During the opening track of this, Editors’ fourth album, frontman Tom Smith tells us in his still-assuming baritone that he is concerned that his constant references to death mean he’s getting boring.

Two themes rear their heads in Neko Case‘s songwriting: a deft touch when it comes to showing us the icky, corporeal aspects of life and a fondness for externalizing internal turmoil, whether expressing baser desires through another’s thoughts or projecting them onto the natural world.

Carrier is a transitional album for The Dodos, who lost guitarist Chris Reimer last year when he unexpectedly passed away from a heart condition. The two remaining members, Meric Long (vocals, guitar) and Logan Kroeber (percussion), carry on his legacy by making a bold album that takes you places.

Most ink spilled about Ty Segall takes care to point out how young he is—and further, how being around him is like being around a restless teenager drawing band logos in his Trapper Keeper.

B-side collections should rarely be as good as albums. They offer wonderful glimpses of your favorite bands’ development processes—B-sides are the rock record equivalent of a DVD’s deleted scenes—showing off ill-fitting tracks, interesting failures, and songs deemed unworthy of wider release for other various reasons.

Largely speaking, this fourth album follows the same pattern as the first album, and the one after that… and the one after that.

When bringing together two such eclectic, often esoteric artists as Australian avant-garde musician J.G. Thirlwell and Wisconsin’s Russian-American experimental rock singer Nika Roza Danilova, aka Zola Jesus, there is an inherent fear that the end product could turn out to be messy, over-thought, and far too obtuse for its own good.

Julianna Barwick’s breakthrough record The Magic Place saw the Brooklyn singer find her, ahem, voice, as a creator of ambient, ethereal choral works—layering vocals to the extent that they become lost in the ether, finding an otherworldliness fit for religious ceremony.

BRAIDS’ 2011 debut Native Speaker stood out as an inventive, cerebral take on the syncopated obsessions of their peers. Returning after a foray into side project Blue Hawaii, the Montréal group’s follow up finds them crystallizing their influences and thought processes into one of the most accomplished collections of tracks this year.