Ask The Night specializes in conjuring up classic Southern imagery that it both gothic and pastoral without coming across as needlessly sentimental.

In the end, despite my initial disappointment, Girls have created a really strong debut record that has many more positives than negatives. Being a pessimistic person, I allowed the not-so-great-moments to initially keep the focus of my attention, but in the end I came to realize how great a record this is.

Jana Hunter recently released a limited edition split 7” EP with her brother’s band Inoculist on one side and her own track on the other.

Despite some of the record’s peculiarities, Bonfires remains true to what we’ve come to expect from the band.

If you are over twenty five you have probably heard it before. But it is probably also been quite a long time since you have heard it done this well.

The quartet from Johannesburg and Soweto are equally influenced by rock legends such as Rush, Pink Floyd and Television, as they are traditional music of South African Mbaqanga, Kuti, and Bob Marley. This is not the fraternity funk of Vampire Weekend.

On Crash Love AFI leverages the best elements of its past albums, including the rhythm of punk, the fist pumping anthem sing-a-longs, hard-core intensity, and epic song constructions with big sweeping transitions and a huge sound.

Endgame sounds like 1989. No reason to make that sentence look pretty, the record stands on its own; it’s metallic, crisp and sounds like it’s played by people creating the standard.

While Devil is perhaps a little more folk than the Paisley Underground influenced dream pop of Sandoval’s yesteryear, longtime fans need not worry that she is heading in any radical new direction. The new material is a long overdue continuation of her very distinct slow-fuzz sound.

The big surprise isn’t that it is good, it’s that it is actually good enough to rival the strongest work on Alela Diane’s To Be Still.

Le Loup seem to thrive on the ability to make all of their ideas become a single song. They combine guitar folk and rock with an inclination to twist knobs and push buttons, bringing to mind potential band comparisons from some very different places.

With Sonic Boom, Kiss has done what most classic rock bands can just never get right: they made an album that not only sounds like their old records but, at times, outshines your fondest memories of these make up wearing seniors.