DOPAMINE, her highly anticipated debut-slash-comeback album, still can’t shake the anonymity of her ensemble days, but it lays the foundation for what Normani will be known for: her Southern roots and a voice as plush as a pair of fuzzy dice.

More than 25 years later, O’Rourke and Grubbs have polished and stitched together every scrap and forgotten rarity into one final album, closing off their beloved project as finely as a tape loop.

The recordings on One Hand Clapping are appealingly raw and in-your-face intimate, making the listener feel like the sole ticket-winner to a private Macca soundstage performance.

The record’s best songs, like birth, feel hard-won and revelatory—journeys that might take place on a single physical plane, but expand psychically outward, broadening the spectrum of beauty, personhood, and existence.

But for all the softness telegraphed in her music, Allen’s third album Eight Pointed Star is spiky and hard to pin down, its familiar environment camouflaging lyrics that can be vivid and fantastical.

The two of them could’ve used nostalgia to coast on the legacy of their nearly decade-old debut to turn in a serviceable redux. Instead, Why Lawd? leans into a rawness and fear Yes Lawd! only hinted at.

Born in the Wild, much like Tems the artist, is a slow burn that rewards patience.

If Timeless feels slighter than its predecessors, it’s no less assured, its purpose no less profound: to get you moving, even in quiet moments.

An album that offers its emotional reckoning as a messy and necessary new beginning for Young Jesus.

That’s the surreal magic of Statik: pallid terror deceptively wrapped in an inviting soft-focus glow. If it’s not Cunningham’s best work, it may be his most quintessential, a true distillation of his ability to simultaneously attract and repulse.

This ability to summon intensity without a lyrical shock factor is new for Goat Girl, and they’re better for it.

I Hear You strikes a frustrating standoff between these two versions of Gou: It lacks the authentic quirkiness of those earlier hits, yet never lets loose the confetti cannons and fishbowl cocktails promised by “Nanana.”

The best-sounding version of the Charli XCX promise to make the Apollonian pop landscape Dionysian again. .... BRAT’s most intriguing moments regard her relationships with women, which she unpacks with striking candor.

This album basks in the greenness of youth. .... There is a palpable maturity, however, in the production of her sound. While staying true to her earlier Afro-fusion works, TYIT21 taps into dancehall, Nigerian highlife, and amapiano, demonstrating an expanded range, restraint, and purpose for Starr.

Whenever the album breaks out of its stream-of-consciousness flow, it shows a clearer sense of identity. Merrick’s secret weapon is her soaring singing voice.

A few of the songs on The Dream of Delphi are a little too underdeveloped and end up dissipating into thin air. But it’s Khan’s lyrics, always so full of gravity and grace, that keep the album from stalling out.

Thou are a blast even when Funck is digging into esoteric philosophy over the slowest riff you’ve ever heard, but it’s refreshing to hear them get real with themselves, jogging their music out of the enthralling but insular world they’ve created over the past 15-plus years.

He’s making songs that sound like catchy Gunna songs of the past—he’s still able to float on these laid-back, skittering ATL trap variants while reading straight off his SSENSE receipt—but they don’t feel like them.

Though actual percussion remains sparse, Night Reign grooves harder than its predecessor, which featured almost no drums. Even when the rhythm instruments sit back, there’s almost always a sense of an insistent pulse.

There’s nothing on Dark Times that’s surprising and challenging for Staples but little that detracts from what already works.

Sprawling and spectacular. .... The songs are immediate and inviting in ways that Cindy Lee’s previous discography has only hinted at.

While Frog's vocal melodies are often simple, with nursery-rhyme lightness, tuning into their lyrics make them seem more like sugar-coated pills. They establish Smith as both an objector of the failing system and another one of its many idle subjects, free-floating in the rush of disappointment.

There’s a moment of startling emotional clarity on “Shoot at Will,” a revealing track where Zayn alludes to his and Hadid’s daughter: “When I look at her, all I see is you/When you look at her, do you see me too?” But for the most part, Zayn appears much more comfortable wearing the mask of vulnerability instead of actually exercising it.

At a lean 28 minutes, it’s their shortest and most instantly rewardable—no instrumentals and none of the longform post-rock indulgences of 1998’s Terraform or 2007’s Excellent Italian Greyhound.

With their fluting vocals and bird chirps, her songs could fit on the soundtrack of Michaela Coel’s sitcom Chewing Gum, about a 24-year-old British-Ghanaian woman trying to lose her virginity. Through humor, pop hooks, and scenes of emotional intimacy, both works juxtapose the vibrancy of life with the drab realities of public housing.

HMHAS is just another good record from Billie and Finneas—certainly tasteful, and arresting sometimes, but all the session musicians in the world can’t make it a masterpiece.

Hex Dealer is as frenzied as it is hilarious.

If Crumb’s first two full-lengths squeezed worlds into safety-sized containers, this record is as authoritative as they’ve ever sounded. It sprawls in the vein of psych-pop genre-benders King Krule and Toro y Moi, but also manages to feel singular, a standalone statement of their ever-evolving identity.