Katie Crutchfield’s fourth album features sharp, gorgeous songwriting. The polished production and urgent performances ensure her exorcisms about the end of a relationship are deeply felt.

Using samples from thrift store LPs and dollar bins, Deerhunter drummer Moses John Archuleta crafts a diffuse solo effort where sweet melodies gleam from beneath grimy noise.

On the follow-up EP to last year’s The Mountain Will Fall, Shadow bucks expectations and finds inspiration in unlikely collabs with Nas and Danny Brown.

On Dear, the Japanese trio hones in on their most essential quality—the ability to wrest subtlety from thick layers of distortion and volume.