Drones, buzzing synths, and pitch-shifted vocals feature on this electronic album by Leila.

Sunny timbres and baroque sensibilities fill this psychedelic pop album by The Zombies.

Sentences are shredded and scattered as a verbal collage on this indie album by Life Without Buildings.

Art pop, jazz, and bossa nova inform the sparing riffs and laidback grooves on this album by Stereolab.

Against Me! chronicle the trials and tribulations of a transgender sex worker on their sixth studio album.

Football, television, and FM radio are skewered on this dub-inflected punk album by The Slits.

Cloudy electronic tones billow and deteriorate on this plaintive ambient album by William Basinski.

Fiddles, tin whistles, and digeridoos are smelted together in a Celtic fire on this album by The Waterboys.

Valentin Silvestrov's sixth symphony is a chthonic showstopper and an hour-long exploration of memory.

Clones, the campaign for equality, and Clair de Lune all feature on this manifold album by Janelle Monáe.

Sun Ra composed this futuristic jazz album to accompany the blaxploitation film of the same name.

Tyres turn on sandy highways and jazz inflections abound in this road trip album by Joni Mitchell.

We watch the life of a promising composer play out in reverse in this musical by Stephen Sondheim.

Majesty, mystery, and mythology pervade every track of this prog rock album by The Alan Parsons Project.

A tangle of timbres, from whistling synths to pattered percussion, emerge on Fever Ray's ghostly debut album.

Kraftwerk act as self-styled scientists on this album, and their electronic experiments crackle with energy.

Accordion, fiddle, and acoustic guitar lines are expertly laced together in this inventive folk album by Lau.

Romantic ballads sit next to perceptive social commentary on Tracy Chapman's debut album.

Fifties music hall songs are dusted down and distorted in this poignant ambient album by The Caretaker.

Regina Spektor ponders orcas and owls, cigarettes and cocaine, floods and frotteurism on her fourth album.

Power chords and bebop parodies coexist on this eclectic jazz album by the Esbjörn Svensson Trio.

Can stir up a sonic soup on this assorted album, using ingredients from rock, minimalism, and jazz.

Shouts, moans, and strange sounds ricochet about the void in this avant-garde string quartet by George Crumb.

Deafheaven bludgeon us with a wall of percussion, screams, and guitar on this cacophonous blackgaze album.

Stina Nordenstam showcases her timid, inimitable voice on this introspective acoustic album.