The warmth feels sweeter the longer you’ve spent inside.

Blare Falls in the prescribed order, on shuffle, in a plane, on a train: You’ll dance, you’ll cringe, your Mom will freak out, your homies may start rumors about you--which is as it should be.

Piteous Gate is a porous, sensual record, revealing and alluring in ways that other albums aren’t.

LP builds a steamrolling production and piston-like percussion out of broken electronics and heaps of scrap metal.

Their debut LP for Thrill Jockey feels more tightly composed.

By the time you reach the where-is-that-nicked-from riff of “I’m Not Satisfied,” it’s clear this is Lydon’s most listenable record in 30 years, though Album was a lot more fun and “Shoom,” the catchiest thing here, ain’t “Rise.”

Beauty Behind the Madness is front-loaded with fresh directions for the Weeknd that achieve the impossible: make it sound like he’s actually enjoying himself.

[The] sense of resignation threatens to render Noctunes a laborious listen, but moments of lightness give the record a little bit of balance.

Start Here does a great job of cataloging the highs and lows of early milestones: first kisses, first breakups, leaving home for the first time.

The song choices aren’t a deep excavation from the quicksand of their record collection (“Friday I’m in Love,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”), and the uniform decision to do these all in a clean format with brushed percussion and campfire acoustics is exactly what one would presume from an all-covers venture.

Depression Cherry’s particular non-specifics feel as full of breath and life as anything they’ve ever done--an album-length sigh as eloquent as a manifesto.

Though Crosswords’ lackadaisical pleasantness is by no means offensive, there’s no compelling reason for this EP to exist.

His new LP, Nephew in the Wild, is largely cut from the same cloth, a collection of (mostly) sad songs looking back, just from a perspective that’s a little older, wiser, and well-adjusted.

One of the best albums from a restless artist who understands the ridiculousness of being a Restless Artist, but trusts that a consistent voice will make sense of his cross-genre meanderings.

What remains Bruun’s strongest suit is the way she juxtaposes the extremity of her influences. She comes out of more subdued sections to use blast beats like scare tactics, drops in glacial vocal harmonies as soothing lullabies.

Wave(s) is louder, catchier, and about half the length of The Water(s).

Deradoorian’s arrangements now feel less exploratory than rudderless, her harmonies more droning than direct.

This is music for flash mobs, a valentine to crowdsourcing, and a public engagement proposal to the universe.

On M3LL155X, she does seem to be growing stronger, testing the boundaries between light and unfathomable darkness, the breathtaking and the nauseating.

They offer a survey of rock’s history, but their take is revisionist.

The component parts are limited and austere as always (though this time he’s added on a Roland bass synth to his instrumental palette), which makes it all the more impressive that he’s able to conjure such brilliance out of them.

Think Africa ’70 minus the choruses and sax solos. If that doesn’t sound heretical to you, the groove awaits.

Exhilarating and at times exhausting, the competing rhythms atop call-and-response choruses deliver a jittery math-rock fix cut with humanism, warning against fundamentalists of all stripes even as they embody the multicultural promise of their homeland.

From the rock of “Nganshé” to the roll of “Coco Blues,” two forward-looking cosmopolitans (plus friends) craft new directions in urban sound.

Pretty much every guitar band going is currently toiling in the same ’90s nostalgia mines that Kempner dives into here, but few are able to do so with both technical prowess and its emotive content intact.

He’s chosen good material and done right by it. But Kill the Lights sees him both at an apex and a crossroad.

The new three-piece is no supergroup. Robyn’s best work rises above mere competence, and while every song here will keep people on the dance floor, Love Is Free transcends nothing.

Compton doesn’t need to exist, but it does, and that it’s actually pretty good and fresh in a year brimming with vibrant, relevant young voices, says something.