It’s Haim as we haven’t quite heard them before: not just eminently proficient musicians, entertainers, and “women in music,” but full of flaws and contradictions, becoming something much greater.

The best-sounding version of the Charli XCX promise to make the Apollonian pop landscape Dionysian again. .... BRAT’s most intriguing moments regard her relationships with women, which she unpacks with striking candor.

A Light for Attracting Attention sounds more like a proper Radiohead album than any of the numerous side projects the band’s members have done on their own. ... The Smile spotlights the creative relationship between Yorke and Greenwood like never before.

Sunbathing Animal's considered, whip-smart rock revivalism is a work of substantial growth from a band that already did "simple" quite well, placing Parquet Courts in their own distinct weight class.

As with each of Cox's projects, Let the Blind works best as a swirling, disorienting whole, organizing traditionally abstract styles like graphic-design elements within his unifying vision until they communicate like good pop.

These aren't 11 songs so much as 12 blood-riling arguments.

Where Aromanticism was intimate and sleek, græ is rangy, sprawling, a riot of moods from lustful to angry to broken-hearted. ... The most powerful moments on græ examine the distance between this wariness and the loneliness it produces.

Saturdays=Youth meaningfully diversifies M83's catalog while retaining Gonzalez's indelible fingerprint.

From a production standpoint, the record is nearly flawless. The bulk of YHLQMDLG strikes a balance between reggaetón’s dembow riddim and an island-influenced Latin trap palette.

Complex enough to reward repetitive listening and compact enough to encourage it, Blue Record is one of the year's most generous hours.

The leap in range and ambition from their 2015 EP Bodies and Control and Money and Power is huge: There hasn’t been a punk debut this certain and poised since Savages’ Silence Yourself.

Cancer 4 Cure's closest analogue may be Portishead's Third: the textures and tones are distinctly different from past releases, but it's unimaginable that it could be made by anyone else.

It’s been only three years since Dood & Juanita, but Passage still feels like a comeback. .... On Passage du Desire, he sounds more like himself than he has in ages.

The astonishing amount of care and detail that went into All Hell might just be the result of seven and a half years of creation, or maybe it’s Los Campesinos! giving us an album big enough to live in case it needs to last a lifetime.

These songs feel less like songs and more like treasures, ones that fill you with power and wisdom, and as a result, Too Bright seems capable of resonating with, comforting, and moving anyone who's ever felt alienated, discriminated against, or "other-ized," regardless of sexual orientation.

Robyn presents them in a way that makes her resolutions feel both instinctive and deeply traveled; melodies and emotions resolve simultaneously, slowly, and imperfectly, without editorialized conclusions.

While Sonic Nurse isn't quite as strong as its predecessor, it's equally as imbued with instrumental dexterity and impressively coherent ideas.

Less an exhumation than a celebration, The Seeger Sessions is the best proof we've got that America's folksongs are also our finest artifacts.

Zoomer is a very, very good album, but one thing it makes clear is that the songwriting aspect of this sort of lap[pop] hybrid must continue to improve.

A startling and inspiring record. Eno’s been involved with quite a few of those in the past, but it’s especially nice to experience a new one that reaches us in the present moment.

Tobin's definitely out to have some fun with this record, though the immense density of these soundscapes prevent them from being reduced to chop-shop filler.

Mature Themes is as vital as anything he's ever recorded.

Alex G is playing with new toys that make records sound both more organic and expensive—banjo, accordion, mandolin, actual string sections. This puts Headlights right where it should be, in conversation with major-label debuts from the likes of R.E.M., Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie, and Modest Mouse.

This is a bolder, clearer, preternaturally vivid iteration of their music.

Labyrinthitis delights in rupturing the elegance of its own facade.

On Lookaftering, it comes as a relief to hear not only how pristine Bunyan's delicate vocals remain but that she has retained her understated abilities as a songwriter.

It’s a testament to the band’s ambitions and execution peaking in lockstep that Diaspora Problems can be appreciated as both a fully visceral experience and a cerebral one.

Immaculately produced, fantastically sung, and loaded with memorable choruses, this eight-song effort has plenty to please everyone from post-dubstep crate diggers to teen tweeters-- often at the same time.