Whether yelping or mumbling, Avey Tare occasionally gets stuck on autopilot, but here he sounds like he’s trying out new things and, crucially, having fun.

Somehow this totem of influences works, stacked one atop another in a monument to the newly refocused Strand of Oaks.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, and Guy expertly balances the record’s more somber offerings with a handful of four-on-the-floor, heat-seeking anthems.

Body music for heady dancers, this is a triumph of dance music at its trippiest, and in its controlled weirdness lies real liberation.

Jenny Lewis has reached her troubadour phase. She’s telling tales like never before, singing live in the studio while charismatically leading a band that includes elder statesmen like Benmont Tench and Don Was, not to mention cameos from Ringo Starr, Beck, and Ryan Adams (recorded before the allegations against him emerged).

A pleasantly surprising return on My Finest Work Yet, his most plainly and darkly funny album in a long time.

Putting aside musical intricacies, Inside the Rose just sounds amazing, conjuring a lustrous, lucid world shaken by distant explosions. The drones of strings, pianos, and electronics are offset by bright accents of tuned percussion, sustaining an atmosphere of anticipation and wonder.

Yanya’s songs reflect a woman who’s uncertain of how much of herself to reveal to the world. That is both the allure of Miss Universe and what augurs even brighter things to come.

Illegal Moves is just as powerful a statement about the urgency of the times and the reactions we should all be having, because being entertained doesn’t have to mean being disengaged. That Sunwatchers make their calls to arms sound so fun doesn’t diminish that power--in fact, it just might be the most important part.

Let’s Try the After is a pleasant Andes Creme de Menthe following the feast that was Hug of Thunder, as Broken Social Scene tackle a few of their distinct modes—propulsive and tricky instrumental rock, explosive guitar-hero theatrics, slow-burning balladry—in capable, familiar fashion. That familiarity isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you’re typically into what Broken Social Scene bring to the table.

Nearly every track on LP3 pushes out toward the five-minute mark, and where previous American Football songs were internal journeys, this album’s travel to new vistas in all directions.

ATAXIA has moments of all three, running the gamut across funk, feverish entertainment, and frustratingly dry-eyed experiments. Throughout, however, it remains startlingly original—a powerful piece of work from a sonic adventurer of rare intellectual clarity.

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.

When asked to rank the group’s previous albums by Noisey last year, Kugel ranked them in reverse order. On The Devil You Know, their evolution continues.

There’s always a risk that an album like this one will be received as novelty music, but the compositional integrity is there, and the music is engaging purely on the level of sound.

It’s thrashy if not entirely thrash, it’s dirty and smeared at the edges, and they remain sick of your shit, with their definition of “your shit” an exponentially expanding, spiteful blob. Even without changing much, they’re still the freaks underground metal needs.

Lifeforce is an album in the truest sense, with each song blending into the next for continuous listening. Mostly low- to mid-tempo, the band skillfully integrates bleak and radiant tones, leading to an impressive nine-track suite of ambient, spoken-word and grime-infused compositions.

Groove Denied can’t help but feel like a minor effort. It’s essentially his answer to McCartney II—the sound of a veteran artist with two beloved bands under his belt reveling in the freedom to indulge a latent fascination with the latest gadgets.

Lux Prima works better as a journey than a destination. It never sounds better than when going nowhere fast, its charmingly anachronistic sound at odds with the sharply engineered hustle of the modern pop world. Karen O and Danger Mouse have dreamt up a vividly imagined world, and it’s a pleasure to get lost in it. With a little more freedom, it could have been divine.

Certainly, some--even those who have found pleasure in its makers’ earlier work--will find it too severe, too unrelenting. But Kevin Martin has long made it his mission to go deep and dark, and Solitude goes deeper and darker than he has ever gone before.

The story of a young female songwriter pushing back against the sexist songwriters on her major label and modern pop’s oppressive beauty standards is an impressive one. The cautious Sucker Punch could do with more of that insurrectionist spirit.

A different kind of hero’s journey through the musical mind, Psychodrama feels less like a platform for clout than a starting point for self-help and paradigmatic change.

The Nagoya-based band’s second album, PUNK, is terrifically over the top.

On Time Out of Time makes the billion-year-old buzz of two neutron stars into something heart-stirring.

Fifty percent of the lyrics are bad (“Back on my bullshit, devil emoji”) and the other 50 percent are also bad, but then they get stuck in your head and ultimately turn good (“Tell me your darkest secret shit you wouldn’t even tell Jesus”). ... Death Race For Love feels like the real Juice WRLD, wearing his influences and heart on his sleeve, putting his ups and downs into the music in real time.

Dido’s fifth album, Still on My Mind, guides her even more into the path of serenity and easy listening electronics, with odes to marriage and motherhood that bask in their comforts.

Foals’ problem is that they have the same ambitions as just about every other large-font rock band these days and thus the same pitfalls. Making apolitical art feels borderline negligent, and yet it’s easier than ever to feel desensitized to the doomsaying when everything just seems to get incrementally worse.

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.”