With We Were Made Prey, Joseph finds her technical and emotional stride. Her lyrics are impressionistic, if not abstract; channeled through her expressive voice via subtle melodic movements, however, they become accessible, taking on a mystical allure.

Somehow, With Trampled with Turtles combines the emotional heaviness and wounded introspection seamlessly with the palpable, communal joy of playing and singing music in good company.

It comes across as a record not made with a grand statement or goal, but rather a meticulous creation from a collective with nothing to hide or show off. Just raw talent and a willingness not to be too precious with their creations.

Here is your soundtrack to that world, perhaps unsurprisingly it rocks righteously.

The angular flexes in style and wordplay tied together with Russell’s high wire deployment prove as duly consistent a formula as any of the standout entries in the duo’s crowded discography.

While Crooked Wing finds These New Puritans at their most refined and fractured, the album won’t be for everyone. Its refusal to deliver easy pleasures might leave some cold. And for all its inventiveness, there are moments where the almost academic precision threatens to override the emotional core. Yet, it’s exactly what it feels like, a requiem for the mechanical age, a love song to decay, and a stark reminder of the beauty that can be found in the shadow of ruins.

For a group so often criticised for the coldness and the metronomic aloofness of their catalogue, this is a record that sounds warm, tactile, and is evidently the outcome of five musicians spending six years on the road together.

On Hers, both the words and the music often make you stop in your tracks, raising a smile or prompting a gasp.

Metalhorse largely succeeds in conveying the pushing and pulling through life.

Furman’s upfront picture of Goodbye Small Head is perhaps clouded by jest: “orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples,” she writes. Yet, it’s a continued display of her marked empathy as a songwriter, trying to seize control against a rhetoric centred on exclusion. Her observational musings are even more: a sign to band together now more than ever.

Ever since 2009’s lo-fi debut Bird-Brains, every Tune-Yards album has offered raw excitement. Better Dreaming does too, and it may just be their most uplifting and inspiring work to boot. Give it a listen – you’ll be dreaming better.

The clarity heard on this album can be interpreted as a sharpened edge in Hval. She collapses the space of the album into a single sensory experience; she conveys something unsearchable but found.

As it stands, the more things change the more that stay the same. But, when you have a formula as egregiously glorious and cacophonous as PUP is no bad thing.

The album not only justifies its existence but also adds something vital to the band’s legacy. It’s messy, lean, sharp, and relentless. Not cleaned up. Just tuned up and turned loose.

Woods’ song begins with a view from a beach, watching as zombies staggering into the sea, except these bodies are actually just people, pushed from their home countries by corrupt governments and post-colonial extraction. “Universities empty, the troublemakers is drowned or drivin' Uber overseas”. Moments like these prove Woods to be one of rap’s best ever storytellers and, what’s even more remarkable, is that among this Golliwog remains a distinctly New York rap record too.

Tall Tales sees Pritchard and Yorke plug into the fragility of social structures built on sand, a subject that finds voice via a quasi-cryptic sidewind through vast digital and organic tracts – an at times menacing, evocative and hypnotically immersive statement on a freefalling societal state of play.

It appears they have landed on something magnificent; symphonies of aching, internalised nostalgia and frequent beauty, bookended by hate, despair and some of their finest sonic experiments ever.

I Said I Love You First barely even tries to entertain during its runtime. It’s fundamentally uninteresting music.

While its tunes are a little weaker than that of her previous albums, she emulates the “poetry without the words” she mentions on “Sacred”, snapshotting around a subject in order to construct a clear picture. But sometimes the resulting image is a little hazy.

This 33-minute introduction to the next evolution of Scowl answers a question posed on their debut: “I just wanna know, is this how flowers grow?” The answer is yes. They bloom and blossom into something wonderful that still has a heap of potential ready to sow.

While it’s a rich topic [unhealthy romantic relationships] to explore in song, a sense of repetitiveness does ultimately set in as Teitelbaum circles around the same themes of codependency and falling in love with questionable men against one’s own better judgement. .... When Teitelbaum looks elsewhere for subject matter, some of her strongest songwriting comes through.

Pirouette is an intriguing segue album. Even if it falls short of the cogency displayed on Dogsbody, Model/Actriz should be applauded for their creative restlessness, the risks they wholeheartedly take.

Prima Queen cement their emerging status with The Prize in a confident and unabashed manner.

The band’s singularity makes their music something of an acquired taste. Hex Key is not accessible to a wider public. Or rather, only bits of it are, such as the catchy choruses of “Take Me” and “Nothing Lasts Forever”.

There are only a handful of pop albums that can sustain epic run times through the power of really, really good songs alone (Car Seat Headrest’s Teens Of Denial is one of them). There’s a story for those who want it and some delightful songcraft for those who don’t. Not a bad compromise.

The album both expands on the now expected lyrical themes (tackling corruption and injustice both generally and more specifically in the context of ever-messy Nigerian politics), and injects fresh energy, economy and verve into afrobeat’s typically unhurried, generously portioned polyrhythmic splendor.

Mortal Primetime sees the rebirth of the New York trio; emerging from the shadows of winter to tilt their heads towards the brighter, more fruitful pastures of spring.

The album as a whole is a safer affair than Taylor’s previous releases, but for the most part it’s very good, and its cohesion isn’t necessarily a weakness. Still, it’s hard not to approach a new Self Esteem album expecting some kind of life-changing revelation, six months of therapy condensed into an hour-long speedrun.