Her delicate fingerpicking and shimmering vibrato carried her across state lines, oceans, into record deals and mixing rooms. The juxtaposition is apt: Beware of the Dogs is Stella adjusting the scales, shifting seamlessly between intimate and all-encompassing.

Fading Frontier’s signature is focus though, and it’s evident in the concise and tightly controlled songwriting.

In all, Turn Up That Dial treads familiar ground, but their heart-on-sleeve message of empathy and admiration for friends, family, and the gift of music is a welcome addition to their discography.

It’s a bunch of sad songs which make you feel good to be alive. Can’t go wrong with that.

There's no pandering to authenticity here, no appeal to the emotion: Love Remains doesn't drag you into its world with any sort of force whatsoever so much as it places square within it, naked and indifferent.

As a whole, Sharon Van Etten really hits the nail on the head with her third try.

It may not contain anything that the casual Swift listener or average radio-goer will be breaking down doors to hear, but with Speak Now (Taylor's Version), she delivers an admirable and very intimate effort that will be extremely rewarding to her most devoted fans.

It's an album that shows a band comfortable and willing to begin moving on, 70 minutes of something new enough that you can see a pretty bright future for the band that seemed impossible to many just three years ago.

What does set this apart from Actress' earlier pieces is the incredibly organic feel that this album seems to thrive on.

Musical transcendence is a rare thing, but you can literally feel the weights being lifted on this album. It’s all so lush, airy, and pristine; a soundtrack for second chances.

Tears of the Valedictorian is easily one of the best records of the year.

One of 2011's premier releases in alternative rock.

Where its cool and dynamic at first, by the time the albums over you get the sense that there was too much, too quickly, and something was certainly lost. While it may break away from the hardcore realm, giving these songs more room to grow and expand would have greatly increased the replayability of Parting the Sea beyond the first listen or two.

Trimming would have helped, still, a portion of his fan base might have asked for this full retreat into darkness for quite a number of years now. It’s ironic how Lanegan’s most tumultuous experience came wrapped in one of the most toned down collections of songs so far. Also, the difficulties of relating to these stories refrain the LP from becoming one of the strongest in the catalog.

I could go on for hours about the beauty within the story of You Are The Morning, but the record truly speaks for itself. From the luscious instrumentation to the heart-on-sleeve lyrics, jasmine.4.t’s first full-length shares a message that needs to be heard: a message of hope found within community. You Are The Morning is nothing short of raw and emotional, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

Bark Your Head Off, Dog continues the Hop Along tradition insofar as it is sharp, well-produced indie rock accompanying Quinlan's bold lyrical earnestness. This is the band's hallmark sound, so loyalists can rejoice. What is different this time around, however, are broader and more grandiose instrumentation.

This is a much, much more consistent album, it's got nothing as immediate as "Mansard Roof" or "A-Punk", and it moves a little toward the pop end of their sound, but other than that it's business as usual.

Avi Buffalo wear their musical influences on their sleeves (Built To Spill, the aforementioned Shins, Elephant 6, etc. etc.), and their lyrical direction is more Superbad than J.D. Salinger, but it's charming without being cloying, poppy without being overly sugary. Most importantly, it's the kind of debut that leaves you thrilled for what the future may bring, and that's something special.

Ohnomite is another solid addition to a growing, consistent discography.

The instrumentation at hand is stellarly crafted, the riffs are infectious and most of the album as a whole is certainly on par with the band’s discography. Yet Intronaut’s most blatant change--foregoing harsh vocals, and only utilizing singing--is a decision that severely dampens the group’s fourth studio outing.

I hear Wheel slightly differently every time I listen to it, but what stays the same is the overarching feeling that there is some ungraspable quality to it, something indefinable in the way these songs come together, as if multiple worlds are eclipsing each other while remaining individually visible.

Colored Sands is exactly what a Gorguts record should sound like in 2013 and will surely breathe for years to come.

Brimming with the caustic darkness of his later material, the album feels wholly new while still featuring the same haggard nihilism that Wrest is known for.

UNLOCKED's best features are its brevity and simplicity. Songs drop in, do what they need to and cycle to an end without melodrama.

Love Is The King is weathered and patient, rarely effusive, and entirely demonstrative of its namesake. It’s a warm embrace.

Tight as heck, gorgeously thematic, lovingly orchestrated, produced within an inch of its life (i.e. well), seamless, vital, other compliments, all of them. An album with a pulse.

The league Big|Brave are continuously uncovering is one of their own: not explicitly inviting, but altogether demanding and utterly rewarding.

Somehow heavier but feeling lighter than they have in years, meeting your gaze not with a self-deprecating shrug but a grimace and a snarl, Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs is a perfect sendoff to one of pop-punk's finest drummers and a victory lap for one of the genre's best acts.