Ultimately, Necrocracy is one more in a long line of killer albums, and thanks to its dynamic range, clever riffs, and newfound melodic focus, is likely to ensnare the youth of today the same way its spiritual predecessor lured in the young heshers of old.

Da Mind Of Traxman Vol. 2, for the most part, is a stellar collection of songs--playful, ballsy, informed by the past but living very much in the present--but they’re songs that relate more as cousins than as siblings.

A frequently gorgeous, sometimes roiling set that stands out in each artist’s catalog.

He delves deeper into his personal life more but he is just as sharp as been across his last handful of releases. It isn’t so much that these songs are better; they simply render a more complete picture of him, one he’s been working toward.

Marcielago serves as a capstone for Marci’s decade, a mix of evocative soul samples and stripped-down loops paired with his trademark gnomic flow.

This is a readymade soundtrack for humidity-choked summer nights spent getting up to no good and going crazy from the heat.

Halvorson is an inventive and generous arranger, organizing Amaryllis in such a way that it never feels like a mere vehicle for dazzling solos, though there are plenty of those. She has a painterly approach to sonority, attuned to all the rich colors at the ensemble’s disposal.

Good emo music makes you feel their feelings; great emo music makes you see the world through their eyes. MacDonald’s lyrics render images like chewing on bread that’s turned to flesh, peeling a drunk driver off the asphalt like roadkill, feeding nickels and dimes to ducks in a pond.

The result is a meticulously crafted homage to the strobe-lit, chart-topping dance music of the 1990s and 2000s—though, at times, it misses some of the tension that made Romy’s songwriting with the xx so vital.

Lenderman and his band elevate his dreamlike narratives into something joyous, collective, and free.

Recorded with Gilla Band bassist Daniel Fox, Who Let the Dogs Out wisely leans on nosier elements when the subject matter gets earnest.

Despite its nonchronological sequencing and song-cherrypicking, it never really comes together as an album; it's more like "the many moods of Fucked Up," or, rather, their many variations on one mood.

Wakin on a Pretty Daze breezes past like a Klonopin dream, and radiates an easy confidence that is as rewarding to return to as a melody.

Williams revels in the comfort of rock’n’roll, encouraging her band to play loud even when they’re playing slow. .... There’s a casual, authoritative swing to their [the band's] performance that belies the stylistic range on the record; the songs touch upon different traditions, yet all sound of a piece.

Plenty of artists put their every fiber of being into a record, but there’s rarely the overt drive to exceed one’s greatness that’s so insistent, it threatens to earn indie rock's most unintentionally revealing slight: try-hard. For most bands, it's an epithet. On Nearer My God, Foxing flaunt it like an Olympic gold medal.

Segall makes quite an impression in half an hour's time, and Melted's the best foot he's put forward yet. It still seems like his best records are ahead of him, like he's still got a couple of things to nail, but as it stands, Melted could charm the sweat out of anybody.

It's a strange combination-- big, lush beats and stories about small victories-- but it turns songs that are celebratory of simple things (a girl sending sexy cell-phone pictures, visiting Paris for the first time) or full of thoughtful sentiments (supporting family, helping community) into something epic.

Panorama skillfully and subtly creeps towards resonance rather than catharsis, an approach that can make even their own colleagues sound like they’re trying to cheat towards the big release. Even when La Dispute rock, they do so like they’re trying to tiptoe on a frozen pond.

The introductory duo of “I Don’t Know How I Survive” and “Roman Candles” position Asphalt Meadows as a clean break from the slick competence of Kintsugi and Thank You for Today. ... A record that mostly satisfies through course correction.

Chin Up Buttercup is certainly an evolutionary leap for Austra, but it’s not a total departure.

The tinkering of the trim Spoon attitude has become the most engaging part of their latter-day career. For a band that seems built on a reliable formula, they remain full of possibilities.

Film of Life doesn’t quite break new ground for Allen, but it does offer a pretty solid and succinct demonstration of Afrobeat’s adaptability to changing times.

Even as it draws on new and old songs, 50 presents a startlingly current and nearly apocalyptic vision of America; it’s album full of brimstone and brine, perhaps more perfect for this moment in history than we’d like to admit.

Inferno shimmies with the vigor of a man who can keep this up so long as the tunes, one a year if necessary, keep coming. Just don’t press him. As “One Bird in the Sky” reminds listeners, “I eat only when I eat.”

Whether he's channeling the energies of John Fahey or Tom Petty or even Bob Seger, Smoke Ring makes clear that the end result is his alone.

If The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone fails to find the Apples branching into James Brown territory, it's still the band's most diverse outing, and debatably their finest. Wisely jettisoning the noodly experiments that made Her Wallpaper Reverie seem much longer than it actually was, the Apples turn their focus squarely back on the catchy song, with a more pronounced feel for instrumental variety.

The album crawls from the speakers like a stabbing victim and gives up a great moan; it's a difficult listen, but the rewards are great.

Murray Street is Sonic Youth's first successful convergence of envelope-pushing guitarwork and accessible songery since 1988.