Wilco (the Album) finds this great American band getting deeper into . . . Wilco! Okay, I joke, but they do open with “Wilco (the Song),” on which Jeff Tweedy & Co. simply insert their band’s name into an emotionally reassuring (lyrically and otherwise) tune. From there, it’s Wilco qua Wilco: structurally immaculate roots-kissed rock and pop songs that are simultaneously tight and loose without contradictions. The group goes full-on 70s-George Harrison on “You Never Know,” an easygoing boogie that’s likely to become an epic show-closer onstage. And Wilco fans are sure to love Tweedy’s loving martyr-play on “I’ll Fight.” Me, I just love hearing guitarist Nels Cline—one of the best there is—moving from burning melody to scorching noise as the steady “Bull Black Nova” builds to eruption. (M.L. Thrope)

One of Gertrude Stein’s keenest quotes: “For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.” The quote feels right for Cass McCombs; despite four affecting and unwaveringly excellent records this decade, McCombs seems to have glided at low altitude across the indie singer-songwriter airspace. But something is different upon the release of Catacombs. Enough people (especially fellow musicians) have been talking about him for enough time that it just feels like he’s arrived at the tipping point to which Ms. Stein refers. Of course, none of this would matter to him; Catacombs finds this poetic Lionkiller older and wiser, examining and imagining in his lighter-than-air, heavier-than-life voice over perfectly uncluttered pop-guitar arrangements, tinted with pedal steel. Nothing here is quite so sublime as his last album’s “Deseret,” but “Dreams-Come-True Girl,” with a stunning guest turn by cult actor-singer Karen Black, comes close. (She’s in the video too!) As an artist, the spectral McCombs seems to exist outside of time; in the world of fame and records bought and sold, his time is . . . now! (M.L. Thrope)

Returning quickly after his Vignetting the Compost album, the UK artist known as Bibio—a.k.a. Stephen James Wilkinson—jumps from Mush to Warp (that was fun to write) and spreads his electronic wings wide, adding fo’-real beats as he offers up a more rounded mix of folk-flavored pastorals, vanilla-soulful vocals, twinkling soundscapes, and the colorfully jagged glitchy laptopisms that have sort of become Warp’s stock in trade. While his music is all based in electronics, it’s when Bibio homes in on traditional songcraft that he’s at his best: “Haikuesque (When She Laughs),” the lightly funky “Lovers’ Carvings” and “The Palm of Your Wave” are the songs you’ll remember (and fairydust your mixtapes with), while the corkscrewy “S’vive” and “Fire Ant,” as well as the Curtis Mayfield-imitating “Jealous of Roses,” provide sharp counterpoint. (M.L. Thrope)

Brooklyn’s own Julianna Barwick is someone you’ll want to get to know if you favor dreamy ambience of Brian Eno and even Cocteau Twins derivation. The talented Barwick has an uncommon angle though: the EP Florine, like her self-released debut, Sanguine, is composed almost exclusively from her vocals, looped and treated and layered like . . . like . . . honey-glazed baklava. Okay — that was corny, sorry. But if Barwick’s methods are becoming more loosely familiar in this age of home computers and feckless, interminable “experimentation,” her vision is unique and worthy, and her (presumedly) wordless vocalizations, evoking angels on high and a life free of peril or fear, would thrill someone like J.S. Bach. You say I’m just talking; I say you haven’t heard Florine, bub. (M.L. Thrope)

Sounding every bit like the rural folk outfit from Down South that they are, Bowerbirds make their debut for the well-respected Dead Oceans label with the very likable Upper Air. Phil Moore handles most of the vocals (and all of the acoustic-guitar strumming), though it’s the songs where partner and accordionist Beth Tacular (nyuk-nyuk!) joins on vocals — like “Beneath Your Tree” and “Ghost Life,” which hover in the middle of the record — that reach the stratospheres alluded to in the album’s title. Moore and Tacular have the unblemished perspective that surely comes with . . . not living in NYC! Which is necessary to envision the not-perfect but much-more-potentially idyllic world that populates their songs, which is probably why this simple group sounds so charming to these ears. Could be a sleeper hit in your life, too. (Simon)

So straightforward they don’t even bother with an apostrophe in their name, Tennessee trio Those Darlins arrive years after anyone was really excited by “cowpunk.” No matter: these raucous ladies personify that old scene, meeting at the crossroads of indie rock and Southern-fried country, bringing the sounds together with prototypical punk abandon and blowing new fire into dusty tropes. What comes through more on record than onstage, strangely enough, is the way tangential styles fleck the fringes of the band’s sound, from rockabilly to Appalachian folk (Nikki Darlin plays baritone uke, by the by). And this group is a real unit: no lead singers here, with the three sticking in close harmony most of the way. Hide your whiskey and menfolk! (M.L. Thrope)

If you think you know Moby, Emine’s favorite “techno“ nerd, you should give this album a chance. Far from Moby’s past, license-every-note-possible affairs, Wait for Me is a gracefully subdued set of dream-pop songs for these end-seeming times, featuring six different lovely sounding female singers (with Moby himself taking the microphone on just one). Modern soul star Leela James is the recognizable name, but the best turn goes to Melody Zimmer on “JLTF,” a sublimely romantic tune that should get a rise (if that’s the appropriate phrase) out of all you old Mazzy Star fans. (Mark)

All properly calibrated heads are pointing their magnetic true-norths toward Kesamaan Lapset, both the album and its title track. Head of the surpassingly cool and adventurous Finnish label Fonal, Sami Sänpäkkilä — a.k.a. Es — hits a high-sky mark in psychedelic stillness with the 20-minute-plus “Kesamaan Lapset,” one of those pieces of music that you somehow just find yourself within. Like, it begins, and after a short while you realize: It’s all around you. In a good way, like being surrounded by a just-so blend of oxygen and nitrogen, with trace amounts of argon and other gases, except it’s all begun to take on color, and you see it in its life-preserving essence, down to the atom. The shorter piece that follows and closes the album (there are five songs in all), “Haamut Sun Sydamesta,” makes for a perfect coda. Another awesome offering from this artist and label. (M.L. Thrope)