It’s a superb return to the traditional album for Deacon. He's clearly learned a great deal making soundtracks, producing a record of a grand cinematic scale with a clearer eye on creating emotionally shifting tracks. Yet Dan Deacon maintains his constant look towards salvation and joy and retains an almost incomparable gift for conjuring them in a listener.

It all speaks of erudition, repetition used and abused in a dizzy concatenation. 25 25 is music as heartbeat (and screw the arrhythmia). Essential.

While Deliverance does have instances of real bracing power, it equally finds itself faltering in its most exposed moments where it really needs to connect.

Thought Rock Fish Scale arrives wholesome and homely rather than exciting or challenging, as if missing the lights of the big city.

At times, Miami Memory feels like a streamlined repurposing of pop music's warmest sounds – be it the glowing synth jabs on Stepdad or the crispest of snares on Far From Born Again and Divorce – all retooled with a new level of subtlety and honesty for Cameron. What you’re left with is ten great pop songs; bitingly funny, bombastically anthemic and gently sensual, often at the same time.

He’s skilled enough to make it sound agile and purposeful. You’ve heard the individual parts before though, with more range, colour, and taste. It’s Alright Between Us… will do its job, but on the cheap.

December is a difficult month for many ('The countdown's started / It’s a hollow toll for the heavy hearted') and these songs are likely to resonate with those feeling adrift. How comforting they are, despite the lack of 'wise men and virgins', is an additional triumph.

While some tracks like Panpsych and Eternal Return remain lost at sea – the latter's lurching tempo is a bit of an auditory mess – KGLW's experimentation with brass, strings, and woodwind definitely hits more than it misses. Drawing together calamity and fortune in a novel way, 15 years in, Phantom Island shows a band still having fun making music together.

TMBG’s 20th album, I LIke Fun, doesn’t mess with the template too much. If you come to this record knowing only the TMBG song used as the soundtrack to Malcolm in the Middle, you’ll get a hearty helping of everything there is to like--and, yes dislike.

While it may not be the collection of hits we were hoping for, The Sun Will Come Up, The Seasons Will Change is a little like a compilation of musical diary entries sprinkled with newly learnt wisdom: it’s fun, it’s new, and it’s Nesbitt's coming-of-age moment.

It’s fitting BODEGA’s debut has all the essentials covered; wry wit, shrewd observations and a vision of art rock’s finest punk party. Like, listen, like, like.

A masterpiece in wistful, cathartic electronica, his seventh studio album Fragments.

There is little to separate the tracks from each other, resulting in a batch of unmemorable songs. Lionheart promised much, but fails to capture the imagination in the way McEntire’s previous work has.

Packed with irresistible hooks and confessional lyrics, you'll find her best songs to date here; it's clear that Baby Queen understands the cinema of pop music.

It’s a chaotic, wonderfully soundtracked journey from one of the best underground musical collectives to come out of Glasgow.

Not only are the band adding to their soundtrack credentials but they're also getting rather good at the old pop banger.

On Future Politics we find Austra revolving on the spot, caught in a flattering beam of light but still hovering on the brink of taking those first, brave steps towards a radical utopia.

Weighty subject matter, then, but Harris’ John Darnielle-esque delivery rams the message home amidst their strongest set of tunes since 2006’s The Body, The Blood, The Machine, with Kathy Foster’s on-point harmonies (Thinking Of You) and propulsive bass (Always Never Be) adding purpose to their power-punk arsenal.

The album is chock full of thundering tunes and monster riffage. It might be that is all you need. Unfortunately, though, Carter has a tendency to call on his inner Billy Idol when he should be channelling Ian MacKaye (see Wild Flowers).

The results are rewarding. Could We Be More is a finely crafted unit that takes KOKOROKO’s span of influences (highlife and afrobeat in the vein of Fela Kuti and Ebo Taylor; a solid education in jazz; the entire city of London) and spins them through a dream machine of sorts.

It's the peppiest, jauntiest, most charismatic debut you’ll likely find in the next 12 months.

