Worm Food takes the form of Skinner's most well rounded and experimental project to date.

Overall, Banks has taken a step forward in her development as an artist, and you can hear this increase in maturity across each album. At times, her evolution is not as convincing as other artists on her level, though the quality of the songwriting here generally makes up for that.

Days of Abandon, like everything before it in the Pains catalogue, will win precisely zero prizes for originality, but there’s a vivaciousness permeating every aspect of the record that breathes so much new life into its well-worn touchpoints. Indie pop at its most sparkling.

The record is certainly clever but feels stripped back in comparison to their 2017 debut, now relying mostly on pointed lyricism that deftly avoids pretension. It’s a move of maturation as they continue to shift further from their Portobello Road busking days of indie hits “Over and Out” and “Light Me Up”. In a strange way it feels as if Flyte have returned to their roots.

What’s most impressive about the Blind Spot EP is not only how deftly Lush have mined the sound that made them a real treasure in the first place, but that they’ve matured without sounding tired, cash-in or merely nostalgic.

With Filthy Underneath, Shah doesn’t necessarily reinvent herself, though she certainly recommits to honesty, vulnerability, and stepping out of comfort zones, all the while documenting an important self-initiation.

It delivers successfully on its objective to keep things light and easy while dancing the night away. It’s not that deep, but it might just be Lovato’s best effort yet.

The ten songs that emerged from that process are a compassionate exploration of selfhood that rewards patience and resists easy answers.

The Blind Hole is nothing utterly mind-blowing or game-changing in the grindcore world, but it’s also not trying to be. Instead, much like a kick to the balls, it’ll remind you of what it’s like to be alive and feel primitive emotion, and sometimes that’s enough.

The album is - as expected - a well-crafted, sonically flawless work. What it lacks in heart (as with all of their albums, there's very little humanity in the sound or the lyrics) it more than makes up for in style and finesse, and it continues the band's run of producing quality records.

Where some tracks edge towards lounge territory, on the most part, this is a an album that surely won’t sink.

Stranger, is a fully formed welcome to the staying power of Lean, and this third chapter is unlike anything he’s done before, while simultaneously being everything he’s done before.

It’s packed with humour, drama, anger and sadness, all brought together by ALA.NI’s artistic direction. ACCA is a one-woman show that will have you glued to your seat – your toilet break will just have to wait.

The Ark Work pays tribute to Hunt-Hendrix’s dogged desire to push listeners’ buttons. Sure, this could all be a massive wind-up, but to these ears Liturgy seem to have melted down the traditional ingredients of black metal and crafted it into something unyielding, unique and ultimately engrossing.

Undoubtedly, Duckwrth knows how to pen a beat, and to keep the party going, especially when the lights seem determined to come on. It can’t be recommended enough to shut the world out and to let SuperGood carry you away on its positivity, love-lorn and big-dream current.

My Morning Jacket – their first album in six years - finds a supremely engaging, often blissfully beautiful halfway point between the glossy eccentricities of more recent MMJ albums and those old slow-burn yet highly combustible 'jam band' dynamics.

In Moon Saloon, Arc Iris have served us an album entirely unconcerned with nascent fads and just as heavy on challenge as it is reward.

Its maximalist aesthetics and musical creativity combine to make something intensely addictive and satisfying, but it’s still inherently hard to put your finger on what exactly it is.

It also works as stand-alone propaganda for our friends north of the border, and album that feeds the imagination and makes you long for mountains, open space, and something a little more natural.

The album closers says “Bon Voyage” in style – with a short but infectious final offering. At just over the three minute mark, sultry vocals dominate – making sure that Viva Hinds is not a record to be forgotten, but sweetly lingers.

And while some songs on this album get drowned out by the grandiosity of its goals, the project – and the man behind it – are as strong as ever. GNX is the blueprint for a new rap zeitgeist, and all we can do is hope that everyone gets the cue.

Kamaal Williams’ Wu Hen knows what it is and what it doesn’t want to be. It pays respect to the music it’s imitating and iterating upon, in all of its many forms and in spite of it, it manages to carve out a space in the scenes for itself.

Producer Josh Kaufman - New York-based musician, Hold Steady collaborator and member of Bonny Light Horseman and Muzz - has elevated the album, finding the perfect mix of chaotic and smooth.

