But it’s more than the sensational songwriting and her velvety voice that makes NAO’s debut stand out from the rest of the pack. Her approach to R&B is so different from that of her contemporaries that it’s hard to ignore.

Hailing from the UK, where most of her peers are aiming for the sound du jour of minimalistic R&B, NAO’s style is densely layered and sonically maximal. She doesn’t bother with stripping back; instead, it feels like she throws every one of her ideas at the record and only removes them if they don’t stick.

That’s evident even in her vocal stylings: as a trained jazz singer, NAO brings a vocal sensibility to the genre that feels more like the complex pop attitude of Janet Jackson crossed with the deep soul of Aretha Franklin. She brings jazz’s off-beat melodies and accents, but hits those beats with her voice instead of a saxophone. It’s incredibly effective.

It raises multiple questions, but the most important of them is about labelling the record. Is it fair to call For All We Know R&B when it’s so deeply rooted in jazz and soul as well? I’d argue that it is — as often as the rules of the genre are broken, they’re also embraced.

What’s most powerful, I think, is the way that NAO removes the autobiographical element of so many current R&B records, and replaces them with massive female-driven moments of power. Clearly taking inspiration from women like Beyoncé, there are moments throughout the record when For All We Know feels more like a call to feminism and self-respect than it does anything else.

If NAO’s debut has any problems, though, it’s the sheer length of the record. It’s not that the songs are bad; it’s that many of the fine songs (like “Adore You”) are outpaced by the magic of tracks like “Fool to Love”, “Girlfriend” and “In the Morning” (a personal favourite of mine). It’s a long record that could have been improved by NAO making some choices on the editing floor (although what she could have cut, I don’t know).

With all that being said, NAO’s debut record is interesting because it has the dramatic length and pacing — as well as story-telling capability — of 90s hip-hop. But it’s also got the technique of jazz, the trappings of R&B, and the impossible-to-ignore sympathies of great soul. All guided by NAO’s sensational voice.

It’s hard not to recommend NAO as one of the year’s standout records in any genre. Unlike her peers in R&B, NAO isn’t going for minimalism. She’s gunning for stardom, and with massive talent and equally massive hooks, it’s going to be hard for her to miss.

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Every track stands out, and it’s hard to pick favourites. It feels wrong to pick favourites when the album references some of the events that have shaken America over the past year. Hands Up is a clear reference to Trayvon Martin’s killing. Throughout the record, Dev Hynes (the man behind Blood Orange) shares his thoughts on blackness, the hood, and whether or not black people should wear hoods when they walk the streets.

It’s a powerful record. “Are you okay?” Hynes asks on the afore-mentioned Hands Up. The answer seems obvious. At the end of Thank You, a brief vocal moment says: “Let me tell you what it’s all about. A skin not considered equal. A meteor has more right than my people.” It hits hard.

At other times, it’s clear that Hynes is writing music for affected black women. The intro track captures a powerful vocal performance from a black woman trying to understand how to respect herself, how to understand who she is. These moments pop up on occasion throughout the record, and it’s clear that Hynes frequently for women.

I was thinking about it and wondering why he did that, and found myself wondering if approaching blackness from a woman’s perspective allows him to embrace the vulnerability his music requires. Whatever the reason, it’s a powerful approach that works and elevates his music to another level of sophistication and intelligence.

The music is great, too: But You and Desirée are two of my favourite tracks, even though they feel like they take inspiration from totally different parts of music’s sphere. Juice 1–4 has a tone that feels almost tropical in nature. Best to You’s vocal acrobatics is a phenomenal exercise in pop styling. Augustine is a great first single.

But despite juggling all these musical influences, every track comes out the other end feeling decidedly like a Blood Orange sound. Freetown Sound is music you make when you’re confident in yourself as an artist, aware of your place and your style, and willing to give your record a meaning and texture.

I don’t know where Freetown Sound lands among the year’s best records yet, but I have a feeling it might be near the top when the year is said and done. It’s certainly one of the year’s most important, especially given the tragic and horrific events of the past week.

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This attitude is still a big part of their new record, Summer 08. It’s a record that feels like it’s defying many of the genre’s practitioners. It continues down a similar path to Love Letters, which was a huge success (in my books) because it embraced psychedelic rock within the electronic genre.