We’ve seen more than enough spark between the two on previous efforts to know that there’s a future for them; it’s just a shame they chose to rail against their best instincts this time round.

Lyrics are as simple and as witty as ever, focusing around sexual desire, jealousy and life in the pre-hipster East End in 2008.

OK, this sort of retromanic pop writes its own logical criticism in a way (repeated formulas, looking backwards instead of forwards, etc etc), but when it’s done this well, it’s a timely reminder that the true logic of pop is music that communicates directly with the head and the heart.

This album offers a view into the minds of a pair of singular artists who might differ in their delivery, but who both understand that a glimpse of truth is a whole lot more intriguing than a disingenuous attempt at the whole thing.

Sick Scenes sees LC! offering up a liberating set of songs about odious city hipsters, youthful nostalgia and future anxiety, wrapped up in the seven-piece’s usual glorious flurry of chipper riffs and witty lyricisms.

Weaves can flick between breezy, cute pop hits to tight-fisted punk snarlers in the blink of an eyeball, and the record's best tracks are a combination of both.

How to Be a Human Being is arguably yet more effervescent than its predecessor.

There’s just nothing bringing the whole thing together, and a nagging feeling that he could do better if he tried.

For his fifth album using the How to Dress Well moniker as an intravenous exploration of the hold that music has over our fragile human hearts, Krell has perfected his process.

Every second of the record is unconventional, rule-breaking, and mind-bending; the kind of album to ride a horse into sunset to. The Bitchos kick ass and you just know they enjoyed every lasso-twirling second of it.

Nile Rodgers-esque guitars are a key feature throughout Life Is Yours. Aside from the more laid-back Flutter, the album’s danceable tempo shows no respite across its 40-minute duration. Its production is also extremely cohesive.

This is perhaps not as immediate a record as Faith In The Future, the narratives of which were foregrounded in the song titles a little more, but it stands up to repeated listening just as well, and confirms his status as one of American music’s best storytellers, in the same mould as Leonard Cohen or Lou Reed.

Though she’s on the edge of slipping into Adele-esque poperatics, this is a bold and confident first LP from a producer--and singer--with great potential.

It’s not just that Toro y Moi is becoming more sonically ambitious with each album. He’s getting better, too. With Boo Boo, even retreading old ground is somehow an exercise in innovation.

I and II are both lean, economical, sweet and seemingly genuine. Both have a similar emotional tone but demonstrate some stylistic differences. The songs on II are a little slower, groovier and less manic.

Everything that grooves here (over half the album, which clocks in at 19 tracks) is great and makes you want to see the band live. The rub? Making a New World is a song cycle about the after-effects of the First World War.

Never does she let these arrangements overshadow the most arresting part of her work though: her own voice.

It’s a record filled with trite sentiments and well-trodden musical ideas (or in some cases, badly-trodden).

While an intriguing return to Dwyer's roots and to Dawson's charming voice, Memory of a Cut Off Head is a typically strange experience from OCS and one which might not translate to newer fans of the band looking for their trademark psyche-punk sound.

Superorganism could've been the perfect indie pop record if they'd have cut back a bit on the style and added a bit more of the substance.

What is clear is that Ride's fifth album is something of a triumph and infinitely better than many a fan could have hoped for. Almost 30 years on those vapour trails show no sign of fading just yet.

Compared to their past work, the album lacks intensity and seems to rely on a heterogeneity of unrefined styles, making it seem more like an album of covers that flirts too closely to the tired hip-hop trope of a single, aimless verse.

It takes multiple listens to get to the heart of this record, each one well worth your time.

Where WU LYF once teetered on the cliff-edge, barking every utterance like they knew it might be their last, they're now sure-footed and comfortable, speaking with a conviction that can only come with experience.

While the album can feel sluggish at times, Ring’s knack for constructing textured sonic architecture is still a draw.

Means is shadowed and dizzying, sour and fleeting. The album captures the essence of an indie sound that's almost universally considered to be jaded, and proves that the genre may be weatherworn, but its framework is ripe for a renovation.

