A foregone conclusion has never been more mysteriously rendered than in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Like Bigelow’s Best Picture-winning The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty similarly leaves politics aside to look at the behind-the-scenes story of one person’s mission to serve their country in a most unflinching way.

There probably aren’t two electronic artists making music right now who fit together better than Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never, Ford & Lopatin) and Tim Hecker. On their solo albums, both men have made art out of surprising and sometimes uncomfortable reimaginings of ambient, drone, and trip-hop, albeit in different ways.

Sarah Cracknell’s (Saint Etienne) 1997 album Lipslide had all the markings of a vanity project.

Dayve Hawk, aka Memory Cassette, aka Memory Tapes, has made his name over the past four years doing essentially the exact same thing as Toro Y Moi but making no attempt to shake the glib “chillwave” tag that became so omniscient in the later part of the last decade.

It must be tough to be Big Boi—OutKast looms over everything. He attempted to escape that shadow with 2010’s Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, a years-in-the-making album that showed Big Boi could create great music apart from OutKast. Now Big Boi is back with a follow-up, Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors.

With thoughtfully crafted compositions so carefully rendered, Godspeed You! Black Emperor plays like a massed force that could show its mighty strength at any time, and can be equally compelling and unnerving when it does.

Five long years stretched between proper Sufjan Stevens albums, from 2005’s breakout Illinois to 2010’s heartbreaking The Age of Adz, but for those who believe that he is anything but prolific, Asthmatic Kitty presents the second compilation of Stevens’ Christmas EPs. Stevens somehow found time each year to explore the tensions between the garish commercialism and tradition and religious core of Christmas.

No matter how one feels about Interpol’s output in the 10 years since the release of their debut Turn on the Bright Lights, it’s still an astonishing record. Not many bands have come into the world with such clarity of vision that the music, design, attire, and persona all fit tightly into one package.

When you’re attending a show lovingly dubbed “Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice,” you know what you’re getting yourself into.