Its highs are higher, its lows are non-existent, and it has the government mandated Obongjayar feature, or it wouldn’t be a Simz project.

Each sound is lovingly wound up and left to tick away in the groove, a feat accomplished few times this side of LCD Soundsystem. Most impressive, however, is that this is just a damn fine collection of material.

TYLA is turned up to 11 – there is little emotional or energetic dynamism on the album, but every song is club-ready, danceable and infectious.

It’s impossible to consider this release outside of its original context. With no other albums to compare this to at the time, it sounded life affirming, with its promise of white lines, gin and tonics and taking us away.

An outstanding (dare I say ‘perfect’) debut.

While she’ll have to work even harder to find an angle for record number two her debut delivers everything you could have hoped for from a pop star in 2013.

Opening themselves up to new concepts and sounds, but retaining their trademark ability to captivate and obliterate in equal measure, listening to Holy Fawn’s Dimensional Bleed inspires a deep, unfading admiration for a truly genre-defying band.

Sparks’ avant-garde tradition is freshly lacquered on A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, a track record injected with further potency during dystopic times. Jaunty melodies juxtapose with typical wryly wrought themes, levity undercut with social critique - the brothers’ inimitable style at its finest on an album that represents one of their most prescient and much needed.

Anakin often brings an urgency with his flow, each bar breaking with his voice, snapping like a bonfire night firework. It's an effortless relentlessness, ensuring you watch but keeps you cautious enough through fear of getting burned. Those personal touches are truly where Frank shines.

Across the record it’s clear that Pillow Queens have truly hit their stride as a band. Leave The Light On strikes the balance between the excitement of an early career and the deliberate precision of seasoned musicians.

The powerful fusion of the electronic and the classical crucially allows the brothers to lightly grasp the hands of their listener, and guide them through dreamscapes of cosmic beauty, searing light and haunting darkness.

He provides a gentle yet absorbing escape from the hypervigilance with which we patrol our own lives. 12 songs that are soft around the edges and wash over the listener in shades of sunset orange and pink, guitars morph and collapse in on themselves like the contents on a lava lamp.

In excelling at hoping to convey music--or in this case, a suite--with a deliberate emotional arc, Pearce has re-established himself as an auteur to be reckoned with, delivering one of the very best albums of the year in the process.

Californian Soil is London Grammar in an act of gradual evolution, signs hinted at on their sophomore outing but blossoming to a greater extent here; retaining an ability to innovate within the parameters of their synonymously plush electronic soul.

It’s a scintillating sliver of glass to the senses – a defiant, desolate, and darkly beautiful album that commands multiple listens and highlights once more that Forest Swords is and always has been at the top of his game.

Those who never warmed to the sharp-elbowed vibe won’t find themselves wooed by a new angle, but for everyone else St. Vincent is close to definitive.

Savages own a gravitas, a brooding confidence and effortless cool, that no matter how cynical or wary of pretentiousness you are, will be suck you in.

With each record, Wolf Alice return with more bite, a new story to tell, and new fans to invite into their world, The Clearing is no exception to the rule.

Blending the raw energy of punk with the gritty realism of folk, the result being a potent double pint of catharsis and confrontation. There’s seemingly several albums worth of material on display, from industrial poetry to showmanship indie, held together by its narrative which howls to the struggles of the everyman, from the depths of addiction to the despair of a nation in decline.

Seeking New Gods is a fantastic album – and certainly one of Rhys’s best. No matter how odd the concept, or how strange the inspiration, each album that Gruff Rhys releases seems to prove that he couldn’t make a bad one if he tried.

The strength of Don't Let The Ink Dry comes from its mixture of vulnerability and power, both apparent in the vocal delivery where they subsist in harmony.

Punk Drunk and Trembling is an EP that displays the best of their later sound and leaves you wanting more.

Toning down her wry wit and wrapping her songs around the common theme of reckoning with and rebuilding from loss, Historian offers a more cohesive testament to Dacus’s exceptional songwriting.

For Yanya, this is a masterful debut that, like a tasting menu, looks jarring on paper but, in practice, is tantalising, surprising and undoubtedly impressive.

With a sense of perfection that may be tumultuous, Promise Everything is as real a record as you'll find. Swooning in some places and stormy in others, Basement have never sounded this good.

While vocally she proves to be a voice as unique as punk icons such as Kathleen Hanna, or Poly Styrene, her form on Comfort to Me has her, and her band hurtling towards being 21st Century punk icons with ease.

Depeche Mode are still at the top of their game and ready to explore their vulnerabilities in new and intense ways. Memento Mori is not a one-listen album; take a few rounds to wrap your head around all the little details and let your favourite song change with every listen.

Thumpers maintain a vertigo-high quality on Galore, and provide us with another option in the hotly-contested battle for ‘album of the summer’.