By being both coherent and pleasingly unhinged, bEEdEEgEE more than fills the role of cosmic dance music vacated by Gang Gang Dance.

Self-doubt and anxiety still flow through the veins of the record, albeit quieter and much more introspective, but this time it’s darker, and more matured. A vital record of universal emotions that makes the current global mantra of “we’re all in this together” feel just that bit more believable.

Tackling societal issues and delving into the depths of mental health, the band hold no boundaries when fronted with ‘taboos’ in their most honest, and sonically mature offering to date.

While her vocals ground her in a country vein, her sonic contexts borrow from and integrate blues-rock, classic-rock, and pop sounds. The result is her most freewheeling sequence to date.

Music for People in Trouble perhaps doesn’t have the crossover appeal that Ten Love Songs had, and its head-on engagement with contemporary struggles will certainly not be for everyone. But for those who are done with escapism, at least for an hour or so, its sustained mood brings rich rewards.

The widened musical palette helps to pull you in while the songs are digging in their hooks. Pollard's production is astute enough to know when the most potent thing to do is to fade away.

Like every great record, For Melancholy Brunettes fits well in its release’s social sphere. These poignant songs are as relevant as ever in the United States, now equipped with an insatiable leading figure who has become a patron saint of noxious male authority for the impressionables. It’s only a shame that the music, albeit beautifully composed, doesn’t feel as forceful as the subject.

It’s a special place, in which she has the peace and comfort to continue to snatch all those thoughts and feelings out of her head, and distil them into her signature, singular poetic epiphanies. Just like those that give Close It Quietly the huge depth that it has, and mark it as an indie pop album with a substantial difference.

Bang is a great album, but more crucially, it’s an important one.

It’s a fantastic example of how artists can still come to a project with tonnes of contextual flavour that they want to include and not have it overpower the entire dish.

Ultimately, for as talented of a musician as Miller is, her greatest feat on her first proper LP is creating a distinct feeling and sense of place that's possible only because every element here works in sync.

Their ability to drop a pop banger has been proven already – they can do it – but they just find reimagining what Cybotron would sound like as a future-punk band, and that exploration in sound proves to be a gripping listen here.

There are certainly more strong points than weak points to be concentrated on here. All the tracks that centre around Posdnuos, Trugoy and Maseo see De La Soul at full strength with their rhymes as sharp and playful but seemingly wiser than ever before.

We are never out of surprises on Windflowers, as it has that gift to reconnect you to the essential, with the help of sweet pop as contagious, varied and comfortable.

Greene dials down, as was the case with the preceding LP, Notes from Quiet Life serving as a comedown equivalent to the sonic swelter of the former.

The subtleties written into the album's DNA make all the difference (with the mention of the album's title in so many of the lyrics acting as unifying sentiment), almost to a faultless degree.

Making experimental music is certainly a noble calling. Sneaking the adventurous spirit of improvisation into a relatively conventional song-based record such as Eyes On The Lines, however: that's truly radical.

Ultimately these songs work their sly magic in subtle and nuanced ways and here may lie the risk for BODEGA. Their, at first seemingly modest, charms need re-evaluating when on the third or fourth listen it all clicks and you realise what appeared modest is in fact pretty sublime.

The final 2 minutes of the [last] track feature a stream of guitar-generated distortion dotted with melodic hints that quickly rise and pass. It’s a glorious coda to an impressive return, a reemergence that shows the band at their most versatile, free to be themselves.

First Two Pages of Frankenstein is yet another dose to remind you why – and how – the band have managed to carve their own special place out in the cultural landscape.

A handful of the album’s later tracks, including “Sleep Paralysis” and the restless “Choose Your Fighter”, do perhaps fall short of other songs’ ‘absolute banger’ status, but nowhere is there an outright miss.

Ash & Ice ultimately represents the contemporary tension of two talented artists finding their way back from the brink by leaning on each other as well as their music.

Clearly five CDs is way too much musical despondency to take in on one sitting, but this compilation does comprehensively show that for a genre known for an insular outlook, there was a surprising amount of scope musically from the bands involved.

Ultimately Drunk is an impressive record which commands multiple listens as much by its quality as its complexity. It shows off Bruner at the height of his powers as an artist shapeshifting through genres but always leaving his scent in the air.

