A better title might have been Thriving, because this record continues their remarkably consistent run and proves that they are still very much at, or at least near, the top of their game.

Bunny's performances are pristine: the record navigates its hooks, sonic sways and immaculate v..v..vibes with palpable ease.

Yet, for all its wonderfully dense qualities, A.A. Williams’ voice remains the star of her show. It’s as consistently powerful as it is calming: it fits tranquil acoustic soundscapes as well as devastating post-metal disintegrations.

From continuous instrumental surprises to brutally honest lyrics, Trophy Eye’s sophomore effort is much more than a solid return, it’s an unanticipated punch to the gut--one that will leave the listener reeling as it rightfully earns its spot among the genre’s most passionate and achingly honest albums.

The Dream Is Over is one of the most unapologetically over-the-top punk albums in recent memory, and fitting proof that Babcock’s vocals are still fully functional.

What truly puts Swift’s fifth full-length in its own class is the combination of brilliant songwriting and incredible production. Those two strengths come together throughout 1989, but no track showcases it better than “Out of the Woods.”

This is damn good music. Like, legitimately sensational. Some of the best of 2023, actually.

Boris doesn't have any obligation to still be putting out records this captivating, but Dear most certainly captivates, and it has me excited for 25 more years of Boris.

They Want My Soul chases that sound far past anything Spoon have done to date in their careers. It’s a chase I hope never ends.

A delicately-crafted work fusing experimentalism and sheer sonic beauty, A Light For Attracting Attention stands proudly on its own merits as a top-tier piece of art rock, connections to a certain critically and publicly acclaimed band aside.

God’s Country is a sordid treat. It’s too personably grounded and idiosyncratically voiced to be mistaken for anyone else’s recycled diatribe; it punches up tenaciously every step of the way; it’s ready for the end of days, and it hates itself for this with a vengeance. What’s the appeal? It’s bloody wonderful.

There's a clear aesthetic touchstone for pretty much everything this album does. If you're the kind of person easily frustrated by such influence-heavy music you'll be turned away, but I admire the consistency of songcraft needed to hold together an album pulling from so many places.

It's both primal and audacious, raw and approachable, unnerving and at times comforting. Most of all, though, it tackles the relationship turmoil in a brilliantly inventive and thrilling fashion.

Talk of pretension aside, Rival Dealer is an important piece of work, a genuinely astounding and jaw-dropping release that deserves every pair of ears it can find.

Few albums can make such bold statements without seeming heavy-handed, but Jacklin’s sophomore effort feels as natural as the words rolling off her tongue.

All in all, Henry St. marks a triumphant return for The Tallest Man On Earth, as he once more emerges from the Swedish countryside to take the folk world by storm. This time, though, he’s got companions, leading to a fuller and richer sonic journey than ever before.

It’s technical excellence as a musical product cannot be overstated. For a pop album to be this busy yet possess a pocket as deep and rich as underscores displays here is simply amazing.

Wildlife was a great leap forward, and Rooms Of The House further evolves their sound.

It may not garner the same kind of fond appreciation that fans have for The Mysterious Production of Eggs, or Break It Yourself, but this album is less a niche corner of the folk genre and more an illustrious banner for all to appreciate. In Bird’s vast canon of genre experimentation, there’s room for at least one big time indie-rock record--and this fills those shoes quite well.

Sinephro builds on the cosmic shrapnel of her debut Space 1.8, reprising that record's chamber jazz arrangements and buzzing analogue synthlines, its New Age mystique (at the time packaged as ECM overtones) and its knack for gorgeous ambient expanse, all while furnishing the continuity that album's episodic tracklist so patently lacked — but Endlessness does not demand that context, or any, to stand as a great record. This album's draw is as simple and effortless as hearing each and every one of your intuitions for the possibilities of its palette spool out in real time.

At once exquisitely beautiful and deeply tragic, and imbued with a bucolic sense of a rural England full of villages and country lanes and woods and fields, I Am Not There Anymore is a journey that you won’t readily forget. Flaws and all, it’s both a worthy comeback for an excellent band and one of the year’s finest releases.

If Async was an album centered on the genesis of its creator's suffering and recovery, Remodels is the triumph over the odds put up against Sakamoto and his way of continuing to share his life's work with the world through the lens of his disciples and his contemporaries.

It’s an album utterly relatable because love, and heartbreak, are universal. It’s also something so amazingly personal that no one could precisely duplicate it, because every experience is specific to Tomberlin’s journey. That’s At Weddings: passion, devastation, depression , and strength rolled into one. It’s tenacious, and it’s beautiful.

The record showcases their most cohesive and potentially most versatile stylistic palette to date. Returning fans will find the likes of “softscars”, “ghosts” and “bloodbunny” full of familiar glitchy flourishes, and “inferno” within a stone’s throw of Serotonin II’s understated reveries, but there’s a much more ‘physical’ presence to the music here.