Summer 08 takes the band closer to electronic pop than ever before, embracing funk on the way, but it doesn’t feel like it’s a last-ditch effort to “go mainstream.” Actually, while the band feels more mainstream despite themselves, they still don’t seem concerned with following genre conventions.

I love the opening track: Back Together is a spastic, alt-rock inspired, Chromeo-like song that’ll get you tapping your feet. Even some of the more “pop” tracks, like the relatively low-key Hang Me Out To Dry, feels like it’s got just enough of an off-beat to it to defy mainstream convention and embrace Metronomy’s odd side.

Summer Jam feels like it’s been lifted straight from corny ’80s movies, even while it slowly spirals out and into itself again before it closes the record. Night Owl sounds inspired by the indie bands du jour, and Metronomy manages to make it their own despite doing their best Arcade Fire impression.

It’s hard to make logical, reasoned arguments for what makes Summer 08 such a good record. I’m struggling for words, because all I can say is that I have an involuntary emotional attachment to the record. I just like it, and it’s as simple as that. There’s no real criticism I can levy at it, because something about it stirs my soul and I enjoy it. If, by recommending it, you can have a modicum of the joy I get from the record, then I think I’ve done my job. Summer 08 is, in my eyes, a great record with sterling production, great ideas, and some fantastic ideas. Metronomy still surprises me every time.

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The lead singer, Miles Arntzen, put on a heckuva show. He was practically manic: he played an upright, standing drum kit centre stage, pounding it with a palpable degree of ferocity. The bassist head banged through every track, but in the sort of dancey way that you might laugh at if you saw a friend do it.

The sax and trumpet player can’t stop dancing, wiggling on stage like they’re at an EDM show. The percussionist in the back has all the excitement of a DJ who’s really into the tunes. This show was messy, and the band wasn’t as tight as they maybe could have been, but it didn’t matter. It was an explosion of energy — one of the best lives shows I’ve ever seen.

That energy isn’t necessarily captured on their debut self-titled record, but the incredible music is. Emefe is straight out of New York, so their Vampire Weekend-inspired Afrobeat sound is almost familiar, but the way they layer in jazz and funk makes it feel like a whole different gig.

Same Thing is one of the moments on record where it feels like they manage to capture as much of their energy as a recording can handle, and their jazzy style is on full display. The keyboardist is oozing psychedelics, and the trumpet and sax are out in full force. Not to mention that the music is delightfully weird, and oddly danceable.

The One isn’t dissimilar: the guitar lays down a nice, groovey riff, the vocal line makes for a nice sing along, by and the time the song is over, the whole band is jamming over a gnarly riff that’s simply divine.

I also love Sun Spat, which might be my favourite track on the record. I love the way that the instruments interact with the off-beats of the drums. It’s cool stuff, even if it “feels” musically wrong. It’s an incredible track, played with power, delivered with gravitas.

The following track, Summer, feels nearly traditional by comparison. But it’s clear, at this point in the record, that Emefe is all about defying convention. I love the way the song slowly builds up, in a manner that feels reminiscent of some of the great funk of yesteryear. Plus, that guitar riff (and the surrounding instrumentation) about a minute and a half into the song is plain old delightful.

Every member of this eight-piece band feels important, and necessary. Even if the music isn’t your cup of tea, if it’s too avant-garde for you, they’re a band you need to see live the next time they’re in town. They’ll make a fan out of you yet with their incredible live show — among the most energetic and exciting I’ve ever seen.

I can’t recommend Emefe highly enough, and I cannot wait to see where they go next.

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Take Wall F——k. This is an exceptionally thick track, with more layers than I could think to count, and not a single spoken word. It’s an assault, sonically, but it doesn’t feel aggressive so much as it just feels deep and bass-filled. Yes, there’s lots of music like it, but there’s so little that feels so inventive in its light touches.

There’s a reason Flume is such a success. If he weren’t so good at adding pop inflection to big remixes, he’d be making intellectual electronic ambience like Tycho. It’s Streten’s ability to marry both ambience and production value that makes him such a wunderkind.

