The blindingly sunny Endless Flowers is an album appropriate for the beginning of the summer, all popsicles, poppy beats and poolside parties coalescing into warm nights

This is alt-country (or folk or whatever) at its finest, music that elides from well-worn and comfortable generic trope to bursts of originality, music that revels in the holy trifecta of lyricism, instrumentation and production.

Well-worn, well-defined, Heaven is the work of band with nothing left to prove.

That he was able to keep as much of himself in the transition from the underground to the mainstream is what is admirable.

It's difficult to generalize about an album like Manifest!. For every flat moment or forgettable song there soars an incredibly high peak, the kind of song you keep on repeat for a solid hour. And even this binary critical formula fails; some songs succeed and stumble at the same time.

Celebration Rock is raw frenzy, tender love, and foolish cacophony.

Generals might sound like a spoonful of sugar, but it gives you a lot of medicine to get down.

If you're over alt-rock, then Brazen Bull is going to do little to bring you around. But if you need a new guitar rock record, one that you can headbang to without irony, then the Cribs have delivered.

At best, this would spark an awakening that provides the catharsis for yourself. At worst, WIXIW is an impressive statement by a band that regularly seems several steps ahead of their peers.

To say that Oh Holy Molar has a bite is a vast understatement -- the record grabs ahold of your skin and refuses to let go.

This is almost selfishly indulgent, and unless you haven't heard the previously released "Dr. Marten's Blues," you have very little to learn from the rest of the album.

With nothing wasted, it leaves you wanting nothing more.

It has a known start and finish, with a middle that's tied together cleanly enough.

Taken as a whole Shy Pursuit feels like a flat amalgamation of post-millennial indie-pop tropes clean-cut from the quirks and charms of their creators.

Most of these songs would make for a devastating end to an emotionally charged, disturbed album. But ten songs like that in a row?

Nupping proved it, and Natural History amplifies the point that Dope Body are a completely unimpeachable unit from a musical standpoint: able to fit in with contemporaries while still sounding undoubtedly like themselves, carrying on the proud outsider-rock tradition of their hometown.

The other moments here retread instead of reform, so while the trio's stubborn vision for their music is abmirable, its limitations become glaringly clear as you get to the record's end.

On the whole, Anxiety lacks the addictive quality of its predecessor, and it's certainly less musically interesting.

As a genre that's saturated with trends, micro-trends, and anti-trends, it's rare to find someone doing something that makes a legitimate claim at being totally unique.

Control System is one of the better mixtapes to come out this year.

It's the sound of a cooking band truly cooking it in the studio. Everything sounds like it's about to jump the rails at any given moment.

While the album, at times, feels a bit monochromatic, it maintains its intrigue and never loses its vision.

Words And Music expertly explores the intoxicated love of music and the sheer joy of being a music fan: feelings so universal that they will never be confined to particular eras.

The hooks often lack a singular focus, and there's a significant amount of fun to be had while working in a studio that's better off left on the cutting room floor.

Beautiful front to back, it's still an album that never quite asserts itself.

The true brilliance of Cancer For Cure is its refusal to find common ground, to come to the middle and meet anyone.

Its power and poise never ceases for 90 wonderful minutes.

If Family Perfume Vol. 1 can be seen as a progression where Presley is settling into his skin, Family Perfume Vol. 2 is a cathartic catalogue of letters never sent, the consequences of past decisions poignant enough to keep Presley musing, wide-eyed, remorseful--but nonetheless hopeful.

Black Mesa ventures deep into individuality but it's ultimately a fever dream that's more accessible to the man who created it rather than to an audience.

Dismania makes for an altogether appropriate title for an album this interested in gathering the common ingredients of despair, anger and disaffection.

It's his finest work yet, which is saying something, and the kind of record that will resonate for years not just because it's reveres history, but because it understands it and isn't afraid to demand answers from it.

Even if they are more refined, they may still sound very much like what Blackshaw has given us before.

Adventures in Your Own Backyard is about as confirmatory of an artist's status quo as an album can be; it takes Watson's style in no new directions, preferring instead to bask in its own childlike exuberance and to demonstrate all the trappings of ambition but little in the way of earning it.

