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

The results are certainly a departure for an artist who seems to relish the chance to collaborate and while each of these ten songs is a Roberts original, the lush song craft recalls the golden age of electric folksters like Fairport Convention and Trees, ensuring Roberts' ongoing connection with the past.

Occasional spoken word excerpts add nice intimate touches with themes of love, heartache and introspection at the forefront of Nutini’s endearing lyrics. It's not faultless, but Nutini still glimmers with magic on this magnetic new record.

Stay Close to Music is captivating. Unable just to play in a background, Mykki Blanco has created an album that needs your full attention. It constitutes a narrative that is not only guided through words, but also sounds.

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.

With its main influences taken from the distant past, Medieval Femme has an inherently Gothic feel; its mystical sounds transporting the listener through the rich, vibrant history of Arabic music and culture.

This is an acutely refined album fuelled by energy and agitation from a group way ahead of their age.

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

It's not an easy listen and it's hardly surprising that Lawrie has admitted his intention was "always to create a listening experience reaching beyond the realm of natural vision" but as Something In My Brain grabs you by the neck and thrusts you into the void, it's hard not to give into its dark and welcoming charms.

The results flit capriciously and deliciously through tones and genres, with highlights including the mechanical electro of Let’s Relate, the stuttering du jour production of A Sport and A Pastime, and the glam rock/spaghetti western/prog hybrid (aye, another one…) that is Chaos Arpeggiating.

Decidedly more disco for Mitski, Be the Cowboy is a showdown of electrowave and her signature fretwork that brings a pop pep to heartbreak and humanity’s greatest gluttonies. With that formidable force of a voice, she forces us all to be the cowboy and lament for a while.

Over the course of their unabashedly DIY-sounding debut – whether that sound is merely an invocation rather than authentic, you can’t deny that it nails it – these songs walk the same line of art rock as Goo and Dirty-era Sonic Youth.

Brickbat is never less than a delight: a sparky and genre-spanning showcase of songcraft and ambition. Lovingly rendered, a clean mix allows its often lavish arrangements to soar.

Throughout, the group's tried-and-true, gleaming synth-pop palette is flecked with fresh sonic ambition, particularly on slow-burning epics Corner of My Eye and The Sickness. At the centre of it all remains Herring’s fabulously expressive voice, tailor-made to spin tales of heartache.

CMAT is a pop tour de force who knows exactly who she wants to be and has all the talent to deliver it.

The second record from Rachel Aggs and Eilidh Rodgers, Glasgow-based duo Sacred Paws, is an unrelenting, fast-paced doubling down on its energetic predecessor Strike a Match.

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

It’s a coming-of-age bruiser of a record that transcends their brutal blend of J-pop and metalcore to more daring soundscapes.

There's a lot happening in just six songs, with too many jarring ideas to fit on a cohesive album, but as a grab-bag of ideas it's an interesting and enjoyable listen.

When it feels like life’s moving too fast, and that things are starting to get away from you, it doesn’t hurt to revel in the small things. Across their debut album, Wet Leg do exactly that and it makes those precious moments of nothingness feel that little bit more special.

The Glasgow-based quartet back it up with brilliantly catchy and inventive songs that will ensure a smile and a toe-tap while making their audience think.

CHAI may lean heavily into kawaii culture but PINK proves there’s a wealth of depth beneath the cute exterior.

As usual Flying Lotus produces, with his fingerprints particularly keenly felt on tracks such as Unrequited Love, to assist Bruner with yet another fantastic release.

Can we still say ‘wow’? The evolution in Joseph’s work is restless and searching. This release is no different as it serves us another intuitive and unexpected turn in her style, instrumentation and vocals.

Somersault takes a bolder leap forward, taking tropes and palettes from 60s pop, grunge, and even country, and making bold play with strings and horns, piano and harpsichord, surprising effects, freer guitar and more assertive bass.

These eight tracks are so deliberate and self-contained that you almost wish for something to puncture their protective casing, for Burns to let her agile voice soar. But Argonauta is an album still forming questions, giving no answers.

[The Ever Turning Wheel is] a track whose presence is indicative of the record as a whole: tender, considered, personal. 'Call off the race, I’m thumbing my way back to you', and the listener may find themselves agreeing.

If Panic Shack has a constant theme running through it, it’s an appreciation of the power of female friendship, as crystallised on the disarmingly earnest closer Thelma & Louise. This is one of the debuts of the year.