This three-song EP features James Blake at his most restlessly playful, exploring new sounds and styles while also expanding on his already varied body of work.

Despite its title, this relatively lighthearted mixtape has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas but it was a fitting way for the immensely likable New York rapper to close last year.

Gucci Mane, once one of the most prolific and popular Southern rappers, has done an LP with Kreayshawn sidekick V-Nasty. Even more surprising? BAYTL is a competent, sometimes fun, low-stakes rap album.

The singer-songwriter's self-released fifth record follows 2008's Matador-imprinted Here With Me and three years spent working odd jobs and piecing together a life bungled up by recording and touring.

Wolf Eyes/Stare Case member Nate Young's eerie, dark solo LP-- a sequel to 2009's Regression featuring members of Wolf Eyes past and present-- might be his most minimal work to date.

The reformed "classic-era" GBV have produced an album with the collagist careen of Bee Thousand and Propeller and but it ultimately comes up short in the songs department. The best moments come courtesy of Tobin Sprout.

The debut LP from Odd Future DJ Syd tha Kid and her OFWGKTA cohort Matt Martians mixes neo-soul, experimental jazz, and funk but lacks the collective's usual take-no-prisoners confidence.

The French DJ/Justice remixer's fun, freewheeling second commercial mix is a collection of whinnying, vocally oriented dance tracks he meticulously bends to his will.

Finnish vocalist Olivia Merilahti and French multi-instrumentalist Dan Levy's sophomore album keeps up the genre-hopscotching whimsicality of their debut.

While Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti's Luomo project has evolved, his other best known alias has remained devoted to a singular vision of ambient techno and cold digital dub. This new collection plays out like a chilly landscape troubled only by the occasional moving figure.

Where the Weeknd's House of Balloons was a debut tour-de-force and Thursday an arduous journey into the internal turmoil of a self-loathing narcissist, the rising Toronto star's third release in nine months exudes a brazen, sexy confidence.

Though it's a solid effort, Young Jeezy's long-delayed fourth LP feels both airless and over-inflated, the sound of an artist trying to revisit something gone.

More than a decade after the release of Sunn O)))'s proper debut ØØ VOID, Southern Lord offers it again, packaged with a disc of remixes by Nurse With Wound. The same material's available via Stephen O'Malley's new imprint as 2xLP set The Iron Soul of Nothing.

Moving from Krautrock to funk to candy-coated pop tones and new age, the Swiss producer Dimitri Grimm's third album features an ADD-infused freshness.

For his first proper solo release, Emeralds member Steve Hauschildt uses a synthesizer to turn tiny sounds and gradual shifts into something larger.

A collection of odds-and-sods cobbled together over the course of nine years, Lioness: Hidden Treasures presents a picture of a talented singer at her most restrained and polite.

Can's 1971 album Tago Mago, freshly reissued in a "40th Anniversary Edition," is a colossus, the product of a band that was thinking huge, pushing itself to its limits, and devoted to breaking open its own understanding of what rock music could be.

Nicolas Jaar's tight, three-song EP as Darkside, a collaboration with guitarist and bassist Dave Harrington, is at once sexy and frigid, cavernous and cramped.

The Austin garage rockers continue tidying up their sound and refining their songwriting on their third LP, a collection that adds piano and politeness to the mix.

On his new EP, Odd Future's Mike G creates the rare OF release that feels purposefully removed from the collective.

4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell's This Mortal Coil-- a band that never toured, that never really was a band at all-- is the subject of this comprehensive box set, one that offers remastered versions of their three LPs along with a fourth disc consisting of non-album tracks.

The Thom Yorke-endorsed British-born singer/electronic composer's self-titled debut illustrates her belief that dance music is fatally boring when you stick to a blueprint.

Mac Miller's debut is the first independently distributed debut album to go to No. 1 in 16 years, but the Pittsburgh rapper is mostly just a crushingly bland and intolerable version of Wiz Khalifa.

Analog Africa's first foray into cataloging the music of the landlocked country Burkina Faso features 16 recordings from the 1970s. If you have any interest in West African funk forms, it's essential listening.

On the Swiss artist's second full-length release-- her first for James Holden's Border Community-- she buries herself in a dark, claustrophobic world then tries tunneling back with her elastic voice.