In aggregate, none of this feels like a departure--it’s somehow a step backward and forward at the same time, mining roots as a way to age gracefully.

It’s neither a live album nor an album of its own, yet it’s also not a set of demos for a forthcoming record. Instead, it’s a vivid snapshot of a particular moment, preserving a time when he had yet to fritter away his good will, and capturing Townes Van Zandt when it still seemed like he was on the verge of great things.

Fierce as Donnelly’s writing can be, it’s empathetic to the core.

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.

The album deepens and expands upon the imagistic nature of Lange’s lyrics and cosmic synth-folk, using found sound and his own sonorous, humming voice to tease out the complicated harmony of love and power at the heart of Kincaid’s short story.

Sometimes Ashworth sounds like she’s yearning to startle her own music’s hypnotically pleasant surface, and there are times you wonder if the gauziness of shoegaze is doing her a disservice, hiding her in plain sight. But SASAMI is a powerful first effort, and Ashworth is a compelling presence.

Roving at will across other genres, Cross is able to wholly remake the horn in his own image.

At turns both acerbic and unguarded, GREY Area feels like the grand culmination of everything Simz has been puzzling out to this point. She’s a preternaturally gifted lyricist, a prodigy who recorded her first raps at nine and released her earliest tapes in her teens; it simply took a while for her to apply that acuity to her songcraft.

Mushonga glides effortlessly between synth pop and dubstep, interlacing flute samples and vocoder flourishes without gilding the lily. Here, the intricate details embellishing her music do more to enrich the whole than draw attention to themselves, just as individual stars complete a constellation.

At 14 tracks in roughly an hour, Wasteland, Baby! falls prey to the humdrum, all its power wrung dry.

If Durand Jones & the Indications was the party, their second album and first since signing to Dead Oceans, American Love Call, is the slow dance.

The album rewards repetition, in listening and in execution.

Forsaking the earthier vibe of later Trux records like Veterans of Disorder and Pound for Pound, White Stuff feels like an extension of Herrema’s work with Black Bananas, thriving on the tension between old-school authenticity and modernist manipulations.

On Death Becomes Her, Angel-Ho beautifully transmutes any past anguish into a colorful network of global sonics, a bold statement of trans femininity, and a rallying cry for resistance. At once, Angel-Ho shatters binaries and encompasses dualities.

On her confident and intoxicating first full-length, Good at Falling, she lets go of any lingering self-consciousness and makes the transformation from hesitant outsider to unlikely pop star.

This Land is the first place where Gary Clark Jr. doesn’t appear hemmed in by the past. The album may be informed by old sounds and forms, yet these familiar tropes feel fresh thanks to Clark’s idiosyncratic splicing.

There’s no emotional throughline on The Black Album, no grand statement that continues from one track to the next. The songs never blur together, but they also don’t tell a story as the sum of their parts. A sense of tonal whiplash ensues, and the album’s highlights are best enjoyed in isolation.

It’s a more straightforward and accessible sound that might leave past admirers missing the all-out weirdness of albums past, but the evolution that Tasmania represents also speaks to the fact that the main constant in Pond’s approach is change. Even as the sea levels keep rising, they’ll doubtless find new waves to ride.

Wanting to seem OK while secretly falling apart is a tricky dance that placeholder deftly captures. But hearing about a riot is not the same as listening to one. Duffy excels at mapping resolution, which might make you want to hear about the conflict.

All My Relations boasts a syncopated charm that stems from the freedom of groove inherent in jam sessions. But the album’s spiritual elevation comes from Gastelum’s songwriting process.

Big Bad... is yet another example of his continued career elevation, signaling what is possible if you stick to your guns while caring little for what others think.

DJ-Kicks has long given reign to both dedicated DJs (Nina Kraviz, Seth Troxler) and artists who are better known as producers than disc jockeys (Nicolette, Erlend Øye), with frequently brilliant results. Vynehall’s mix sits firmly within the latter territory: more selector sensation than DJ spotlight, but still an impressive showcase of the producer’s ear.

His bars vary from the goofy (“She made me bust a nut, that’s a starburst”) to the confusingly profound (“Time is poured on me when I ride that Maybach”), but it’s his ability to apply his signature inflection to just about any rhythm he conjures up that can make Drip or Drown 2 nearly hypnotizing.

Pump’s only motivation is to stunt on his old high school teachers. That theme is heavy-handed on the album, as Pump bashes us with a running joke about how he used to go to Harvard before dropping out.

It’s remarkable how Crush on Me comes off as two albums in one. One album, containing “Heels” and “Haunted House,” is a less abrasive version of SOPHIE’s work with Mozart’s Sister, which ends up as a hyperventilating version of the alt-pop singles that litter playlists everywhere. They’re all executed well; they’re certainly done with the most gusto possible. But the familiarity gets a bit much. ... The other, better album in Crush on Me is an alt-rock throwback.

Father of 4 ultimately works as a solo outing because Offset is such a force of nature, but it’s too often cautious where it could be candid, or dull where it should be sharp. Still, the record is a progression for Offset and for Migos.

It’s hard not to tumble into Crushing’s vast emotional depths and look past everything else that makes the album exquisite, but lyrics like this showcase just how clever Jacklin’s songwriting can be.

Helium moves with the numbing pace of a stubborn hangover, and its drums have the grain and snap of limp celery.