Local Artists:

The Bear Hunt: Ready Or Not (Single) (Indie)
- There's a lo-fi roughness to this raggedly emotional alt-rock-pop that recalls the best moments of Bob Mould (if Bob were a woman, I guess), so that's pretty bloody great. (Chris Cobcroft)

Cured Pink: As A Four Piece Band (RIP Society)
- Enderie Nuatal's no-wave monstrosity, with the addition of three other members, takes on a jam-band feel. Kinda like Tom Waits at his most demented, backed by a hellish gamelan, fed through unholy effects machines and marinated in dub. You probably wouldn't get it. (Chris Cobcroft)

Desmond Cheese: Peace & Quiet (Indie)
- The third full-length from the Brisbane production partnership shows off the nonchalant skill they've developed. Peace & Quiet is as chill as the name suggests, but it's that same chill you find in the best of the Ghostly International roster: something smooth, underlaid with hidden complexity and united with an easy-going mastery. Instrumental jazz, blues and funk jams rise out of ambient and cheesy chillout to make a relaxation record you really don't have to feel guilty about enjoying. (Chris Cobcroft)

Kitchen's Floor: Sundowner (Single) (Eternal Soundcheck)
- Matt Kennedy continues to grow in my estimation. Two minutes of slow, brutish swagger with all the subtlety of a bull rhino. It's an ominous intro to the forthcoming album, Battle Of Brisbane. This is certainly charged with social and racial tension and that kind of dark fury that makes you stab your neighbour repeatedly in the guts. (Chris Cobcroft)

Marville: Fickle (Single) (Indie)
- An advance cut from the Brissie two-piece's forthcoming full-length. As loud, fuzzy, warm, sludgy and stoner as you would expect from a band that shares members with Bottlecock. (Chris Cobcroft)

Moses Gunn Collective: Mercy Mountain (Indie)
- Huge lashings of psych-glam. Luridly colourful and woozily soft focus. If you didn't live through the '70s or simply don't remember it, this might well be the soundtrack to forgetting it a second time round. (Chris Cobcroft)

Simi Lacroix: Sexual Attention (Single) (Indie)
- Anthemic '80's synth-pop to melt your heart and possibly your brain. If Eric Carmen is too far back for you to remember, then the syrupy sounds of Twin Shadow should provide a more contemporary touchstone. (Chris Cobcroft)

Simi Lacroix: Back In Your Arms (Single) (Indie)
- Who is Simi Lacroix? I’d wager that he’s a very sad, very dangerous person, living an atrocious life consumed by baseless nostalgia and pill-related mental degradation. All that bullshit is background noise though, considering the beatific, crystalline tones and gushing urgency of his new track, Back In Your Arms. Like a call for a long-lost lover in the night heard by no one, like a seagull sobbing silently as it sails through sky, like an airhorn in the desert, it’s a plaintive, redemptive plea for acceptance in the face of unexplained, yet totally warranted rejection. Whoever and wherever Simi Lacroix is, he can be safe in the knowledge that his music is touching frail hearts and healing disgusting open wounds. One can only pray. Because it’s far, far too late for him. (Joe Saxby)

Timothy Fairless: Plural (Unperceived)
- Plural is the kind of thing you can tell has been made with a lot of love and attention poured into it. It’s an engaging and admirable piece of work all the way through really, but no stronger is its gorgeousness than on third track Pollen, in which intertwining pianos and strings introduce these wonderful, uplifting melodies amid swirling ambience and crumbling sonic detritus. Listen for the warm pleasantness it will generate inside of you. (Joe Saxby)

These Guy: Coming Around (Single) (Indie)
- Local eclectic spirit These Guy continues to mix it up. This new single taken, I believe, from a forthcoming full-length, takes cues from the art-pop of Animal Collective and the EDM-pop of Jagwar Ma and meets somewhere in the middle, to lush effect. (Chris Cobcroft)

Thirteen Seventy: Bitter Dream (Indie)
- It's the warm, fuzzy heaviness of the guitars which really makes the melodic, alternative rock of local stalwarts Thireen Seventy stand out from the crowd. Bitter Dream is also an expansive record, clocking in at over an hour, the band make good use of the time to explore a variety of genres: soft, menacing alt-acoustic, melodic punk, shoegaze, post-rock and straight up alternative that'll remind you of what you actually like about Foo Fighters. (Chris Cobcroft)

