There’s a beautiful, full-circle moment that brings The Hope Six Demolition Project to a close. Forlorn horns and ghostly organs eventually give way to the sound of children playing in the background, forcing a moment or two of filterless human connection. Listener on subject. PJ Harvey has said her piece. What a visceral piece it is, too.

Bleached seemed to emerge fully formed on their excellent 2013 debut Ride Your Heart. A stunning combination of pop smarts, reverb, and some slight experimentation, it was one of that year’s finest albums.

Deftones have milked the tension between vocalist Chino Moreno’s tendency towards poppy fey melody and guitarist Stephen Carpenter’s tendency towards the heaviest metal imaginable for a long, successful career.

I used to imagine Kevin Morby‘s arrival in New York from Texas sort of like Jon Voight’s at the beginning of Midnight Cowboy. Big ideas, big plans, big boots. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that maybe this isn’t the most flattering comparison.

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. If you like dreamy synthpop, this is the album you’ve been waiting for. Even Postiljonen‘s breakup songs give sensual shrugs of commanding confidence. And whatever way the romance is going, most of these tunes are pulling you straight for the dance floor and won’t take “no” for an answer.

The man behind the live-wire sexiness of St. Vincent’s sound, and a host of others, belts out his solo debut, Until the Horror Goes. Both vocally and conceptually, John Congleton hurls forth a paranoid alter ego from the subconscious that sounds like the nerdier cousin of Rivers Cuomo after getting his hands on some bad designer drug.

If you have any sort of enthusiasm for listening to film music without films, it may be that enthusiasm began with the music Angelo Badalamenti composed for the films of David Lynch.

We promise you, this is not a Beach House record. And Sam Sarty, despite her vocals, is not a pseudonym of Victoria Legrand. No, really.

Bonnie Raitt gets down to business on her new LP, Dig In Deep, churning out some seriously unfussy alt-country. All of the album’s strengths are encompassed in Raitt’s offbeat INXS cover “Need You Tonight.”