy away from political protest, but she’s careful to couch her dissent in the personal and the compassionate.

The Atlas Moth hope to be heavy and heavenly, aggressive and accessible, to exist in worlds of light and dark simultaneously. In this instance, they wind up in the shadows of their own intentions, hidden in flat gray instead of beautiful white or harrowing black.

The record is fluid, but front-loaded.

I Don’t Want You Anymore paws at ambiguity. The feelings are raw, and Creevy resists major-chord resolutions.

At its best, Invite the Light manages to bring together Dâm-Funk’s wilder, more experimental side with his newly refined pop side to produce not just some of the strongest material he’s ever made, but some of the strongest material to arise out of the current funk boom.

Uniform Distortion abounds with displays of James’ fiery fretwork, but he rarely wields his other signature weapon--that angelic croon that trembles with vulnerability yet can soar high enough to rattle satellites. In the fleeting moments when it does surface, the effect is doubly stunning.

There are no ham-fisted reggae rubs or overreaching rock moments; instead, the band simply plays with nuance and purpose, elaborating the lyrics by first understanding them.

Hynde responds to the drummer’s studio return not just by writing the band’s tightest rock record in ages but by thrusting the group’s interplay to the forefront. By doing so, she makes an effective case that the Pretenders are indeed a rock’n’roll band, not a singer-songwriter in disguise.

Rather than fully implementing Earlimart Phase Two, as they have hinted, the duo is still dressing up the same minimally satisfying ditties in ruffly fuzz; its still scrupulously orchestrating the same kinds of songs that appear on simpler, better Earlimart records.

Sonik Kicks is a good record, but it doesn't have the songwriting depth and range of its two predecessors, and as admirable as it is that Weller is still playing with his formula and searching for something new to do with it, the electronics here do the songs few favors.

Muhly seems at home in this world, and part of the enjoyment of Drones is in how it seems to observe, from Muhly's serene remove, how others are not.

Acquiesce always goes deeper rather than bigger. TALsounds has always been an inwardly focused project by nature, but these songs feel uniquely designed to pull you into them. The album grows darker in its second half, but there’s a warmth and safety there just like the dimly lit shot of the bedside table on its cover.

The result is songs that often feel anthologized, and without interstitial dialog or music it’s not always clear how the stories they tell relate to one another as part of the narrative arc that will, presumably, someday underpin a stage show. All the same, Mann has created compelling, complex sketches of characters who are more than the cliches of mental illness that so often appear in popular culture.

Palomo’s previous albums sounded like the ghosts of ’80s memories. On World of Hassle he offers some unforgettable nights of his own.

Quantum Baby is a lean and muscular eight-song accompaniment to 2023’s BB/Ang3l that asserts itself with the insistence of manicured nails tapping on a hard surface.

Barring a couple of forgettable, filler-feeling tracks like "Don't You Think I Know?", the biggest drawback of Does It Again is the production. It doesn't sound bad, but the washed-out reverb and pushed-to-the-front keyboard creates a distance that the band sounds like they are constantly fighting to push through.

Show Me How You Disappear is bigger, brighter, cleaner, more ambitious than anything she’s done.

All the masks and cameos aside, this still feels like a Damon Albarn solo project, a place for him to treat the studio like the welcoming arms of oblivion, and for us to join him.

Fans of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will no doubt find Loose Fur an indispensable companion piece, as much of the music found here occupies roughly the same static-frosted moonscape as "Radio Cure".

Hear most of these songs a few times and you'll feel like you've known them all your life.

Love and Its Opposite plays more like a conventional singer-songwriter album. The shift in gears isn't unwelcome: Thorn, as always, exercises that smoky voice to great effect.

This is Field Music at their most baroque-- a record of sweetly melodic miniatures that coalesce into form only long enough to tumble into the next meticulously designed song suite.... [Yet] Plumb is a little too fussy. Great hooks rise up, but are quickly abandoned in the rush to the next good idea.

Like that high-pitched whistle that SonicScreens play outside corner shops, there'll come a time when what DZ Deathrays are doing no longer resonates with you. But for now, it's more than worth going deaf to.