Royal Headache have taken steps forward since their last album--they’ve cleaned up their production and diversified their songwriting. Ultimately, though, the important bits are intact: the passion, the power, and the hooks that demand being shouted joyfully.

The music is poignant and meticulously arranged, and all you have to do is surrender to it. It helps that the engineering of ¡Ay! is pristine, often evoking a smoky, afterhours lounge, the kind you might find in a spy film from the 1940s. At times, it is so vivid and immersive that it feels as if Dalt is singing directly in your ear.

Somewhere between King Tubby and King Buzzo, Machine may not have the irresistible grooves of 2003’s Pressure or the political resonance of 2008’s landmark London Zoo, but—by thudding leaps and earthquaking bounds—is easily the heaviest, ugliest, paint-peelingest record in an already seismic discography.

It is a profoundly lonely place, this album, and it would be unbearably cynical were it not for the moments of sublimity rustling through its sneers.

The members of the 1975 began playing together in their teens as an emo band, and they are still interested in wringing out unadulterated feeling from everything they touch. This is the thread that grounds even their most dubious dabblings, and makes their dilettantism amount to more than a series of stunts.

On Farm to Table, he’s saying many of the same things he said on Live Forever, but more with his chest, with his feet planted even further apart, his gaze more level with ours.

At times the songs can sound cold, as though they want to keep their distance, refusing to shed any armor. Although this could be a handicap on other albums, it only serves to makes Carboniferous more intriguing.

Cohen is a genially commanding stage presence, falling on his knees at crucial moments and doffing his cap for his accompanists' solo turns. The Old Ideas songs, sprinkled throughout the set at just the right intervals, are naturally at home, capped with the wry God-speaking-to-a-man-named-Leonard "Going Home". Otherwise, the songs you know and plenty of songs you should know better are probably here.

The album is also a quiet showcase for her melodic imagination.

Shura is at her most convincing, and her most alive, when she’s fully embodying her own experience rather than narrating someone else’s.

Deerhoof are at both their most whimsical and most energetically approachable on Miracle-Level.

Fear of Men are likely never going to shred riotously, blow up their gear, or even raise their voices to anything resembling a scream--they simply aren’t that kind of band--but here’s hoping that all that well-considered vitriol in Weiss’ lyrics might eventually bleed over into their music.

As a whole, We Are KING is seamless: It properly showcases the group's breezy aesthetic and has the feel-good creativity of black music's great luminaries.

At their best, Szun Waves jams come as swells, with a power that is hard to dismiss, regardless if you can see their intentions from a click away.

This is heavy stuff, but Ahmed’s wry wit and laser-focused delivery ensures that it doesn’t feel overwrought.

He continues to split duties on keyboards, guitars, bass, and drum programming with longtime producing partners Daoud and daedaePIVOT, and at its best, the music splits the difference between carefree and careworn.

What a Time to Be Alive’s rage feels visceral because of age and experience and exhaustion, not despite it.

Even at its most sophisticated, Seek Shelter retains Iceage’s restless spirit.

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.

Throughout, Mr Twin Sister is every kind of luxury--it’s more pillowy and firm than the spindly, spiky dance-pop of their past, crystalline on the outside and glittery on the inside, a snowglobe of a Times Square celebration.

Bruun has sealed many of the foundational cracks in her compositions and owned the audacity of the project and the form at large.

O’Connor’s a true eccentric, but O∆ has a universal appeal. The hooks are so intensely hooky that you can find yourself singing along to them without even knowing it.

She’s so versatile that it’s difficult to identify her musical ground zero. ... She’s the glue holding everything together—think a female Travis Scott, one who grew up worshipping Madonna and the Spice Girls instead of Drake and Kanye West. At the same time, the sheer intensity of every song on Clarity makes it tough to digest in one sitting.

It is one of the most intimate records in her catalog, and the entire band seems locked into the introspective intensity that marks her best songwriting.

Live Forever argues that life is not some march toward a peak, but a closed loop—one that’s tighter if you’re Black. The brilliance of Bartees’ debut is in how it carves out an expansive space within that loop.

Nothing in contemporary music sounds quite like it, yet it seems to have always been with us, hovering just outside the realm of possibility.

As a transitory release, Persona is the best of both worlds: just as ferocious and unrelenting, but with bolder production and deeper hooks.

Lianne La Havas streamlines her impulse to blend styles, while still taking the time to nod toward pioneers.