Australian Artists:

Andras & Oscar: (I Know) What You Want (Chapter Music)
- Loungey beats man Andras Fox & avant-crooner Oscar Key Sung continue their fruitful partnership. When it sounds like this it's easy to see why. Simple, beautiful, deep house on the lead cut and some remixes of Look Back: Tornado Wallace's smooth nu-disco version paired with the absolute opposite in Zanibar Chanel's bouncy, willfully naff electro, sounding something like the hiphop of early 80's Afrika Bambaata. Neat little package. (Chris Cobcroft)

Asdasfr Bawd: Body Party (Remix) (Single) (Indie)
- Melbourne’s Asdasfr Bawd is definitely a producer get to watch. Not many turnt-up remixes of already pretty turnt-up songs are worth even a passing glance, but this is a radical experience from start to finish. It’s actually an improvement on the humid, stanky original, which seems to think that lagging behind the beat = SEX (sexiness evoked xtremely). The way the bass interacts and grooves along with the rest of the crazy business going on is purely infectious, and I love how it focuses right in on the phonetic silliness of the song’s title. (Joe Saxby)

Destiny 3000: 7" (RIP Society)
- Destiny 3000 fall pretty squarely into the now much-maligned dole-wave sound, but they don't deserve to be tarred with that brush. The all-girl group produce a brilliantly textured wall of guitar noise which is finely produced enough to allow the wispy focals to float through nonetheless. If you tore a shoegaze band up in a woodchipper it'd sound something like this and...whatever it makes you think of me...I think it sounds great. (Chris Cobcroft)

Dianas: Favourite Place (Single) (Indie)
- Another strong single from the Perth girls. Cool, almost cold, but for all that, forceful: almost as if post-punk and dream-pop were circling each other, closing in for the kill. There's a gothic splendour in it. (Chris Cobcroft)

Kučka: Unconditional EP (Midnight Feature / Inertia)
- Kučka has cultivated herself over the past while as one of the most fascinating voices in Australian electronic musics, and this EP is the perfect culmination of all that work. Vocally, she positively shreds her way through these tracks, but for the discerning headphone/beat enthusiast, immense pleasure can be derived from getting lost in her wigged-out, otherworldly instrumentals, the categorisation of which falls in a delightfully ambiguous zone somewhere between nu-age cloud-rap, and glittery, club-oriented beatscapes. (Joe Saxby)

Laptop Destroyer: ZZAAPP Beats Vol. 2 (ZZAAPP)
- Intoxicating, brutal beats straight out of Arnhem Land. Which is a sentence I of course anticipated writing at some point in my life. Has all the intensity and wit of stuff like Death Grips’ instrumentals, and for some reason reminds me of playing Tony Hawk as a boy and feeling like a total badass. (Joe Saxby)

Nutrition: Conditions (Indie)
- This sounds like the kind of dance music that would come out of Byron Bay, but without all the terrible psy-chill conotations. Epic, ambient techno with rustic, glitchy edges and very individual affectations, all of which make Nutrition a pretty unique voice. (Chris Cobcroft)

Pleasure Boys: The Bat IV (Single) (White Label)
- This is a sumptuous little tune that overflows with its own brand of simple, no-frills charm. Pleasure Boys apparently started off as a wedding band, and what’s cool is that, in a weird way, this actually makes sense. They take all the best parts of being accustomed to playing cheesy covers, like the over-excited vocals delivered from within a barely concealed smile, the jaunty, relentlessly boppable rhythms, and an overall good times aesthetic, and leave out the tiresome stuff that nightmares are made of. I can’t stress enough how nice this song is. (Joe Saxby)

She's The Driver: Kill That Sound (Indie)
- If time has passed for the former members of Violetine they're pretending they haven't noticed. Thickly textured alt-pop like it's 1995 and it's even more bittersweet than it used to be courtesy of the huge nostalgia wallop it now packs. (Chris Cobcroft)

Sui Zhen: Secretly Susan (Dot Dash / Remote Control)
- Southern songstress Sui Zhen continues in the vein of the cute, outsider synth-art-pop that has defined her career so far. Adorkable DIY awkwardness is smoothed over by a coat of reverb on tipsy lounge crooners, and slow dance beats wonkily misremember some romantic montage from a John Hughes movie. It's a date, Sui Zhen. (Chris Cobcroft)

