Their music is timeless but pulls on nostalgic heartstrings—it can be goth, earnest, sad, happy, distant and close all at once. It scratches a very specific itch for atmospheric pop and rock music that most of their imitators still can't touch.

The arresting thing about Robertson, and what makes her latest so effective, is her aversion to absolutes.

Second Line offers an impressive level of immersion from an artist who's spent years inviting us into her own personal universe.

The way he calls back to nearly all of his past projects, one could make the mistake that Hebden's best years are behind him. That would be missing the point, though. Regardless of all the attention he's received from his massive performances, he's still looking for new ways to be Four Tet.

The striking concept alone is enough to make this album worth a listen. That it turned out to be so inspiring is a happy byproduct of the whole experiment.

Ambiguities can make Olympic Mess's charms difficult to excavate, but it's well worth making the effort to do so.

Lafawndah's stripped-down approach invites us to sit in these new environments, culminating in an album that feels as thoroughly absorbing as a good novel.

It has hooks galore, but embedded in brilliantly strange music.

[Amphis (Reprise) is] a quiet, almost reverent close to an album that further refines the disorienting beauty we've come to expect from Luke Abbott.

Equal parts rock, hip-hop and experimental, it's one of the most interesting records of the year thus far.

If things occasionally become one-dimensional it's arguably the admission price for the many successes this album packs.

Mala in Cuba is a statement of consummate mastery-of a form, of a tempo, of a set of tools-shaped by the implacable creative imagination of one of the finest producers of his generation.

Smith never went away exactly, but Bleeds feels like as storming comeback.

Loud City Song is her most broadly scoped and epic album to date.

Its best moments draw you to the formative dance floors of Space's past, the parties where he watched dancers react to the thrilling amalgam of styles that would become footwork, and where he danced himself, absorbing the lessons that would feed into a genre based on movement.

Those of you disappointed in similar efforts this year by Hercules & Love Affair or, say, Jessica 6 will find many of their itches scratched here.

By carefully balancing these ideas with unambiguous dance floor moments, Tangerine hits the sweet spot that many of the best electronic albums occupy.

It's a more expansive, more ambitious and more accomplished Raime than we've heard before.

None of these ventures feel forced, instead they flourish under the weight of some heavy emotional themes. After this versatile and unexpectedly wholesome depiction of a broken heart, Mykki Blanco has earned some deserved beauty sleep.

This is not Jaar's best album, nor is it his strangest, but it's a wonderful listen that tempts you to get lost in its many layers. It is beautiful but confounding, an artwork whose "solid form" still passes through like water trickling down between your fingers.

I Hope You Can Forgive Me, ten songs under a half hour that move quickly but stay with you long after, is a full-fledged real-time resume that demonstrates how complex rhythms and careful arrangements can elevate the human voice to the ultimate instrument.

Captain Of None places Schott's voice front-and-centre and folds in her long-burning love for dub and reggae rhythms, making for her most approachable and otherworldly record yet.

It's an album of gorgeous sounds and textures that prefer to lay in the dark and be discovered rather than assert themselves.

Harlecore is the souvenir, a collection of dance music so deliriously upbeat you can't help but surrender to it.

There are no new tricks at hand here, no experimental forays into the goonier psych-prog ends of the space disco genre. And you know what? Thank f*** for that.

It's tricky to make music this mopey without sliding into shtick, but Holy Other pulls it off, balanced right on the brink of bathos.

Though it's way too long to listen to in one sitting, Grime 2.0 is catnip for the grime fan, and good bait for those new to or curious about the genre.

Wise's third album is striking not only because of his unparalleled voice or his candid verse, parts of his artistry that already caught our attention on the last two albums, but because of the way these elements come together in such an assured way, in a space that demands swagger bravado from its virtuosos delivered with a welcome vulnerability.