She’s an outsider claiming a piece of the mainstream for herself without sacrificing what makes her music so special.

It’s weird that “better than nothing” became the bar for what was once one of the most celebrated bands of their era, but if it’s a choice between more records as solid, if unspectacular, as Beneath the Eyrie or nothing, the Pixies might as well keep them coming. It’s been a long time since this band had anything left to lose.

The ideas sprawled across Mirrorland are mostly in service of songcraft, adding color and texture to their vibrant visions of a super-black Emerald City. It’s Atlanta rap fantasia, manifold in form and style, each track a new, distinctive set design in the production.

Lifetime is marked by aesthetic and personal conflict, and while it doesn’t uncover easy resolution, its beauty (and it is a remarkably beautiful record) derives in large part from the acceptance, or even embrace, of those conflicts as what generates a lifetime’s meaning.

As with earlier albums, it’s studded with experiments: “Project 2,” an interlude of fluting vaporwave synths, and “Sugar,” where melodramatic violin and piano are coated in Vocodered gurgles. They’re less interruptions than camouflage.

With Devour, Pharmakon furthers industrial music’s decades-long history of seeking truth about the self in noise and negation, of boring holes in the propaganda that assures us everything about the system is working just fine.

The new songs, meanwhile, feature a return to form for Belle and Sebastian, whose more recent releases have ventured away from their trademark style of “puckishly depressed” and into explorations of the dancy, the jazzy, and, occasionally, the kinda bad.

Much of Lookout Low sounds more fatigued than mature.

Bainbridge’s production is always tasteful and seldom bad, but is only great when heightened by its guests. On Something like a War, those guests are generally pretty good; sometimes they are very good.

Hypersonic Missiles on its own is unsatisfying, and the overconfident presentation risks stifling his voice before he’s found it.

Charli uncovers a singer-songwriter unafraid to display the cracks in her facade, crafting a striking portrait of what happens when a robot glitches.

The haziness of Free has its share of frustrations—as alluring as the pensive soundscapes are, it’s hard not to wish they were occasionally more sculpted—but there’s something curiously human and appealing about its ungainly nature.

Forced through the sieve of the overarching concept, some of the songs, both in sound and content, come off as overwrought and obvious. ... The strongest songs are the simplest.

Resonant Body celebrates 1990s rave anthems with a bittersweet sense of vanished time—the party ended long ago, the dancers shut their eyes against daylight, but balloons still float around the room on inherited breath.

Phonte and Big Pooh sound rejuvenated, and while 9th Wonder isn’t on this record (or part of the group), the beats compiled by Khrysis, Nottz, Zo!, Black Milk, and Devin Morrison have a sophisticated bounce, making this feel like an old Little Brother album without dwelling too much in the past.

When he’s not wasting time trying to glower, he proves himself surprisingly versatile. ... There are a lot of guests on Hollywood’s Bleeding, and all of them sound engaged.

Soft Landing is his most traditional singer/songwriter-oriented release since 2007’s Tiny Mirrors, but it both embraces the melodic integrity and warmth of ’70s AM-radio standards while stripping away the pop-song packaging to let the contents unspool in unpredictable ways.

The ’90s were a decade very much in its feelings, and the best parts of Wallop are its most emotional.

Saves the World approaches adulthood with unabashed honesty, so you’ll be ready to smash the system a little more gently. And while MUNA’s pop is preoccupied with that greater sense of purpose, it carries its heavy heart to the dancefloor.

She has a lot going on up there, and she seems to feel a responsibility to sort through it all. An impatient conversationalist might prod her to just spit it out. On her most direct and brash album yet, Twelve Nudes, Furman does exactly that, and spits in a few faces along the way.

She makes no apologies, feels no inadequacy. Over the course of the album, this near-hour spent in the presence of the people she loves, she is reminded that she is equal to any challenge which may befall her.

Close It Quietly is honest about the pain of rebirth, but it doesn’t dwell there. Kline’s more interested in what grows out of that mess.

The feels remain noxious and suffocating, but as she embraces the delirium, the “ughs” slowly turn into insights.

It’s a vivid world, although less singular or startling than Khan’s previous creations; these touchstones have become so deeply embedded in the cultural fabric that they offer the same comforting glow as an episode of “Stranger Things” rather than the shock of the new.

There are a couple of good performances here and there, but no choice cuts, just songs left on the cutting room floor during sessions for recent solo albums and filler tracks from lower-ranking artists on the QC roster. The longer the comp goes on, the more obvious it becomes that nothing is happening.

[“Soft Power” is] an engrossing, haunted fable, a way to link society’s obsession with conspiracy to our basic needs for security and comfort. It’s proof that Tropical Fuck Storm are still clever when they want to be, able to channel obsessive rage into real insight. Braindrops could’ve used more like it.

The hybridization that made Tool so popular on the radio in the late ’90s has rusted: They are part stoner metal, part prog rock, part mainstream metal, all working in ignorance and opposition to each other. Things do come together a few times. The 15-minute closer “7empest” brings the biggest fireworks from Carey and Jones, the two undoubted stars of the album, adding alluring melody and texture to these bloated epics. But the highlight far and away is “Invincible.”

Sometimes it really does seem like he’s rapping to instill love, sometimes he’s rapping for rap’s sake, and those lines get smudged at times, but more often than not he’s methodical. It is in the moments where his precision underscores his affection that Let Love truly conquers.