Wave Racer ft. BABY: Flash Drive (Single) (Future Classic)
- Now for something almost repulsively sweet. *Take that as a warning.* I love this song because it knows it’s stupid, but regards this a mere symptom of its actual genius, and just keeps destroying the whole way through. See 1:35. (Joe Saxby)

Wireheads: Big Issues (Tenth Court)
- Don't let the dolewave ticker-sticker fool you, there's a lot going on in Wireheads new record. It snarls with punk menace but plays it off against upbeat pop. It's messy and all over the place, but only for effect, there's plenty of musical skill and diversity that allow the band to hit their targets bang on. Finally there's Dom Trimboli's iconic sung-spoken style, delivering ever-present wit, lifting Big Issues far above the shoulders of its contemporaries. (Chris Cobcroft)

New Zealand Artists:

Electric Wire Hustle: Brother Sun feat. Kimbra (Rodi Kirk & Aron Ottignon Version) (Single) (Loop / Bastard Jazz)
- Two of New Zealand's more interesting urban exports (Electric Wire Hustle and Kimbra) team up on an advance from the EWH's new EP. On this version not only does the neo-soul EWH get help from Kimbra but Rodi Kirk & Aron Ottingnon strip out a lot of the 'futurity' in favour of a fat, old-school disco vibe. It's the difference between good and great. (Chris Cobcroft)

Introverted Dancefloor: Take It High (Single) (Carpark)
- Another rollicking edm cut from the forthcoming record. It again recalls both Ruby Suns and Hot Chip and that's alright. (Chris Cobcroft)

Overseas Artists:

!!!: Freedom (Single) (Warp / Inertia)
- This is a super sick, pretty ferocious new banger from the professional Crazy Boi, Nic Offer. It starts off really slick and slow, and when everything inevitably finally falls together and goes nuts, it’s suddenly an unhinged hybrid of soul, house, and dance punk that only this guy could have pulled off. (Joe Saxby)

Deradoorian: The Expanding Flower Planet (Anticon / Red Eye)
- A fascinating solo record from the former Dirty Projector characterised by earthy tones, wigged-out vocal athleticism, and most importantly, extremely well-crafted songs. Psychedelic folk that knows its way around the ether, while also having strict, motorik groove. (Joe Saxby)

Dornik: Dornik (PMR / Caroline / Universal)
- The British r'n'b crooner with D'Angelo producer Russ Elevado for a record that joins those afro-retro-futurist sounds you've been hearing from the likes of Thundercat, Kendrick Lamar, FlyLo, and D'Angelo too. This is significantly less soulfully tortured than some of those and also connects to more contemporary r'n'b and its chill synth grooves. Dornik also has inflections that echo Prince and MJ; it's a pretty sweet recipe. (Chris Cobcroft)

Dr. Dre: Compton: A Soundtrack By Dr. Dre (Aftermath / Interscope / Universal)
- How does Dre keep doing it? Rap billionaire, tech mogul and chiselled nubian god. If it spoke to nothing else, Compton really shows off Dre's ability to get folks together and make them work. Rap's grandfolk team up with the young go-getters of today and Dre just watches over the who thing, nodding in time. This is far from Dre's best work and it's entirely unexpected, but this is still better than 90% of other things that'll be rapped up this year. (Chris Cobcroft)

FKA Twigs: M3LLI55X (Young Turks / Remote Control)
- You can't accuse pint-sized panther FKA Twigs of sitting on her paws. This surprise EP comes only a year after her first full-length and, not only that, it’s paired with a quarter-hour of impressively distinctive music videos. Her continued collaboration with midas-fingered producer Boots reprises that hi-contrast mix of fearsome beats and super-sweet r'n'b. If there's something that makes this collection really stand apart from her previous work, it's an even more intensive interrogation of ideas of sexual identity, made particularly evident when you watch the accompanying video. M3LLi55x is an easy cut above the largest part of today's ubiquitous r'n'b sounds. (Chris Cobcroft)

