Although SASAMI is a debut album, it feels more like the work of an artist whose craft is already honed--and that's because it is. You can hear the decades of refinement in Ashworth's songcraft, which makes for an absorbing collection of confessional songs both incredibly personal and widely relatable, on an incredibly self-assured debut.

Freed from the spectre of Unicorns' success and freed from the burden of their debut Return To The Sea, Islands offers us the transcendent Islomania, their most convincing album in 15 years.

This album makes use of every single second of its runtime, jam-packed with choruses so huge and emotional, no one can quite replicate her unique sound and vision.

Most Normal is mostly freeform pieces with no real beginning, midpoint or end. It's typically confrontational, throwing the listener face first into their wall of noise with some spectacular excursions into how to make naturally rhythmic instruments sound ugly, aggressive, unpleasant and ultimately cathartic.

Despite moments that may lull, Night Moves exude with charisma and reformed creative panache on an LP that will find favour with seasoned fans and new listeners alike.

Wednesday know what they want to say, and how: Pouring their hearts out with reckless riffage to illustrate the agony and ecstasy of smalltown life.

Things Are Great is certainly a return to their best form, and it shows signs of the band entering a new golden era with the next one. Just hope it’s not another six years in the making.

Bird Machine is a resonant final word from an enormously talented singer-songwriter. While Linkous clearly struggled with depression, his music often feels as if it’s soaked in light and infused with love, even as it evokes melancholy and apprehension.

Each track is like a piece of the puzzle. You’re looking at the shapes in front of you thinking that they will never fit together; then somehow, given time, everything clicks into place. That satisfactory snap into place is what Little Dragon has been searching for. Their wait is now over.

Allow a while for these songs to seep in, and The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania will leave you deeply moved, and desperate for more.

With a blend of fact and fiction, Isbell has created his own Nebraska and secured his place among the greats of country-rock.

Souvenirs is the creation of a band who have to make music and like all great debuts it’s both a culmination of their beginnings as well as a pointer to the wide open road ahead.

Fearless is releasing the best material of his career.

Cardamone’s crew are at their peak when moving between the simmering heat and the fireball, and these drawn-out song structures give them more space than ever to explore the tension between nervy build-up and cathartic release.

This is an album both challenging and gorgeous-sounding. If occasionally over-ambitious, it is always attention-grabbing, and very often risk-taking in the most positive sense.

A clear and consistent exercise in true class from a band who clearly haven’t lost a step, they just took a few stray ones.

Minor setbacks aside, it’s another beautiful, consumable collection of music from Bibio that no other artist could make sound so inherently theirs, and one that leaves Wilkinson's future musical trajectory as wide open as it’s ever been.

In word and sound Little Neon Limelight is an unashamedly backward-looking record, and it's all the better for it.

After a string of EPs, Chinouriri arrives at her first full-length with confidence and ease. Devastation has never sounded so fun.

All told, Breach is a sustainable thrill that despite the ambulatory nature of their name is more of a monument, or a line in the sand, especially in light of purported inter-band friction during the recording process.

A subdued record tied to no one setting. No matter where it is, Somewhere is a place of subtle beauty to find solace in.

It's everything you've ever loved about Guided By Voices, all smashed together in one record.

Its musical journey mirrors yeule’s life progression, pairing alternative rock with electronic glitch just as yeule couples their human self with their cyborg persona. This creates spectacular results, opening up to raw and honest emotion all while maintaining the mystery.

Metronomy have stepped up from the mantle of electro-pop, and matured into the sort of band that endures. Excitingly still, they leave us with no idea where they’ll go next.

This might be a transient flash in the pan for some, but it’ll find a special, permanent home in the hearts of others.

Simultaneously more overtly experimental yet more easily accessible - even the most cacophonous warble here is rooted in strong melodies--than Holden's past output, The Animal Spirits is a triumph that makes rigidly electronic textures seem so last year.

With For The Company, Little May have added another worthy entrant to 2015's albums of modern blues and, unlike the relationships that inhabit its songs, it gets better with each visit.

Seeds is a very strong album, even if it may alienate fans of their older synth-led doom-gaze sound. Their loss--this is a triumph that has risen from tragedy, a glittering testament to a fallen band mate who has been done proud.