Listening to it feels like fleeing from a warehouse rave. Just like lockdown itself, How I’m Feeling Now can be overwhelming – panic-inducing, even – when taken as a whole. But there are snatches of brilliance here, and as perhaps the very first album to be produced under lockdown, it is really quite an achievement.

When the album shifts into its second part, and turns inwards with a slower pace to match its vulnerable introspection, there’s no jolt: Sumney’s voice ensures that his soundscapes melt together. It’s here that the emotional heft is to be found.

It is an album as multi-faceted as it is innovative. And that’s Sparks to a tee.

Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, lands with devastating precision. These 13 tracks are finely wrought works of art that draw as much influence from Purcell and Mozart as they do scuzzy Nineties post-punk.

Petals for Armor doesn’t offer up an easy redemptive arc towards happiness; it is a Herculean effort to pull yourself out of depression. But in letting us in on that effort, Williams has created something special.

It Was Good Until It Wasn’t is the latest work demonstrating the 25-year-old’s profound emotional intelligence. Its 15 tracks waft in as though carried by a summer breeze; Kehlani’s crystalline vocals shine through arrangements of sedate beats, jazz piano motifs, and luxurious twangs of Spanish guitar.

A meticulously crafted work that sticks to their winsome, Nineties-influenced slacker-rock while sounding freshly liberated after two years described as “the best and worst” time of their lives.

Gone is much of the external noise – typewriter clatters, vinyl crackles and the whir of bicycle spokes – replaced by ambitiously ornate compositions. As on Dark Days, I Grow Tired feels spookily prescient.

Wake Up! may tackle weighty themes of capitalism and power struggles in relationships, but the woozy ambience of its shoegaze and Sixties-inspired pop is not exactly going to propel you into an invigorating new way of life.

There are moments when it all starts to feel a little bit too doom-laden. But Williams saves not only the best, but the most hopeful, until last. ... An impressive but relentless album.

Manic descants, discordant pianos and abrupt changes in time signature at once complement and compete with each other in a carefully crafted clatter. The melodies are wonderful. The lyrics, too – conversational yet precise.

Rina’s mini album may have marked her out as one to watch, but SAWAYAMA stakes her claim as one of the boldest voices in pop today.

Her best work to date. ... Violins courtesy of Rob Moose (The National, Bon Iver) make this in part an elegy for her own experiences. What a marvel this album is.

The New Abnormal – a spookily prophetic title – is stacked with rolling, streetwise grooves, boldly graffitied onto the chipped paintwork of NYC past.

Archer took half a decade to make this record – no surprise, then, it makes for such a wonderfully unhurried listen.

I’m Your Empress Of is a bold statement of her individuality, nodding to her Honduran heritage but also her clear love of electronic music and Chicago house. ... This is an album that bristles with life.

The band may have achieved Ivor Novello and Mercury Prize nominations, as well as their highest chart position, with 2016’s Curve of the Earth, but A Billion Heartbeats aims higher, and doesn’t miss.

What’s impressive is how Thundercat makes this music, with its complex structures and zigzagging rhythms, so human.

The band seem guided more by instinct than any sense of formula, but there are some superb embellishments – a fearsome guitar solo on “Take the Long Way”, eerie synth ripples on “Retrograde” – that build to the surprising final track, “River Cross”.

Honestly, there isn’t a duff track on here. Every beat is elastic, every note and sample bold and shiny. Future Nostalgia is 37 minutes of pure sonic spandex.

This is the most country she has ever sounded. The most lavish, too, despite the album having been stripped back to only its most necessary parts.

As a soundtrack album to meditate to, Aporia is pleasant, but there’s no denying that the absence of Stevens’s typically ornate songcraft is keenly felt.

Are You in Love? is a magical marriage of joyful pop with heart and depth.

On her third album, the self-titled Kelsea, she finds a balance between the two. There’s more than a hint of early Taylor Swift on perky opener “Overshare”, while “Club” is as uplifting a “not going out” song as you could hope for.

Like Starboy, there’s a hefty Eighties influence here, although for the most part, After Hours abandons the danceability of its predecessor in favour of moody introspection. This is the music you listen to when the party’s over.

I Am Not a Dog has its moments, but they are brief and virtually lost amid the more experimental forays.

If the Grammy-nominated Forever was their blistering hellscape, Underneath is a glitchy, industrial wasteland.

Every Bad is a relinquishing of whatever it is that keeps us from baring our souls, and an unleashing of frustration at how, like children riding a carousel, we’re all just going round in circles.