Ultimately Honey is one of the more interesting experiments in the use of AI, but in this case it feels like a watering down of emotional impact from an artist who has never had an issue when it comes to capturing hearts and moving bodies.

Drastic Measures is a firm step up from Primitives, and an album that continues to demonstrate the development of Sellers’ effervescent sonic world.

Far from the carnival of featured guests that was 2017’s 26-track Humanz, though, The Now Now, at 11 tracks and with only three comparatively unobtrusive features (Snoop Dogg and Jamie Principle appear on Hollywood) is tighter conceptually but looser as a listening experience.

ODAOTWMA will do little to challenge the Sheffield band's twee reputation, but the record crosses genres with far greater experimentation than they're known for.

Weatherall is known for bucking trends, forging his own path in electronic music and this album undoubtedly has an experimental, narcotic-tinged feel meaning Qualia will not be for everyone. An album for the heads.

Her career to date might have been bolstered by a stellar string of friends but there’s one thing that the multi-instrumentalist is more than capable of handling herself – the artful knack for sincere songwriting.

Sallee’s songs tend to expand outwards, the feeling established at the outset spreading itself thinner as the loops cover more area.

The tunes are massive and buried in strings, synths and stacked harmonies, but the subtlety of the lyrics is lost in tunes like the Gary Numan-esque In Eternity and Broken Algorithms' Appetite for Destruction obsession. It's left to album closer The Left Behind to offer a signpost to where the Manics could go next.

Bulat performs with passion and authority. Ten songs and not a hint of filler.

Aimless and fussy, Heartworms sounds like the kind of album a person with slightly too much money, their own studio and a massive ego would make. Crushingly disappointing, this is, alas, no return to form.

As soon as you get a grip on it, TFCF wriggles into another shape. But even at its weirdest, Angus Andrew’s songwriting couldn’t be clearer, and that’s what makes it a mess worth unravelling.

Although the spiritual undertone (providence meaning ‘divine guidance’) feels somewhat overdone, Fake has created a truly impressive release--managing to weave together diverse and eclectic sounds into a cohesive whole.

The title track of Van the Man's 40th (!) studio album, the slow jam is a brilliant blues number based on rolling Rhodes keyboards, fat horns, thin cymbal splashes and a vocal with such clarity, concision and quality that it will stop you in your tracks. Yep, that good. The rest? Well, you've seen this movie before: blues, jazz and soul standards delivered with minimum fuss and maximum quality.

It’s all reassuringly consistent and distinctively Baths, managing to be both personal and kinetic as well as fantastical and otherworldly. He may not have switched up his style between albums, but now with this hat-trick of gems, there’s no need.

Essentially, while Hunter is fiercely conveying an important message, one's enjoyment will depend on the unsubtle nature of the message or the slightly formulaic nature of the music – but with openers as soaring as Galapagos, it sure is hard to resist.

The second album from Leschper’s Atlanta outfit Mothers, it reaffirms the band’s talent for making the familiar sound so strange.

Pixies needn’t ever escape their core identity, but they can enhance it like they have done here.

While Reflection of Youth doesn’t always capture the more brutal side of growing up sonically, Bruland does give off the sense that she’s come out of the other side, older and wiser.

It adds up to a remarkable work of often queasy beauty that never releases its grip.

ANNO stands as a collection that casts an old master in a new light while cementing Meredith’s place as a constantly startling and boundary-breaking contemporary composer.

The songs are resonant and cleverly unhurried--the group aren’t afraid to sit in silence, letting a feeling wash over the listener for a beat before continuing their story.

While there's nothing particularly new or breakaway on this self-titled release, it’s a familiar feeling that will leave fans more than satisfied.

Is Inner World Peace going to change the history of music? Probably not. But it will absolutely become a comfort album for many.

An earnest but keenly self-aware synchronisation of Gou’s ‘eyes on the Top 40’ dance music with an artistry that is both curious and willing.

It’s a well-rounded selection of tracks on an album that can sit comfortably next to your best Fabric and Watergate compilations.