Hot Snakes are as dry, dented and slightly demented as ever.

Sampa The Great's latest offering ensures that she will remain a beacon in her home continent of Africa and beyond.

Bird Songs of a Killjoy is a soft filter through which to view the world. It is a record to lean into, a brief respite from the daily grind to catch your breath and find your own peace and understanding.

Flowing effortlessly between melodious vocals and blistering guitars, between reflecting on past feelings and accepting new eventualities, the majority of the album feels weightless.

A four-track run from “Spider” to “New Magic II” – which includes the title track and “St. Francis Waltz” – proves a career best for Rose, housing her most affecting tunes yet.

Tracey Denim manages that difficult task, of creating an album that feels like a self-contained world without losing sight of songs that really work in and of themselves.

FREE SPIRITS brilliantly represents the pairs growth into themselves and into the reality around them. It’s as playful as you’d expect – the features all doing their part to add to the dizzying hold on to actuality – but beneath the smirk lies something more deliberate.

Elsewhere is a compelling debut, on which Moore has successfully revitalised the folksy feel of some of her earlier work. For a first album, it’s certainly a triumph.

Has God Seen My Shadow? seems similarly poised to wipe out Lanegan’s reputation as a perennial sideman: on this showing, he must count amongst the most compelling voices currently in circulation.

Long Way Home is a vindication of all that time spent slowly learning her craft and doing almost everything herself. As a result, she has finally delivered what all those early tracks promised; a bedroom record conceived in the club that drags confessional pop music further into the future.

The Source is a work that showcases a great rhythmic and tonal diversity throughout, floating between a myriad of influences and arrangements.

Invite The Light stays true to the hallmarks of Dam Funk's sound; winning formulas never need much adjustment.

In all, it's a glossy debut that certainly gives you something to shout about.

Collaborating with vocalists such as Hannah Peel, Blaine Harrison of The Mystery Jets, Euros Childs and Jane Weaver, the musical styles glide from genre to genre with impressive ease. The approach would have resulted in a patchy album in most other people’s hands, but The Soft Bounce makes such eclecticism sound like a natural thing.

If it doesn’t quite hit the consistent highs of 2017’s Love What Survives, The Sunset Violent is a clear next step for Mount Kimbie. With limited features and a cohesive throughline, they’ve never felt so much of a unit, embarking on a trip together.

By the time it’s over, you’re wondering how a record so precise, so considered, can sound so gloriously laid-back, and quite how they’ve managed to convey so many different ideas so efficiently.

This isn’t Furman’s best album, but it might be his most heartfelt, his most intense, his most candid – and that’s more than enough for now.

There’s an enchantment in the album's pacing and sequencing that we journey with the band through each of these emotions and emerge from trepidation with renewed hope, feeling reborn.

San Fermin is a classical album, fitted with an accompanying tale of love and heartache. San Fermin is also a folk-pop album, set in a world of brilliantly beautiful classical instrumentation and composition. It sits perfectly in both of these guises, and for this, Ellis Ludwig-Leone deserves all of the praise in the world.

Wonderland‘s a cracking slab of chewy pop-toffee. It’s sugary, and superficially slathered with rainbow glitter, but it takes more than a few seconds to comprehend and devour the music.

Each track is married in evoking a similar sense of a vast misty landscape and hazy melancholic mornings, though the albums finale does this particularly well.

Everywhere the listener turns on this album there is something else to be found, another subtle motif, another dab or colour. When combined with the inescapably affecting vocal and accomplished songwriting style of Spx, this creates a record that manages to reveal its treasures over multiple listens without ever sacrificing immediate appeal.

Talkie Talkie is a triumphant follow-up to their debut. It sparkles intensely has tonnes of shiny charisma and sustains its shape while trying new things in the second half.

Author & Punisher’s Krüller is a sonic purge that rages and recoils in equal measure, enhanced by collaboration, but with Shone remaining the master of ceremonies of his distinctive noise.

A record that uses choral, electronic and orchestral features to embellish Stromae’s creativity, Multitude is crafted to be enjoyed again and again.