Only Place doesn't say or feel much, which would be fine if it didn't sound like it was trying so hard to say or feel a lot.

In 2006, it seemed like Beach House couldn't outlive Beach House. In 2012, Bloom is the bar to clear.

For all its questing, though, the album's--and the band's--heart and soul are the simple arrangements which, layered upon one another like a stack of firewood, often signify something greater than their sum.

They act as a constant reminder of the power of music that isn't afraid to be ugly, blunt, and confrontational.

You could never truly expect a truly cohesive album from Santigold, and she's met expectations.

If "just trying to play with passion" is the ethos, then consider the band's sophomore album, Death Dreams, the perfection.

If you enjoy church hymnals, tabernacle choirs, tunes from the Elizabethan era and all things Stratford-upon-Avon, you'll pleasantly enjoy Dr Dee's attempt at a modern interpretation of the ancient, packing a lost piece of history into 2012.

You can't knock the songs, but it's hard to swallow whole.

Like Pigeons before it, A Different Ship is a solid album, but one that still finds Here We Go Magic on the road to perfecting and updating their sound on a full-length album.

A valiant attempt to combine varying disciplines of Eastern music with neo-psychedelia, Aufheben is a pleasant listen.

This is a rich, complex and conflicted soundtrack for the best comic book movie never made.

Pluto should be appreciated for what it is, an album of impeccably crafted, energetic, original music that is striving above all else to be popular and universal, even if such goals look less likely of being achieved than ever before.

Don't expect any club bangers or hot remixes. But the exciting part is that, in Silver, it's starting to look like we might have a true composer on our hands.

What's missing is the meditative joy they achieved in their rockier moments.

It is tugs and pulls like these [going from raw, minimal stutter to a serenade of a "foreign-language female vocalist"], that take you to the edge and then let you down quickly but softly, that showcase the heart of what is most appealing about footwork and the genius of Mind of Traxman.

Whereas Helplessness lived up to its title through a narrator that found inspiration in leaving childish things behind, Misty treads the same notions of spirituality in a decidedly earthier manner.

By the end of the album, most of the momentum is gone, and closer "My Forevers" is really just "The Return of When I Was Twenty Nine" but sampled with the melody from "Scissors," which means that there's really only eight (and a half?) songs with good, original content.

The best song here, "Chinese Braille," isn't going to top anyone's song of the year list, but when Candy Salad is on, it seems like the only music you'll ever need. And that counts for something.

Those who credit Benson with the poppier side of the sonic stew cooked up by the Raconteurs can probably make a pretty good case for that notion based on his solo outings, and What Kind of World is no exception.

Past albums might have romanticized drugs and booze as the way out, but here it's music, and the album feels more healing as a result, even if its ode to the sweet sounds that came before it presents its own complications and delusions.

The tuned-down Melvins-like squall from their earlier records is still present and accounted for, but Torche have managed to shove their guitar work into unexpected places that balance limber melodicism with punishing heft.

Despite all his sonic island-hopping over the years, Krug has an aesthetic noticeable as his, and unfortunately his backing band here doesn't quite have the same unique musical vision.

Death Grips might not match Exmilitary for style points, but the indelible image of them playing this for label bigwigs is one for the ages.

It's been a captivating listen thus far, and will likely remain that way wherever he takes it next.

The result is album of beats and grooves, alternately plodding and engaging, punctuated by the occasional bursts of Black Dice's signature sonic playfulness.

Ultimately, Dross Glop cements the versatility of the second version of Battles, establishing them as both a powerful singular and collaborative force.

The End of That feels like something built with the intentions of making a grand statement, but it comes up a few great songs short. Honestly it's pretty remarkable for what it attempts.

The songs on Illusion are detailed on the whole, but remain lightly so in other aspects.

The album encapsulates summers of falling asleep on porches, cicadas chirping periodically among the trees, shaking slightly from a passing breeze.

At times, the country air's so strong you can smell the hay/freedom. Far more often, though, Dekker and company find the sweet spot.

The lilt of the melodies, the consistent surprises of the production, and of course the poetry of the lyrics are all more than enough in and of themselves to keep listeners fully engaged.