It’s not teeming with future classics, but it’s their most solid and replayable record since Brain Thrust Mastery.

Rest assured, although still more cerebral pleasure than triumphalist pop breakthrough, this uniquely accessible record is a subtle delight.

Marble Skies finds difficulty in consolidating each defining element into a smooth blend, leading to a record that’s bookended by heart-stopping tracks with a frustratingly stodgy middle passage.

Without doubt, Oxy Music honours Cameron’s skill as a storyteller, and his unique ability to embed some of the most outlandish lines into sanguine melodies.

Much more than mere offcuts, Great Thunder instead offers some stunning moments from Waxahatchee with Katie Crutchfield at her most off guard and most personal.

What Marauder provides is a top-up of Interpol for the band’s most dedicated fans, but nothing that approaches their former glory.

This festival-friendly record attempts to turn Tom Misch (whether intended or not) from a producer and guitar-player into a pop star. It hasn’t quite paid off.

New Me, Same Us finds its vigour in the sweet spot between pure pop and the band’s more adventurous tendencies. When an emotionally-charged, jazz-inspired piano climax cuts through the otherwise smooth veneer of New Fiction or when Where You Belong leans fully into a part-funk, part-R'n'B groove, the band really hit their stride. It’s just a shame there are some stumbles on the way.

The resulting album, Saviors, is a hugely entertaining return to form, with some of the seminal American rockers' best music in decades.

Apart from a few tonal blips (Taken By The Tide may well be a smuggled-in Band of Horses track, and 1985’s piano ballad proves an idling mid-point), Curve... is a remarkably slick experience.

Edwards, Carla Azar and Eugene Goreshter have taken their sweet time, and Pussy's Dead is satisfyingly, luxuriously self-indulgent as a result.

All in all, this is a welcome return for Dave Clarke and an album declaring his rightful place at the helm of electronica.

Love Is Dead shows CHVRCHES attaining a greater urgency and darkness in tracks such as the dramatic, M83-esque Deliverance and My Enemy, a stuttering, drugged up duet between Mayberry and The National’s Matt Berninger.

Album opener Angel Fire make it tempting to categorise Vessel of Love as an uplifting summer album. Yet Cook’s lyrics contain a haunting melancholia, touching on love and survival to create a bittersweet effect. There's a hidden depth to her breezy pop that will stay with listeners for days.

Sorcerer may not offer much in the way of straight-up pop thrills, and undoubtedly requires patience to truly appreciate its merits. ... [But] it’s an impressive statement of intent.

Both blissful and bloody-minded, Ullages is raincoat-clad gift from goth heaven.

Chock-full of gluey basslines and gleaming synths, Outer Peace is very much a dance record and it’s pure ecstasy.

At nine tracks and 27 minutes long, Highway Songs isn't the longest of albums, an element that's perhaps suggestive of the brief period documented by these songs. The best is saved for last, though, as Pajo's true shot at self-redemption makes for a stunning close.

This is an album swimming with inventiveness, quality and variety: it’s good to have her back.

Nostalgic, dramatic and not exactly short on synth, Iteration is the kind of album necessary to help us battle through the rest of 2017.

It’s an album of shattered dreams and primary colours--“Where’s your sense of humour?” decries Blunderland--and more than once it isn’t obvious if the band are laughing with us or (in the nicest possible way) at us.

All in, it’s a diverse, bravura undertaking that sees Hubby not only moving on, but upwards as well.

Heavy Meta is most likeable when he directs those high standards inwards. ... More often though, Gallo is on the offensive, and his technically commensurate and frequently enjoyable garage rock gets entangled in a scornfulness that becomes a little uncomfortable.

You Had Me makes for a luxurious if over-rich listen.

Unpeeled’s problem is that it is too long at 21 tracks, and the band’s new sound only really works on some of their material. Their older work simply doesn’t benefit in the same way.

There are moments where things becomes a little sluggish, though perhaps a stumble here and there can be expected when an album tries to fit so much into a short space. For the most part though, The New Monday is a valiant attempt at distilling Detroit’s musical culture into a single, cohesive record.