As messy and thoughtful a take on house as we're likely to hear this year.

Sleigh Bells pull off this more sophisticated and nuanced approach without calling attention to their improved craft or maturity.

On Interstellar, she transports us further and takes us higher than she ever could have as the drummer of an indie pop revivalist band.

The Russian Wilds strives for timelessness, but sounds temporally adrift.

Compulsively listenable.

The songs on Hadreas' full-length debut are eviscerating and naked, with heartbreaking sentiments and bruised characterizations delivered in a voice that ranges from an ethereal croon to a slightly cracked warble.

Somehow, Dando's nonchalance here--his stoned cadences, fleeting hooks, loose-limbed guitar playing, and generally rumpled demeanor--comes across as a weird but sincere gregariousness.

Animal Joy proves they are still a naturalistically minded band, but in dropping the more arcane conceptual gambits of their self-described "trilogy" ... and speaking in layman's terms both emotionally and sonically, they're taking their best shot at meeting new listeners halfway.

Hastily assembled, thoughtlessly sequenced minutes of vivid beats and incredible rapping.

Never before has his music possessed this much majesty, this much command, this much power.

They've developed a larger musical vocabulary, but the results can be cumbersome.

Here, when everything's as clear as it is on Les Voyages de l'Âme, he feels almost too exposed, and the big climaxes he's reaching for don't arrive. There's no denying the beauty, but it feels weirdly muted-- or perhaps just unsurprising.

It's the most cohesive-- and, possibly, the out-and-out strongest-- Islands record yet.

Despite feeling like the work of a couple laying themselves bare, it's also music to get lost in, to block out the real world.

The struggle between salvation and damnation has rarely sounded so lively or so gloriously conflicted.

This music, so basic on one level, is both warm and cold, blackened by mortality and twinkling with life, somehow evoking the wonder and absurdity of existence itself.

A boilerplate, but immensely satisfying, noise-pop record.

Free All the Monsters simply consists of a set of plaintive songs that draw on all the stylistic cues this band has worked hard to establish in the past (a Byrds-ian jangle, a touch of Velvets-style dissonance) and tightens everything up a touch.

So maybe Mux Mool can't literally do everything--but for the bulk of Planet High School, he's got himself an engaging something.

This version of Earth has simply given Carlson more room and more assistance to explore, well, darkness and light--in his own time, of course.

It's a cushy listen, if not only always distinctive, particularly since the shorter tracks often amount to a cooled, deep-blue gelatin that holds the previously released singles together.

Musically, Tennis have broadened their horizons just the right amount, adding rock'n'roll muscle and a more purely pop clarity.

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.

The personalities on this album are so blank the songs may as well be performed by apps, and sung by Siri.

You may not feel pleasure all the way through And They Turned Not When They Went, but if you're drawn to the bizarre, inconstant emotional terrain of late-night wakefulness, you'll find something honest.

On Ten$ions, they replace what made them sometimes intriguing and slightly subversive with tired tropes and lazy lyrics.

The noxious muck on evidence here obscures most of what made his past music so singular.

James Blake continues to move as an artist, and the thrill of witnessing those movements hasn't dulled.