Metal Moon could be the soundtrack to an hour from now.

It is simple, it is pure, it is predictable, it is Another High on Fire Album.

The listenability of the second-half might leave hip-hop heads indifferent, often feeling just too full of glossy pop, no matter how solid Plug 1 and Plug 2 continue to rap twenty-five years into their career.

Zammuto excels at the opposite: deconstructing life into easily digestible songs that make you feel something.

Spine Hits feels too spacious, lacking the depth that both [newly-departed singer] Fannan's swelling vocals and improvised jams filled the band's two previous releases [with]. Regardless, Spine Hits is an enjoyable listen.

Beal's lyrics proves to be the major sticking point for an album that is quite successful. Most of these tracks follow the kind of topsy turvy logic of a Kaufman film.

Family Perfume Vol. 1 wafts with a brilliant array of aromas, drifting from atmospheric psychedelia to homegrown folk melodies that leave a lingering sweetness in your mouth.

Better Luck Next Life, their second full-length, does lapse out of recalcitrance, but its immersion makes for a worthy distraction.

With Spooky Action at a Distance, Pundt proves he can walk the tightrope between listener-friendly anthems and cerebral digressions into edgier terrain with aplomb.

Ugly is ultimately an album that finally finds the Screaming Females completely confident in their own identity, no longer trying to straddle the line between their headier rock aspirations and the DIY punk scene that gave birth to them.

This buckshot spray of quick pop tunes is another wild success in his constantly twisting variations on a theme.

While groping for a consistent aesthetic, Young Prisms provide moments of delightful ascent, only to seemingly let their worse angels drag them back into staid, self-inflicted sludge.

What's missing, though, is the familiar sense of deft control over the album's arc, the lyrical intrigues, and the instrumental detail that make his other work so indispensible to the indie folk canon of last decade.

Both Lights, for all its faults and successes, remains a worthy exploration.

Unfortunately, there are moments on Busting Visions where Zeus succumb to the weight of their considerable forefathers.

I Love You, It's Cool prove Bear in Heaven's 2009-10 success wasn't a fluke, and given two years, they can deliver another album of ebullient jams.

The cuts that utilize Batoh's brain-pulse method are nevertheless striking pieces of electronic minimalism -- stark and compelling.

Rather than the stripped-down or lonely songs that so often accompany the bill of "solo effort," these five songs are as polished, highly wrought, ornamental--take your pick--as any on Veckatimest.

THEESatisfaction's awE naturalE is one of the most adventurous and tradition-bending hip-hop albums of the year, and further cements Sub Pop as the place for imaginative, left-field hip-hop.

Fin creates a passionate kind of poetry not only in its music but also in its listeners.

On her second album, Sees the Light, Goodman has tweaked the La Sera formula slightly to create an engaging record that plays to her strengths as a pop craftsman.

Mostly Lee Ranaldo has created a mid-crisis record that sounds more powerful than frustrated, more strong in its beauty than reactionary in its power.

A Church That Fits Our Needs isn't easy to define, but it is easy to get lost in.

What results instead is a solid offering full of familiar noisy-pop that with a little branching out might help the trio do something special next time around.

Valentina spends much of the time spinning in circles instead of plodding onward.

Break it Yourself dodges the feedback of erring too closely to its own sources--but not all of it soars.

The results are hit or miss going forward.

Eric Emm and Jess Cohen have produced an album is both substantially intelligent and undeniably fun in equal measure.

Father Creeper is his greatest achievement thus far, succeeding, if nothing else, as demanding listeners to enter his warped headspace.

Formulas churn out reliable, consistent results, but "reliable and consistent" art doesn't always inspire a passionate response.

While still mostly a success, Zoo marks the first time where Ceremony do not seem 100% sure of their own identity.

It's an album that purges the nastiness of its predecessor and switches things up enough without sacrificing its power, a template that hopefuly they remember to follow.

Milk Famous is a full-on declaration, a confident pop record that shows us this band as a collection of unique performers.

The album is so cleanly produced that it sounds like they can't afford a flaw. And ironically, it's this seeming aversion to being perceived as imperfect that holds them back.