On the beautifully airy Original Colors, the ambient pair seem weary of making a good impression.

His music is also a hodgepodge: square sax-rock, Motown, bongo-heavy folk ballads, and sunshine pop, all tinted by Shin's guitar, which is alternately savage and buttoned-up.

The results are even more immersive than the stuttering microhouse rhythms on which he built his reputation originally.

The luminous All Things Will Unwind uses strings, brass, marimba, and mellotron, brilliantly showcasing her operatic, slightly scary voice in tricky songs that remain fresh after repeated plays.

His supporting cast has stabilized around multi-instrumentalists Emmett Kelly and Shahzad Ismaily, but song structures dissolve altogether on Wolfroy Goes to Town.

He's purely elegant throughout.

We Were Promised Jetpacks' second album tightens the craggy fuzz of their first, revealing twisty post-punk songs with chewy pop centers.

Working in Tennessee glides along on its Bakersfield groove with the greatest of ease, despite the album's title.

They sound like serious witches--impossibly high, fluttery voices singing mystic incantations over pulsing, six-minute jams that gun for another astral plane, and occasionally reach it.

Modeselektor sprinkle the Flying Lotus–style funk sparingly, melting their Teutonic cool just enough to reveal a previously missing musical link: soulfulness.

Here, though, watery, joke-free confessionals like "This Is Home" and "After Midnight" sound comparatively adrift.

Delivered in a frail squawk recalling Seattle singer-songwriter Perfume Genius, his coming-of-age songs carve intuitive, 
idiosyncratic paths (spidery guitar, buzzing electronics) to mountaintop indie-rock catharsis.

While her sound is still dominated by typical darkwave elements--doomy synths and the pishy patter of minimal drum machines--the rest is unexpectedly warm, illuminated by her indomitable voice.

The Kid's voice has tarnished, but his wit-intensive, cross-genre revisionism still grooves like a multiculti Mensa disco party.

Employing a variety of producers, Everything undertakes a cathartic reinvention via late-night, sex-driven trips through dim, sweaty basement parties.

The Less You Know, the Better 
is equal parts frustrating and admirable.

The result is alternately audacious and befuddling.

Ignore the mouth-breathing rock bangers, and Mockingbird is as comfortable as well-worn denim.

Bellowing hoarsely while ivories tinkle and muted guitars gently twang, he comes across like a scenery-chewing Method actor marooned in a stoic Ingmar Bergman flick.

For all the period-piece lethargy of "Warm Summer Sun" and 
"I Fall Asleep," though, they balance it out with the blistering "Space in Your Face" and "Honey Bear."

Gundred's richer-than-you-expect voice is the key to these jagged little pillows.

For all its languid rookie charms, In Heaven might be best remembered as the harbinger of a more consistent sequel.

Her tender songcraft grows stronger.

The Whole Love feels more of a piece with 1999's Summerteeth, the caustic pop opus on which Tweedy sped away from alt-country (or y'allternative, No Depression, whatever) in a car far sleeker (and blacker) than the one Hank Williams supposedly died in.

Again Into Eyes only truly perks up near the end when they call up their inner Psychedelic Furs on more straightforwardly swooning ballads like "Faith Unfolds."

With Father, Son, Holy Ghost's exquisite, beyond-indie melodies, arrangements, and musicianship (the playful "Magic," the elegant "Just a Song," the fiery "Die"), he [Christopher Owens] and bassist-producer JR White flirt with perfection.

Sequenced like an upside-down bell curve, the band's fetching fourth album opens with the vintage hippie wisdom, musique concrète, extended space rock, and lush, jazzy Americana of "Isadora."

The Devil's Walk creates a compelling mix of programming virtuosity, songcraft, and plaintive vocals, with spastic blips fluttering amid languid string washes, while a 
mechanical scrim obscures and accentuates the underlying emotions.