If Firepower was Judas Priest proving that they’ve still “got it”, Invincible Shield is them making sure no one else will steal their crown. Plenty of veteran classic metal acts are kicking around to this day, but none of them (not even Iron Maiden) still sound as vital, fresh, or vibrant as Judas Priest.

Every journey back to Meridian offers one more dazzling gem, shimmering in the music’s translucent waters just waiting to be discovered. Immerse yourself and become beautifully adrift.

With the progressive-pop-doom hybrid that Ghost have crafted on Meliora, with the occult aesthetic running in parallel to the music--is a resounding victory for the Swedish sextet and is assuredly the band's strongest album to date.

forevher is a supremely catchy, slightly experimental (the horn sections in ‘princess leia’ couldn’t go unmentioned), but chiefly fun pop record that implements plenty of ideas that are completely new to Shura’s arsenal. ... With a sound this infectious and spellbinding, Shura has undoubtedly found her calling.

It’s true that this is the warmest Janelle Monae has sounded in quite some time; her music now is more a magnifying glass than a mask.

They are masters of atmosphere and intrigue, and flirting with pop music has only further aided their chameleonic nature, with this being their most satisfying and diverse effort in many years.

Something Beautiful is an absolute triumph that casts aside any qualifiers to make a strong bid for the best major pop album of 2025 so far.

It’s warm, engaging, and possesses incredible aural imagery. This is a band that has truly resurrected themselves, having climbed out of a pool of stagnancy to craft what can only be considered one of the most creative and immediately likeable albums of the year.

Never Let Me Go is a fantastic album, and it could even be argued that it’s the most consistent and engaging album of their career – certainly, it’s their most ambitious to date.

This is a fantastic record, both sophisticated and personable, and one that I suspect will be well-loved by a niche audience. If the album’s description here intrigues you at all, Complete Mountain Almanac’s emergence is not to be missed.

Although this is just his first album, I’m starting to think that in a few years nobody will need to drop a bevy of famous names in order to incite fervour for his music.

If you choose to look for the metaphors, there's beauty and even redemption to be found in Now Only; if you don't, there's a kind of quiet acceptance in the numbness.

Violet’s biggest victory is not only sounding like the sum of its lofty parts, but also having a personality that’s distinctly its own.

To its general credit, this music doesn’t really belong to 2020, but neither is it a ‘90s time capsule: it’s a Hum record through and through, and its assurance as such is far more exciting than talk of timeframes, expectations or comebacks. Hum are right here.

Despite the record running slightly long and a few songs getting a bit repetitive: the lyrics and the arrangements are great, sure, but it’s the singer-songwriter’s ability to make us feel “it” which matters.

An album which simply allows itself to be washed over, and take it all in. To simply be. In a time when even being must hurt like hell, that's one hell of a gift to give to the world.

It’s not a reversal of normal Flying Lotus material. We’re still dealing with confusion exemplified as a messy but ultimately rewarding tracklist, fear exemplified as music that is just off enough that it could feel terrifying, depression exemplified as little quirks and late starts scattered like jacks and marbles. The difference is that, for once, he’s not trying to fight it all off.

Is It? is his most experimental offering to date. It's not easy to follow, and it rarely does what you'd expect it to...but that's the beauty of it.

Heaven Is A Junkyard might be a comparatively trim release, but it contains multitudes.

It’s this unholy amalgam of anger and swagger and self-loathing and--above all--love, all served over some of the best production work the man has ever done.

What she’s crafted here is a breezy, personal portrait of her life through finely orchestrated folk tunes--and it's nothing short of a stunning debut.

The old gang is back together, and they’ve cooked up a project that’s compelling front-to-back, a clear progression on their established styles both separately and as a unit without a bad track in sight.

While the music doesn’t go above and beyond what we’ve heard from them already, the quality remains steadfast, making To All Trains one of the sharpest entries in their discography.

Upon repeated listens, Our Love reveals itself as quite the complicated record; nothing ever stays still for very long, whether that’s Snaith’s serpentine compositions or his lyrics, so often cast in shadows as they are triumphantly lit up.

Where Myth Meets Memory is the slickest, most confident tracklist Rolo Tomassi have ever laid down, and the only real candidate for their hitherto non-existent single-defining-work.

This is a fantastic return that shows the artistic thrust we’ve come to expect from the band, but it’s done in a way that sheds their controversial desires for good, honest songwriting. It’s probably the most vastly experimental offering to date, next to Rosenrot, but it makes sure to add a trove of tasteful elements from previous sounds while it’s doing it.

It would have been easy to expect the music to sound heavy, even morose, following such tragedy. But some of the deepest wellsprings of renewal come from places of profound loss, and The Mountain proves it. This is a rejuvenating record. A healing record. One that finds light without pretending the dark isn’t there.