The audience becomes an audibly thrilled fifth member of the band whenever Butterss and Bellerose land on a more steadily rooted groove, which renders the initially hushed, seemingly telepathic exchanges between the musicians into a collective effort to work up a muscular and hypnotic musical sweat.

A warm-hearted lover of an album that is hard to pin down but acquiesces to exploration and will, in a fairly filthy way, leave the listener sated, satisfied and inspired.

It’s always charming, but in its best moments, Don’t Forget Me is often phenomenally well-written, a solid show from an artist who’s likely to linger in your memory for a while.

Whether he is the influencer or the influenced, there’s such a clear creativity and worldliness in his music, that Radio Songs should be listened to multiple times to really get the depth of where he’s taking his sound.

Alternately dreamily anxious and immaculately groovy it marks the stunning apex of an intensely satisfying record. Just don’t forget that what comes next will be different again.

As carefree as it is frustrated, as playful as it is temperamental, WILLOW’s lately I feel EVERYTHING is a straight up lively hit of jaded emo bangers that will have a new generation of listeners whipping their hair back and forth.

It’s sharp, the beats are punchier, and by utilising similar methods to production as techno, he's made his best album yet.

It’s soppy in the right amount, but it captures the humour and truth in trying to make it through that quarter-life crisis. While it might never really reach the dizzying heights of Alvvays, it still shows the band head and shoulders above the rest.

With A Comforting Notion, Orme moves between dejection and expostulations of lyrical and musical outrage, one moment wallowing in nihilism, the next celebrating the mysteries of birth, sex, death, and creativity. She has clearly absorbed many of popular music’s important templates, asserting a multifaceted voice that captures life’s highs, lows, and in-betweens.

It’s a record that celebrates the wonder of sound, with deceptively intricately songs under a balmy haze of reverb that gets better with each listen.

When Horses Would Run relies on its all-over-the-place ideas for humorous purposes and while it might make for a confusing listen at times, there is fun to be had in its zaniness.

TEXIS delivers everything that one could hope to find on a Sleigh Bells record: dance worthy beats, angelic vocals, and satisfying boisterousness. While TEXIS could have afforded more variability, it remains a testament to the act’s ability to express a range of emotions without killing the tempo.

Pratt has long been a consummate texturalist; mining the pop playbook in resourceful ways, she’s now an exemplary tunesmith as well – the result is sublime.

There isn’t a better way that Skrillex could’ve made his return, and Quest For Fire will undoubtedly be remembered as one of his best.

Each featured artist brings their best game and does what they do best. And in return, K&K thrive, bouncing off the energy of their fellow artists.

These songs, and others such as “UFO” are pretty much straight indie tracks, but it’s when they utilise electronics that Stars Are Our Home really comes alive.

She has a knack for building tension, crescendoing her voice and emoting her words to a point where it almost rings as euphoric.

PROTO vacillates between ecstasy and anxiety, collapsing one into the other, and perfectly captures the conflicted feelings many possess as we face the future. A crucial step forward, its approach demonstrates that maintaining human agency alongside radical, new technologies can produce both bewildering and beautiful results that perhaps nobody, not even Herndon, could have predicted.

Had Primrose Green been recorded in the era it's influenced by, it could well be among the records Ryley Walker would now be drawing inspiration from; high praise indeed.

It’s a natural-sounding progression that confounds the expected developments ‘a guitar band’ should make and instead adds a glorious musical technicolour to a set of songs to soundtrack the summer and beyond.

Defying the years and possibly expectations, Time’s Arrow sees a band revitalised, creating music with those rare qualities of nuance and complexity, flowing in a dreamlike state where, just maybe, darkness loses the battle against light. Or, if you prefer, it’s simply a collection of damn fine synth-pop.

Juice B Crypts is an uncompromised, multi-faceted assault course for the brain, but one you won’t regret taking.

To Those of Earth...And Other Worlds proves Ra's Afrofuturistic vision was very much for real.

Of all albums this year, Elaenia is one that could be--probably will be--discussed for some time. It’s as impressive and rewarding as you want to be.

On Workaround, Beatrice Dillon leaves us to ponder how she’ll continue to transform the idea of techno and club culture.

This record has that waltzing, wispy quality which makes you want to stand on the top of a hill and have a good cry. It's far from the first album to do that in this style, and even further from being the most experimental, but it really nails what it’s going for.