Nothing 2 Loose borrows from religion an emotional heavy-handedness that many listeners will find hard to accept. (I've personally heard the word "cringe" thrown around even among people who generally like it.) But that feeling, an utterly uncool pureness of sincerity, is essential to this music.
The genius of Stefan Kozalla is that he can sound euphoric one minute and heartbroken the next. Moods across Knock Knock shift quickly, from melancholy to blissful and back again, sometimes within the same track. The emotional range is remarkable, but that's nothing new for the German artist.
On Grid Of Points these passages, and the silences in between, invite deep exploration.
Holter has always taken pop and presented her own masterful version of it. But her desire to break through the distressing clatter of the present is what makes Aviary her most captivating album yet.
Vynehall's sense of musicality and use of instrumentation had begun to stand out in recent years ... but on Nothing Is Still he takes a huge step forwards.
On Anticlines ... the Berlin-based artist is on sharper form than ever.
It's a tragicomic pop statement with a radical subtext: just because you're succeeding doesn't mean the system isn't fucked.
For all its mind-melting attention to detail, Hertz's music has rarely sounded so evocative.
It's hard to tell how to feel about this music, which is part of what makes it so powerful.
Throughout Honey, the pure, raw emotion that has always defined Robyn's music is still there. Now, she's just dancing to a different beat.
Since his 2016 EP, blisters, Wise has evolved from histrionic oversharer to keen songwriter with a sharp wit. On his debut album, soil, those qualities bloom on tightly written pop songs that probe his innermost fears, neuroses, queer insecurities and desires.
With Compro, his second album as Skee Mask, Müller pulls back slightly from the '90s breakbeat sound he's known for. This time he dips into ambient music, IDM and jungle with an atmospheric lean, creating some of the most powerful yet restrained cuts in his catalogue.
Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, SOPHIE's first proper album, presents her artistic vision in a purer form than anything she's done before.
Luminosity Device isn't a perfect Surgeon LP ... But in the music's detail and delivery you can feel how Child has mastered these errant, infinitely complex machines.
It's striking how simple and affecting Devotion is as a whole. At a time when so much music is political and intellectualized, Tirzah's sincerity and candor is a breath of fresh air.
Yves Tumor joins the likes of Arca and SOPHIE at the vanguard of experimental pop.