It’s been a long and very busy three years since the xx’s debut album made them global indie stars. I could fill this entire page (or um, "page") just listing where their songs have gone, who they’ve remixed and produced and shared stages with since 2009. Not gonna do that though, that’s what the Internet is for—and we’re here to discuss the sumptuous and minimal follow-up, Coexist, on which the trio (fourth member Baria Qureshi and the remaining three split during touring after the release of the debut) wisely stick to refining and buffing the unmistakable sound of the first album, that slinky quasi-R&B synth-pop that seems to always be both recoiling a bit and staring out at the world, wide-eyed from underneath a dark hoodie. Any of the 11 songs on Coexist could be pulled out and cited as exemplary of their style; I’ll start with "Sunset," with its muffled thump of a beat hopscotching with a clicking snare a level below the traded-off vocals of Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim (these people have spies’ name—the other is Jamie xx, come on!), who also share songwriting duties on the album. It’s spare and haunted, yet the beat propels it along the nocturnal periphery of the dancefloor. Immediately after comes "Missing," with Sim in the lead and Madley Croft providing the most aching backing, wisps of a cry that cascade upward into the night air. "Fiction" comes closest to conventionality, a steady beat and one-finger guitar pattern tracing the outline of a heartbreak. The sound and mood are unbroken, Coexist exists as a solid piece. Peerless stylists, the xx will spirit you away and back again.

If you think about it, this album was kind of inevitable. Annie Clark of St. Vincent, just a few albums into her own very successful career, is tracing an idiosyncratic art-pop path that resembles David Byrne’s, at least in terms of independence, playfulness and creativity. On Love This Giant, they really mesh their work—songwriting, lead vocals, call and response—and it feels like so much more than a you do your thing, I’ll do mine and we’ll put them together routine. "Lazarus" opens with soft burst of horns before Clark quickly sets a vocal melody, and directs the rhythm thusly as well. Byrne comes in shortly, and together they sketch the life of the toiling, weary titular character, as the beat overwrites what they’ve set down; it’s a work song, of a sort. Horns are everywhere here, Love This Giant is not a rock album; "Weekend in the Dust" puts Clark up front and, as she ducks in and out of the swooping horn arrangements, what comes out sounds like a twisted Tom Tom Club construct. The staggered rhythm of "The Forest Awakes" seems to resemble a great massed organism rising to life, but Clark is such a coercive, powerful presence that soon the forest capitulates, and she floats atop the trees in perhaps her strongest and most nuanced vocal turn on the album. Turns and pivots are everywhere—this is art-pop, after all, as purveyed by its leading lights of different generations. But the softest, straightest moment closes the record, "Outside of Space and Time," where Byrne and Vincent make sweet harmonizing for clever fans to hold hands to.

John Dwyer & Co. included "EP" in the title, yet this 10-song set comes in at over 36 minutes total—well within LP range. But at the moment I’m too busy to dwell on that—trying to type coherently while jumping around the room to opening cut "Wax Face," a determined stomper replete with everything that’s made this band a Sound Fix staple for years: chugging bass, ripping guitars, a beat that doesn’t know how to quit and Dwyer’s high-toned yelps and croons. Oh my god, it’s Thee Oh Sees y’all! Look, we can prove it—just listen to "Flood’s New Light"! Who makes noises like that and can make you dance around too? Nobody but these guys and gals. Dig the total pub-rock breakdown in this jam too. So, Putrifiers II EP (which, again, is an LP) is classic Oh Sees—so what’s different? Only that the band continues to upgrade their songwriting and arranging, slowly incorporating an increased understanding of dynamics and space: Both the title track and "Will We Be Scared?" are longer, slower jams that still come off as lean and fun. "Lupine Dominus" (like that title) is a humming jolt of restrained tension, calling to mind some of the best work of Clinic, if they bent more toward the garage side of the street. This is exactly what you want out of bands with style—to slowly incorporate some new stuff without abandoning any of the old.

Band mellows with age and experience—it happens to many of our favorites, and it’s usually greeted with disdain by longtime fans. But is it always a bad thing? Witness Danish transplants the Raveonettes, a sturdy duo now arriving at album number six. Observator is hardly a slight affair, yet the band’s slight softening-around-the-edges (many of which had been jagged for years) has done wonders for their songs. All of the Raveonettes’ trademark reverb and echo is intact on "Downtown," yet the song is a brilliant updating of the C86 indie-pop scene of the UK, with Sharin Foo’s vocals out front and Sune Rose Wagner trailing her like a shadow. It’s gorgeous, and it comes in the middle of a particularly excellent three-song jag in the album’s second half; the following "You Hit Me (I’m Down)" foregrounds an affecting haunt that sounds exquisitely of a piece with summer’s end, while the preceding "She Owns the Streets"—let’s just say it lives up to the coolness of its name. The album opens with acoustic strumming and twined vocals—a real singalong, arm-around-your-mate vibe on "Young and Cold," almost campfire-folksy, if not for all that glassy reverb on the vox. "Observations" surfs along a descending minor-key wave, tweaking goosebumps with its piano backing and—oh, those wailing guitars hit like fangs. Another great album by a band that’s never disappointed.

Sublime musicianship and atmospheric songwriting have characterized Calexico since the band’s beginnings more than 15 years ago. Out of the desert Southwest, a region that lent the band its name and which in turn the duo of Joey Burns and John Convertino mapped and animated in their songs, Calexico has long since gone global, winning a cult of fans in Spain, the UK and elsewhere. Algiers offers another dozen evocative tunes from these humble masters, with international flavors flitting through spare, dramatic folk-rock songs that sound like they come from nowhere and everywhere. "Puerto" features some virtuosic quasi-flamenco guitar and percussion, Burns’s sweet voice directing the tune through explosive arrangements of horns and melody. "Sinner in the Sea" is classic Calexico—they are storytellers first and foremost, from the characters that come to life in their lyrics down into every note and silence, and this song rages up, with Burns hitting a higher register with more force than I’ve ever heard before. That said, it’s true that the band does not depart from its standard toolkit here; all that Algiers is is simply a great Calexico album. (Is that so wrong?) "Fortune Teller" almost conjures a faint whiff of the Shins’ classic tune "New Slang," kind of like what that song could have been in a different universe where songs are about other people, not oneself (heh). "Para" features a pairing of steel guitar and soft horns that’s damn near ecstatic. And that kind of uprushing swell of emotion seems to be a very common side-effect of listening to Calexico.