Phoebe Bridgers’ debut album is best listened to on starry midnight walks, head reeling with thoughts of lovers old and new.

Since the release of The Blow’s self-titled long player in 2013, the world has turned decidedly maximalist. Pop music, politics, sex, food, fashion, feelings, thoughts, even fucking coffee have had their dials ramped up to deafening. If we can’t hear you in 2017, you don’t exist.

It’s hard to believe Rostam Batmanglij is only now releasing his debut solo album. A vital cog in Vampire Weekend until recently, he also collaborated with Hamilton Leithauser on last year’s excellent I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, and scored The OA, a stylish and baffling Netflix sci-fi show co-written and directed by his brother. But believe it or not, Half-Light is the first time he’s ventured out on his own.

Sløtface (pronounced Slutface, and spelt that way until censorship provoked a re-think) bring a classic pop-punk sound with explosively direct lyrics. The Norwegian four-piece manage to be both a throwback and something refreshingly forward looking as a result.

It’s a good sign when the opening seconds of an album sound cool enough to just loop and repeat, and Deerhoof pull that off on Mountain Moves, their fourteenth album.

The earnest spirit of Sonic Youth resides within Lee Ranaldo’s soul. Yet, it is his heart that he pours out in his first album since 2013, Electric Trim.

Open Mike Eagle‘s sixth album is rooted deep in the art-rapper’s Chicago background. While Dark Comedy cast its thematic net wider, covering everything from Mike’s appreciation for Adventure Time to a dreary drive through Idaho, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream hones in on a number of more timely topics like black excellence, faith, and the impending apocalypse.

On the third album from electronic duo Mount Kimbie (Dominic Maker and Kai Campos), it is the gnarly stuff that is best. Once the storming drums really get going, “Blue Train Lines” featuring King Krule, a long-time Mount Kimbie collaborator (and young English maverick in his own right), is a wonderfully troubled, breathless anthem.

Although only two post-Big Star tracks that he recorded in 1974 and 1975 were released during Chris Bell‘s short lifetime, some of the recordings finally came out as I Am the Cosmos in 1992 on Rykodisc and again in 2009 as an expanded two-disc set on Rhino Handmade.