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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Robert Glasper’s reworking of some of these classic songs makes much of Miles Davis’s songs almost completely unrecognizable. Usually, that would demean the original artist’s intent, but in this case, it’s easy to let it slide. After all, Glasper (known for his work with Kendrick Lamar) isn’t trying to make another jazz record, but more trying to bring jazz music into mainstream light.

And in that end, Everything’s Beautiful is a monstrous success. Tracks like Ghetto Walkin’ and Violets feel like extremely modern takes on the jazz legend, allowing rappers to come in and break beats the way they’d break bread. It’s some of the best hip hop you’ll hear this year; at once familiar, but also meditative and willing to wander.

Tracks like I’m Leaving You and Right on Brotha (which features Stevie Wonder) are more likely to remind you of some of Miles Davis’s work, but they add a good deal of soul to the song. Occasionally, some of Davis’s trademark trumpet sneaks through, but the songs really use his music as a backbone more than they do recreate it.

That Davis’s music is so fundamental to modern jazz as to be the foundation for a record like this is astounding. The album is paying homage, yes, but it’s doing it by suggesting that without Davis jazz, hip hop, soul, and so much more wouldn’t exist. Robert Glasper is insidiously burying Davis’s work within this record to suggest its foundational requirements. I love that. To me, this is the purest way to honour the legend. It’s graceful, bold, and courageous.

Like everything Robert Glasper touches (and like everything Miles Davis ever touched), Everything’s Beautiful feels like it’s heralding a new era of jazz without leaving behind the groundwork. I wouldn’t describe Everything’s Beautiful as essential listening, but I don’t hesitate for a second in saying it should be celebrated by music lovers from all walks of life. Everything’s Beautiful is a triumph.

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Much of that is owed to her music, which plays with distance and immediacy, and visceral qualities and intimacy. Even among other singer-songwriters, she’s unique, with the closest comparison being Angel Olsen (perhaps).

On previous records, Nadler has stripped her sound to be nothing more than her and a guitar, largely allowing her voice to be the most powerful part of a record. On Strangers, her heavenly (if sad-sounding) voice remains all that’s needed to make an impact, but she’s expanded the songs to include other instruments and a wider range of production techniques.

I read in an interview/review with Wall Street Journal that Nadler experimented with Logic on this record. You can hear it on some tracks, particularly the airy and expansive Nothing Feels the Same. Other tracks, like Hungry Is the Ghost, are expansive in different ways. Hungry includes an electric guitar and the soft beat of a kick drum in the background, building an incredible amount of tension.

When she experiments with the instruments is when Melissa Nadler feels the most alien and unlike us. She doesn’t use them in traditional manners at all, instead opting to sound ephemeral, as if the song were about to disappear away from our grasp and fade away — along with her. Even when Nadler’s vision of a guitar solo plays, it’s nearly buried in the mix, distant and haunting.

Katie I know plays with synths and a drum kit, offering a variation on the regular Nadler sound that still feels as bleak as ever. Janie in Love feels like a sound that would fit perfectly on the soundtrack to Fallout or The Walking Dead, with its deep and eery piano parts and distorted rock chorus.

Some of that might have to do with the album’s theme. Nadler isn’t the first to release a post-apocalyptically-themed album this year, but her music is certainly the bleakest about it. There’s little hope offered on her record, but there’s a strong atmosphere and a sense that there’s something beyond our own understanding of the world.

The best thing I can say about Melissa Nadler’s Strangers is that it encourages us to get lost, and to dream, in another universe. One where Nadler is queen and calls to all of us with her mysterious voice.

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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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The riffs are fantastic too: unearthly guitar riffs are taken straight from the blues rock playbook. Sometimes you swear you’ve heard the riff before — the boys in Black Pistol Fire might be paying a little too much attention to their idols.

Beyond the guitar licks, blues is in Black Pistol Fire’s soul. Morning Star is a song that sounds modern, with a great riff that feels as modern as it gets, but the lyrics tell a different story. Ripped straight from blues songs of old, vocalist Kevin McKeown sings about the devil causing him pain and refusing to let him go. Muddy Waters approves.

I find writing about Black Pistol Fire to be difficult, because their music isn’t innovative and there isn’t much about them that actively inspires good writing. To be clear, that doesn’t mean they’re a bad band (if they were, their music wouldn’t be featured on Unsung Sundays). It’s just because they’re not reinventing the genre.

But music this old-school can’t be reinvented; it can only be perfected. Every few years, there are new artists who hold up entire genres on their own. The White Stripes and The Black Keys previously held this position for blues-influenced garage rock. Now it feels like the genre is in flux, with no clear leader.

Black Pistol Fire is trying to become the genre’s crown wearer.

I don’t know if they’re going to be successful; these things aren’t easy to predict and often defy logic. But Black Pistol Fire is undoubtedly at the top of their game with Don’t Wake the Riot, which is likely their best record yet. They’re a contender for the genre’s throne, which is saying something, and a band I plan on watching for the next few years.

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