If there’s ever a rough spot on Skin, it’s some of the rap contributors that appear throughout. These tracks are often weaker than the others, if only because the rappers can’t hold a candle to Flume’s production.

But despite that, it’s hard not to recommend those tracks. Smoke & Retribution is far from my favourite track on the record, but it’s hard not to talk about it because the production work is so wildly inventive. The beat Flume has come up with is almost completely alien, totally different from what we’re used to hearing.

I could point to every track on the record and say something great about it. Skin is the sort of album that’s worth listening to from beginning to end, with good headphones on, and enjoying while knowing as little as possible about it. The pleasant surprises are part of the journey. And the final track is… Well, Beck guests on it.

With that in mind, I want to leave you to listen to Skin without me spoiling some of its best moments. If you like electronic music, you’ll love Flume’s Skin. It’s one of my favourite albums of the year so far.

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Take tracks like She Talks Too Much: Elohim uses the synth for much of the melody and the beat, but she also uses her voice as a leading vocal hook to supplant the synthetic flute sound-alike at times, particularly during the chorus. It’s a small twist that keeps the hook changing just enough to prevent the song from getting boring. (That track is a sensational song, while we’re talking about it.)

Much of the album is similarly catchy and smart. Pick a track at random and you’ll see Elohim using similar tricks. (Case in point: Bridge and the Wall, which plays immediately after She Talks Too Much, has a hook that feels similar in tone.) It works, though, and perhaps the worst thing anybody could say is that the album feels calculated.

If anything, the album is sun-soaked and predictably Los Angeles: there are few songs here about money and corruption; instead, Elohim offers a mix of lyrics about personal and emotional struggles with life and relationships.

Pigments is a beautiful track with a fantastic ear worm where Elohim cryptically admits that she can’t make somebody love themselves, but she can change their pigment. It’s a sad song, despite its sunny pop backing track. Guts follows Pigments, and it’s also an incredible song — if only because it’s incredibly catchy. Guts is my favourite track off the record: the chorus soars, perhaps influenced by HOLYCHILD’s version of “Brat Pop.”

At the end of the day, catchiness rules above all else here. A couple times a year, we get a great synth pop record from L.A. This is one of those records. There’s not normally much going on below the surface, but they make great summer records and fantastic driving music. Elohim lives up to that standard, and I’m looking forward to hearing more from her.

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Monster is the obvious stand-out track early on in the album: a big, sing-along chorus that would fit in well at a night club is balanced out by a quieter verse that plays well and gives the duo a sense of dynamics that many of their contemporaries lack.

The production really shines here. Lyrically, this band isn’t singing anything you haven’t heard before. The vocals aren’t meant to be any more than soft texture though. As they dance between falsettos and sexually tinged, softly sung verses, the duo makes it clear that they’re not interested in so much what they have to say but how they say it.

Treating the vocals as an instrument frees them up to explore with almost industrial-like rhythms on tracks like Slow, or the R&B-laden Gone, where the vocal work lacks mystery but aids in providing context to the brashness and power of the instrumentation.

The totality in production makes Colours feel like an impenetrable wall, a giant slab of R&B-tinged industrial pop that feels like an attack on your senses. The duo wants to be noticed and demands to be heard, but they make it inescapably clear they’re not interested in being known for their vocals. They want you to listen to the whole package.

By the time you’re done listening to Ivory, though, you’re wondering what’s next for the band. The success of Colours’ debut hinges on how they grow for its follow up, and what they have to say next. It’s a launching point for what is (hopefully) a successful career.

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So Boucher put Grimes on hold for a little while to come up with new material. When the material did flow, it really flowed: there were over 100 songs written for Art Angels, most of which I don’t think we’ll ever hear — and Boucher has made it clear that these tracks are all part of Grimes records we wouldn’t be interested in anyway.

The result of all this writing, re-writing, and experimentation is Art Angels: a celebration of pop set against Grimes’ hallmark sunny sounds and weirdness. The opening three tracks are worth listening to as examples: an instrumental opener that’s simply bizarre leads into the radio-friendly California before the whole thing explodes into the decidedly not-for-radio Scream.

