As their odd tics, off notes, and bevy of stops and starts build up, the logic of their approach becomes clearer and more addictive. In that sense Napa Asylum, with 22 songs stretched over 45 minutes, is probably the best Sic Alps full-length so far.

On Reservation, Angel Haze shows herself to be the rare rapper who has copped a great deal of contemporary popular hip-hop and R&B and come out the other side as purely herself.

Throughout Sometimes, Forever, she and Lopatin expand on the ’90s palette that has characterized previous Soccer Mommy releases. Bolstering the lingering imprints of Liz Phair, Sheryl Crow, and Sleater-Kinney is a healthy dose of Loveless worship: glide guitars and tendrils of haze.

Dawson grows as a singer throughout these songs, sometimes with humorous results.

This is the rare album that reveals new depth within a catalog that already seemed so deep and ruminative while proclaiming rather unlimited possibilities for a band nearing the end of its first decade.

While her recent records have used their sprawl to navigate a wide array of styles and moods, she now finds a range that pulls her into focus. It is roots music, bursting from the ground, changing form in the light of day.

Her early folk tendencies and pop structures served a similar purpose, a means to explore the off-kilter rhythms and ambient melodies that lulled her into a trance as a child, pulling us in along with her. Halo suggests a self-realization that is often breathtaking.

If Carnage’s feverish first half sometimes recalls David Lynch, its austere second is more like Terrence Malick.

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

It's as much the arrival of The Jicks as it is the rebirth of Stephen Malkmus: The band has become a grounding force he can push and pull from, a safety net allowing him to take risks.

Most of the lyrics here dwell on relationships, which Badu handles with a confidence and informality that most of square-ass, tax-filing society just hasn't caught up to and probably never will.

There's a propulsive quality to much of the beat-oriented Pain, but there remains a relative sense of privacy.

At its best, Lost Songs' take on post-hardcore imagines an alternate history where indie rock's first-wave originators got to rule the modern-rock radio landscape of the 1990s, rather than just serve as an increasingly diluted influence upon it.

This comp makes one thing perfectly clear: for a host of bands so readily compared to the same tiny stable of influences-- "sounding like a modern-day Gang of Four..."-- there sure is a hell of a lot of diversity between them.

The songs are instantly welcoming, flickering with enough hope and tenacity to outlast Kasher's heartbreak.

Sun’s Signature is among Fraser’s most illuminating and eloquent music to date, the work of a flesh-and-blood person rather than the chimerical Cocteau Twin of myth.

The result is an album that creates its own world, one it feels like you could reach out and brush with your fingers.

In the same way the band’s first records felt like off-kilter interpretations of, say, King Tubby and krautrock, these new ones recast, not retread, what we’ve already heard. Seefeel have still got it, and are still finding new things to do with it.

Emma Maatman’s vocals are the real standout on Free Energy, and one of the band’s most successful adjustments is pushing her gorgeous, expressive tone to the fore.

Blank Realm is still bent on mixing the diamonds with the rough, and on Grassed Inn that particular swirl is at its most intoxicating.

If ever an album rewarded repeated listening, it's this one.

Seven years on, the leering, all-encompassing grime of SickElixir melds dozens of Roberts’ subsequent discoveries and revelations into a brutish, unhinged gestalt; its clamorous swagger makes “Tasser” look like a curio.

Within these songs is the struggle in realizing that self-esteem comes more from estimable acts than outside validation. Is Survived By should receive plenty praise anyway, but Touché Amoré lead by example.

With this album she has created an experiment of enormous sonic range and openness--at 14 tracks this leaves a lot of room in which to expand, yet the sound never strays from its essential logic and reveals something new at every turn.

All That Glue’s unearthed tracks easily punch as hard as their better-known counterparts, and each showcases Williamson’s bottomless reservoir of ways to vent spleen.

Nested in Tangles is so powerful because it’s about what comes after those mommy-and-daddy issues—about enduring, as she puts it in that prelude, “fault lines that were never my fault” to become something better.

The Ship is a great, unexpected record.

Coquelicot, like most Of Montreal albums, is at times sublime and lovely, at times infuriatingly catchy, at times simply infuriating, at times overly twee, and at times seriously fucking scary. What sets this record apart from its predecessors, though, is a level of intricacy and detail that Of Montreal have never previously attained as a band.