Golden Rules: Golden Ticket (Lex / Warner)
- The Brits are really backing these guys as the new Outkast and sometimes they do indeed tap into that weirdly wonderful crossover sound. Blues, jazz, funk and soul infused jams with deceptively lazy raps drawled over the top. On this expansive record some bits are better than others, but the good bits are really very good. (Chris Cobcroft)

HEALTH: DEATH MAGIC (Caroline)
- Noisy and abrasive, yet somehow considered and atmospheric, is the general vibe underlying HEALTH's music. After being metaphorically swept under the rug for the past six years - while making the incredible score to Rockstar's Max Payne 3 video game - LA's noise-pop connoisseurs are back at it with their third full-length. Now, more than ever, HEALTH are experimenting and flirting with their pop leanings. Previous album Get Color didn’t try to be even remotely accessible or melodically driven, but Death Magic is a welcome inverse to that equation. You can actually understand the vocals, even though they’re still submerged in that well-known, animalistic, grinding kind of L.A. noise rock. (Jake Wilton)

Heathered Pearls: Body Complex (Ghostly International)
- In a year that I’ve found to be *relatively* desolate in terms of captivating electronic music, Heathered Pearls delivers the best kind of surprise in his sophomore record, Body Complex. This LP is a truly magnificent piece of work that I think resembles something perilously close to total perfection. From its haunting, otherworldly opening moments, and all the way through, I can’t help but remain rooted to the spot. If you’re not going to listen to anything else on this godforsaken list, just make you sure you please listen to this. (Joe Saxby)

Hooton Tennis Club: Kathleen Sat On The Arm Of Her Favourite Chair (Single) (Heavenly)
- The carefree vibes + grooves are palpable on this breeze-driven power-pop jam from Liverpool’s Hooton Tennis Club. Nice like an inexpensive kebab on a chilly evening. (Joe Saxby)

Ibeyi: Exhibit Diaz (Single) (XL / Remote Control)
- The female, French-Cuban duo work their crossover magic on Jay Electronica's soulful original. Latin rhythms infect it with a weird new energy. As always, Ibeyi are never less than interesting. (Chris Cobcroft)

Lizzy Mercier Descloux: Press Color (Light In The Attic)
- This reissue of the legendary songstress’ debut solo album is a must-get for any person obsessed with late ’70s production, provocation, and obviously, French pop. I say “obsessed” because for those people, there’s no such thing as just “liking” something. It all becomes an obsession. Myself included. Bless. (Joe Saxby)

Mac Demarco: Another One (Spunk / Captured Tracks)
- You might not think the way I do, but Mac has surpassed himself here on this casual little mini-album. It’s not like a slam-bang hit record all the way through, but none of his actually are. This just houses his most nuanced, sensitive, and well-written songs to date. No Other Heart and Without Me, especially, are purely brilliant, and can, if you let them, provoke tears. (Joe Saxby)

Mild High Club: Undeniable (Single) (Stones Throw)
- Kind of like if Ariel Pink got the chance to front The Beatles. Which, now that I think about it, would be cool, but horrifying and upsetting. Can’t stop hearing this track, all the time. (Joe Saxby)

Omar Souleyman: Bahdeni Nami (Monkeytown)
- Omar Souleyman is a bit of a ridiculous guy in terms of the volume of his musical output, but as an extraterrestrial talent, he’s totally serious. Bahdeni Nami is, simply, more of his best, with Four Tet again at the helm. (Joe Saxby)

Shura: White Light (Single) (Universal)
- Smooth electro stylings from the London singer/producer with more than just a slight Human League vibe. Warm, delicious, and enjoyable. Like hot marshmallows. It makes you feel good. (Joe Saxby)

Sweet Baboo: The Boombox Ballads (Moshi Moshi / Mushroom)
- Stephen Black's latest gets a lot of orchestration courtesy of Paul Jones. It's a bit Van Dyke Parks, if he were to set to work on a Belle & Sebastian record. Same moseying pop-rock, same wry wit, now with a lush string section that brings a depth and emotion that's sometimes a bit scary. Impressive work. (Chris Cobcroft)

Young Thug: Pacifier (Single) (Atlantic / Warner)
- If you need any further proof that Young Thug is an insatiable genius with Satanic levels of talent who’s been beamed in from outer space, Pacifier is, like, it. (Joe Saxby)