It’s an emotionally dialed-in, instrumentally ramped-up, and vocally memorable collection of mismatched ideas that somehow function together smoothly. Even amid the record’s eclecticism, it’s still a definitive Foxing experience.

Injury Reserve is as cohesive a hip-hop album as one can hope. This is thanks, in large part, to Parker’s ever-so-versatile production, though also, I think, Groggs’ and, in particular, Ritchie’s growing scepticism with modern hip-hop culture, and a heightened awareness of its pretensions.

Bird Machine impresses both as an unexpectedly resurrected album with that classic Sparklehorse feel, and as a distinct entity which sees the project move in a comparatively polished and refined direction. Even without the mournful context of its release, it’s one of the best indie albums of the year.

Spike Field does an impressive job of reflecting upon Maria BC’s recent musical endeavors while also advancing their sound.

Harlequin is a brash and goofy mess that will surely be kryptonite to those who were never willing to buy into her many, many eccentricities. For everyone else, it’s a three-word proclamation: GAGA IS BACK.

On Meir, Kvelertak prove that it's actually okay to play happy metal without appearing saccharine or contrived.

The last thirty minutes or so of Ghosts VI: Locusts feels that little bit more cathartic and rewarding by the end of it. What starts off as simple, sombre piano notes eventually swells up to synthetic ambiences, and the rise of a mechanically unsettling apex for the album’s closing quarter. Both of these albums require time set aside to really benefit from their journeys, but it’s time well spent if you’re willing to accept it.

There’s nothing about Ode to Joy that is meant to set the airwaves afire. It’s raw elegance; a surplus of creativity delivered with equal portions of restraint.

OK Human is an oddity and a warm digital hug; it's Weezer reacting to an endless, nerve-shredding, social-life-destroying period of isolation the way only Weezer can, drawing further inwards to themselves but somehow inviting us along for the ride.

The limber Assume Form finds Blake with a new lease on life. We were lucky to have something as insightful and forward-thinking as James Blake; we’re luckier still to have this one.

In Focus? is far and away his boldest record to date.

When the songs are this satisfying, when each guitar solo tears through cynicism like a wet paper bag, sometimes good old fashioned honesty is more than fine. It’s downright beautiful.

Patience is the key to the evolution of Glass, using tonal shifts and ghostly textures to compliment the improvisational mastery we are bearing witness to, whether or not it becomes something much more ghastly than beautiful.

It remodels slabs of wax in a way that not only acknowledges but embraces the pop potential those snippets of sound have been denied for so long.

Fontaines D.C. finally sound like they're in that better land, shedding their skins with an infectious grin and an even more infectious pack of choruses. Dare you to try and not smile along.

The sum total of their 2022 opus is a straight upgrade to SOUL GLO’s already brilliant back catalog, bursting with scorching new takes on old ideas and enough spirit and passion to set the entire scene ablaze.

Immunity presents itself as the missing piece of the puzzle, the catharsis we were conditioned not to expect. In this very moment, our preconceptions of Jon Hopkins have been entirely undermined--and there’s little to do but enjoy the hell out of the twist of events.

As a piece of esoteric yet engrossing art, I Inside The Old Year Dying marks one of Harvey’s finest creations yet.

Compared to its highly-praised predecessor, Bright Future might come up just short, brought down by its occasional unevenness in quality and weaker coherence as a full listen, but this latest album contains a multitude of Lenker’s finest work yet, while suggesting her reign at the top of indie-dom might be only just beginning. This is a triumphant work from an ascendant artist, and, oh yeah, also one of the finer folk albums of recent years.

The execution on Synchro Anarchy is often crazed and thrilling. Other than some brief, but ominous doom-inspired guitar sections in “Mind Clock,” it’s a nonstop thrill ride.

Jambinai have crafted a beast of an album with the perfect length to maintain its punch. Besides this, there are many idiosyncratic elements here which are hard to forget and easy to recognize once listened to. Though their music isn’t for everyone, once you get to the gist of it, it’s very rewarding.

What we have here is an album crafted by two high-profile artists that manages to live up to the names involved. It’s somewhat unexpected just how well they mesh, though, crafting songs that don’t sound the part of a first-time collaboration.

Birthing does not resolve so much as disperse into a shimmering lullaby afterworld. It releases you, maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it’s still playing and you haven’t noticed. Maybe you’ve changed afterward. Maybe not. It’s no new world for Swans. But it does feel like a world that’s more charged with that strange luminosity of those brightest days, when the edges of everything feel like they’re dispersing into the atmosphere. Whatever it is, it’s a beautiful thing.

This is grounded, back to basics writing that becomes the breath of fresh air for the album. This is the record the band should have come back with post Paul Gray’s death; it has all the hallmarks of what made Slipknot great in the first place, but it contains a lot of the good elements that came from .5: The Gray Chapter as well.

