Zayna Jumma has a similar clarity, allowing listeners to immerse themselves, for a spell, in the special magic that Group Doueh have made their own.

In its more spacious moments, Look A Little Closer recalls the best Talk Talk in the way that their tight grooves serve to (almost) order and contain the ambient chaos and arrhythmic percussion in the gaps.

Down There carries many of the hallmarks of c-wave in its purse like a pack of mints or set of keys, but it diverges in notable ways.

This music took time, precision, intuition, will. But it is the same. It doesn’t demand reverence, but its immense power might go null if not for the voidless silence that could introduce it, carry it like a medium into your every day everyday.

Even at its densest, Whole and Cloven, the third solo record for Bowles, sounds almost desultory, a great credit to his compositional approach.

It's fitting that Mason reserved his first official solo album for his best work since The Beta Band. The results prove well worth the wait.

Pyramids would serve as a helluva soundtrack to a dream I once had, a lucid dream around age 10 wherein I woke up within the dream, realized I was in a dream, and acted accordingly. Super accordingly.

All of a sudden, the hooks sink deeper; the simple solos, redolent of Pavement/Malkmus to the axe-max, sound better; and, most of all, the songwriting is muscular.

Imps of Perversion is every bit as stark and nasty as the band’s previous outings. Only this time, the boogeymen and the futuristic hellscapes seem a little less remote, not quite as far-removed from reality as before.

The LP straps us into its cramped, jilted rhythms and harsh materiality, keeping us in its grips. And it’s successful in keeping us there precisely because we enjoy its confinement, we enjoy its power over us, and we enjoy the illusion that we aren’t confined and powerless. That’s ultimately what makes it a wonderland.

Widow City is by far the band’s toughest-as-nails record yet, with Matthew incessantly setting fire to the stage.

This is a dynamic, densely-packaged slab of rock ’n’ roll, which not only stands alongside the titans of the genre, but gives Kylesa a name of their own.

Get Color is exactly what a sophomore release should be: a deepening of and expansion upon the promise laid out by the band’s first record.

Each sound swerves about unpredictably, as free-willed as particles twisting through a vast nothingness, powerful and intricate in their brutal simplicity.

This is mood music, flecked with beauty and riven with hurt, a compelling, complex work that extends itself outwards, generously inviting the listener to share in its triumphs and disappointments.

The album’s a treasure trove of exciting, sharp production, recruiting some of today’s most tuneful producers (Mick Shultz, Vinylz, London On Da Track, Murda Beatz, DJ Mustard, Soundz) who simply understand what works best for Jeremih’s adroit, rhythmic vocals.

Their strangeness marks them out from more typical death metal bands, while still retaining their brutality and extremity, a distinction that results from the ideas that animate Portal’s work and their commitment to forming their music into a vehicle for the monsters to which they bow.

As a representation of how it feels to find yourself helplessly adrift, The Rip Tide simultaneously strikes a nerve and soothes it; that's a pretty old trick, but Beirut have done it with the right mixture of solipsism and grace to bring the feelings flooding back again.

Some will rank it among other gimcrack releases, like Dylan & the Dead. Still others will categorize it as an oddity, like Self Portrait. It’s all and none of these.

Airs resists the cheap gratification of the indie genre’s tendency of plundering from rock & roll’s rich past with only a passing fancy. Rae’s commitment to serving the dignity and stateliness of those genres is the record’s greatest asset, and with it comes the authenticity of a younger artist who’s keenly aware of her modest place in Nashville’s wide musical tapestry, but nonetheless confident enough to prove her salt time and again.

The Monitor more than cements Titus Andronicus's place in the indie rock arena. At its best moments, it reminds you of just how durable--and dangerous--a beast like rock 'n' roll can still be.

A consistent, immediately catchy album that holds up after repeated listens.

If anything, this album is best compared to the aesthetic of hip-hop, where allusions to universality and transcendence are simply non-existent, and what we are left with is content that will be dated within months.

Rather than attempting to outdo themselves, Efterklang scale back, ending sweetly, without overplaying their hand or overstaying their welcome.

We find ourselves encountering songs that give themselves the time and space to breathe, build, incorporate shimmering choirs of backing singers and more layered overdubs than you can shake a stick at into the mix.

Sea Lion is a delight.

The music on Safe is embedded in the contours of an anxiety attack itself. Rather than an attempt at inducing states of rest, the music is contrarily restless and embroiled in agony.

Despite the aforementioned darkwave influences, it’s not that his earworms get leechlike hooks into you--but that, while you’re caught listening and daydreaming, strands of ivy poke tentative tendrils into the eardrum, and deeper.