Those three tracks serve as a wonderful synopsis of the record: pop tracks like Belly of the Beat sit against oddities like Kill V. Maim (which might be the record’s best track), often dwelling in some sort of strange tension that makes the entire record feel oddly balanced in its leanings.

Despite these seemingly opposing directions — one experimental, and one radio-friendly — Grimes is able to hold it all together with uncompromising focus and unbridled imagination. Ultimately, the album feels like it’s two steps ahead of everybody else: pop music that’s laser-focused on experimenting with form and style, often to the point of flying off the tracks, all while remaining accessible.

It’s a miracle that these songs are accessible at all, though. Grimes isn’t writing love songs: on Kill V. Maim, she sings “I’m only a man; I do what I can,” words that feel completely defiant to the male-driven institution that is pop music. Throughout the record, Grimes practically screams for her freedom as an artist, experimenting with post-electronic noises and genre-pushing ideas that are more like middle fingers than love letters.

The consequence of all this is that it feels like Boucher is entirely avoiding anything personal with Grimes. There’s a sense of detachment throughout the record: it’s massively ambitious, but it’s also clearly a performance. Boucher isn’t involved on as personal of a level. While the vision is entirely hers, the world feels like a meticulously crafted production of her Grimes alter ego.

It begs the question: can pop music, in its truest form, be more personal? Or does it require detachment? Is Grimes answering the question, or has Boucher merely discovered that Grimes is at the unique intersection of performance and experimentation that allows her to drag a genre forward at the expense of herself?

Regardless of the answer, Art Angels is one of 2015’s strongest records, and a glimpse into the future of pop in an age where anything is possible.

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That left School of Seven Bells with only one remaining member, Alejandra Deheza. She and Curtis had gone from being friends to being romantic partners to being only friends again, all while writing and touring together for over half a decade. Understandably, the album was shelved.

In October last year, Deheza surprised us all with the announcement that the final record she and Curtis worked on would be released this year. For fans, it’s been a long time coming. And for newcomers, this record is a sort of morbid curiosity.

SVIIB is, for all intents and purposes, a self-titled album named for the band’s popular short form. It’s clear from listening to it that Deheza has been working on the album since Curtis passed away, as it frequently sounds like a memorial to her friend.

But the album never descends into melancholy or despair. Moments of it feel as if they were written for Curtis after the fact, like Deheza’s refrain in lead single Open Your Eyes: “You are my pain love, you are my sorrows; Can’t you see we’re the same? You’ve got me crying, and now my heart is breaking. Cause I’ve been weeping and I’ve been waiting here silently for too long.”

Other songs are much more transparent: “Confusion weighs so heavy, and I understand nothing of these changes,” Deheza nearly whispers in a stand-out track where it feels like she’s barely holding it together. (It was the last track she and Curtis wrote together.) On A Thousand Times More, she promises to be there until the pain is gone. Elias walks down memory lane with her friend, and thanks him for the time they shared. On Music Takes Me, she gets even less subtle: “I just want to say thank you, thank you for all you gave,” she sings, laying her pain out against the anthemic synth pop background tracks.

Ultimately, that’s what makes SVIIB so compelling. While Deheza is dealing with unimaginable loss, the album never loses itself in the grief and constantly reminds the listener — and in its own way, Alejandra herself — that life is something you cherish while you share it.

On the album’s closer, This Is Our Time, School of Seven Bells stretches their wings for what’s likely the last time and sings about being free to dream. From anybody else, on any other record, it would sound like an inauthentic attempt at positivity. But on SVIIB, it’s given incredible depth. The album transcends synth pop, becoming an intimate and beautiful album dealing with grief and loss in a real, open, and healthy way.

SVIIB is the sort of album that tops year-end lists, exactly the kind you don’t want to miss. It has all the earmarks of a record that will be treasured for years to come.

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Empress Of excels at writing electronic music that is accessible without degrading into pop territory. The lead single, How Do You Do It, is a great example: Empress of makes a song that wouldn’t feel terribly out of place on a dance floor, but she sings it with the grace of a pop star in the makings.

It’s an album that will appease people who love electronic music, and maybe even dream hop or EDM lovers, but it’s also a record that will be loved by the pop mainstream among us. Empress Of finds success in the crossover appeal, and I think she’s got a bright future.

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