Orbiting around the frivolity of human existence and overpopulation, Existence Is Futile is yet another successful chapter in a gothic horror novel that began thirty years ago. It is thus both a celebration and a testimony to the power of perseverance.

Every loop [of "Nowhere2go"] reveals another layer to the undulating beat, but for the first time thus far it's Earl taking the spotlight, rising above the track with a tired yet hopeful rap that's so melodic he's nearly singing. And in case you were worried the boy wouldn't spit, it's followed quickly by "December 24", a song dating back years under the name "Bad Acid" which provides the strongest link to the more aggressive and conventional early 2010s Earl.

The raw energy and occasionally questionable anger of their early years has nicely matured into a confidence and consistency that they've never had before, a diverse set of songs which feels more than the sum of its parts thanks to the band's locked-in chemistry with their longtime producer.

No Cities To Love is a triumph. Not only does it meet every one of our over-the-top demands as fans, it serves as a great entry point for those new comers who have yet to be introduced to one of the most important bands of the last quarter century.

What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World explores a much wider range of topics than their previous literature/storyline-bound themes could have possibly covered, and the result is hands down the most emotive release of The Decemberists’ career.

The songwriting here is too good to deny, and its shortcomings are merely down to personal preferences. If you’re looking for a well-made rock album with all the pop and punk trimmings, look no further than Lifeforms.

Of Monsters and Men use Fever Dream to reject the expectation that they’re nothing more than a “made-for-radio” indie folk band, and based on these results I’d tend to agree with them. This could be the group’s strongest offering to date, and it’s a noticeable few steps outside of their comfort zone. Here’s to hoping that they continue to wander astray.

At once highly inventive and unabashedly fun, the album showcases the trailblazing pop star at her most expansive thus far. M.I.A. adroitly capitalizes on her established style, embellishing it with moments of genuine intimacy.

You can chalk Carnage up as anything from a zeitgeist experiment to a flawed masterpiece, but there’s something precious and compassionate at its heart that I honestly believe will make the world a better place in its own peculiar way, beyond the scope of critical evaluation.

The album's best asset is how it ties together these disparate musical threads with the strength of its songwriting. Having found a stunning depth and emotional acuity on their last release, Reynolds broadens his focus to the world without ever losing the raw feeling which stood out in bold against The Spark's shimmering production.

It wouldn’t just be inappropriate to listen to Coin Coin Memphis casually, while playing a video game or doodling in the background, it would be impossible, so arresting and bracing is the experience.

It’s so perfectly and lovingly written and produced, recalling everything that made you fall in love with the band and their life affirming sound to begin with.

Black is fully replete with every sound Weezer could think to chuck on it, from "Too Many Thoughts in My Head"'s crazy funk guitar to Pat's double-tracked kits and looping beats to the labyrinthine, breathtaking basslines.

Realistically, Ta13oo is extremely satisfying from a consumption standpoint. It’s everything I’d want from a rap album this year.

Expands on the sound she has been sculpting from her debut to the point of creating something that is unmistakably hers. You’ll read comparisons with Grouper here and there, but I can assure you this operates on another level.

The Gods We Can Touch feels like a very round pop record, a little bit of everything for everyone, and it's been smartly complemented by great visuals (the video for "Cure for Me" is mesmerizing) and an impeccable production job by Magnus Skylstad, who doubles down as a drummer in her live performances, and multi-instrumentalist and producer Matias Tellez. Definitely a strong contender for one of the most interesting pop albums of the year.

All of The Migration’s greatest moments showcase a band at the top of its game, quelling the anxiety fans possessed during the record’s inception.

As far as contemplative, comparatively low-energy releases go, this is one of the finest in years, carefully-crafted and delicate but full of nuance and color. However you’d like to classify Aspirin Sun, it’s a damn good record.

In all its ethereal beauty, Ceremony is an ideal companion, whatever you’re going through right now. It’s a perfectly suited album to fill your earbuds while going on a walk, or for the next time you’re lounging on a chair in your backyard as the sun shines down.

The relative polish on 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips doesn’t conceal its edge.

Lots of artists aspire to create an album which matches the zeitgeist (easier said than done), but Mountainhead comes a lot closer than most. With its paranoid and sinister belly coalescing with the joke-y casualness of its exterior, this is yet another successful record from one of the quintessential bands of the internet age.

While it doesn’t quite reach the songwriting highs and wrenching lows of 2006’s Nux Vomica (few things do), Total Depravity avoids the dead spots that have plagued the Veils’ last two records by ensuring that atmosphere of dread remains consistent.

American Utopia, despite the chance at becoming a politically-charged vent towards particular injustices, instead aspires to give hope rather than add onto the dumpster fire of negativity; or so to say, Byrne sits us down and gives us reasons to be cheeful.