Marketa Irglova, the female half of The Swell Season of Once fame, wrote her new album Muna with God in mind.

Shara Worden has been quietly carving out a niche for herself as a unique voice for some time now. Her projects have certainly been varied; aside from releasing music under the My Brightest Diamond moniker, she’s contributed to everything from last year’s The Blind Boys of Alabama release I’ll Find a Way to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s Death Speaks, a classical composition that truly sculpted beauty from morbidity.

The Drop marks the English language debut of acclaimed Belgian director Michaël R. Roskam and the final performance of the late actor James Gandolfini.

After a four-year break—in which Russell (aka Rustie) Whyte’s star has ascended into the stratosphere—the Glaswegian producer/DJ returns with a sophomore effort which more than equips itself as a follow-up to his stellar debut.

As Gary and Audrey watch planes take off from their hotel windows, they experience transformations that change the course of their lives.

Vocalist Rosie Blair made a firm statement on her label’s homepage: Ballet School is “not a synth band.” She clarifies that they’re a guitar band interested in pushing their setup and, in turn, producing what amounts to a singular mainstream/indie pop music hybrid.

The Green Prince offers all the trappings of a story with Shakespearian proportions: loyalty at odds with humanity, betrayal, and two sworn enemies who forge an impossible friendship.

“They’ll never stop The Simpsons,” sang Dan Castellaneta at the end of “Gump Roast,” a critically slated clip show episode from the long-running cartoon. “Have no fear we’ve got ideas for years.” That was back in the series’ 13th season and it’s hard to argue that in the dozen years since that The Simpsons retains the cultural importance of its golden age, if any at all.

It would be easy to relegate this Bristol-bred emcee to a very compartmentalized and sometimes incorrect intellectual place—“trip hop,” “Bristol sound,” and “ex-Massive Attack” are silly buzzwords that try to draw some arbitrary (if momentarily helpful) links between Tricky‘s music and the specific cultural moment from which it came.