If London’s alternative music scene were anthropomorphized, there is every chance that it would look like Kieran Hebden. A scruffy, bookish-looking guy in his mid-30s, based in the trendy Shoreditch/Daltson East End of England’s capital city, creating danceable but distinctly under the radar music that appeals—broadly speaking—to the major cities’ liberal intelligentsia.

Make no bones about it—Blind Boys of Alabama are an American gospel institution. Coming from these longstanding delegates of the genre, even a slapdash record of tried and true gospel songs would still have shifted its fair share of units.

If we can agree on one thing about Arcade Fire‘s latest, the record’s rollout has been nothing short of bizarre, between formalwear-required preview performances, numerous teaser snippets, and the gonzo, celebrity-packed television special. Now, we can finally peel back the mirrorball-like wrapping and find out if Reflektor lives up to its mystique.

Cass McCombs returns with a double album, drifting around the genre map and proving his prolificacy can’t depend on any particular narrative, any overarching marketable story beyond, perhaps, the utilitarian version/vision of songcraft. With that in mind, let’s just slap him with the “enigmatic” tag and discuss a few of the more perfect constructions presented here.

A Spencer Krug piano album-it had to happen sometime. In truth, the indie rock canon Krug’s been mining over the past decade always seemed ill-fitting for his spectral croon. His is a voice that demands unfettered attention; one that craves a simple canvas from which to exhale mystical, metaphorical tropes. And somehow you knew the canvas was always going to be the piano.

Ten years out of the game is a long time for anyone. But for The Dismemberment Plan it may seem even longer. In the decade since the Washington-born ensemble called it a day, the hyperventilating art-punk genre they once excelled in has been pounded, pummelled, and packaged into something that sells records and everything else—from potato chips to high-end motors.

Not too many groups effectively infuse heavy music with high/low art collisions, pan-ethnic anthropological celebrations, operatic inclinations, and theatricality bordering on cartoonishness, but Yamantaka // Sonic Titan do it almost effortlessly, placing the whole mess in a sort of sonic dreamscape.

Nature abhors a vacuum and the three-year gulf that stretches back from the drop of Night Time, My Time to the first intended release date for a Sky Ferreira LP has been unreasonably filled with a narrative of expectation, disappointment, resignation, and cynicism.

For an album called Interiors, Mesirow devotes a lot of time to exploring the ways people connect with one another and contemplating what lies beyond her own world—