“Top 40 synth sounds from a few years ago but with more reverb on the vocals: indie in 2k14. No thank you.” This recent tweet from Vampire Weekend soundmaster Rostam Batmanglij, despite being a bit rude and superficial, isn’t an uncommon view among listeners these days. It’s a criticism that’s been unfairly lobbed at acts like CHVRCHES, M83, and HAIM, and one that assumes all pop music is bad music. Enter Zola Jesus’ fifth album Taiga, a moving piece that will change this conversation. There’s no denying that the song structures of classic radio pop litter this album, and that Zola Jesus, real name Nika Roza Danilova, sounds like she’s beckoning from inside an echo chamber. But even with the lackluster, nature-exploring narrative throughout, Taiga is far more enveloping and dramatic than a commercial pop album. It’s a cinematic approach to a familiar template, and it’s incredibly striking and beautiful despite its flaws.

Taiga seems to find a specific precedent in Danilova’s guest appearance on M83’s 2011 track “Intro”, possibly her best-known song to date despite not being hers. The film-like spectacle and overwhelming rush of M83’s best work provides an affecting, entrapping cornerstone for this album’s production; hell, it sounds like M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez produced these tracks. Lead single and album highlight “Dangerous Days” is particularly guilty of this sin, but the same traits that recall M83 also ensure that the hairs on attentive listeners’ spines will stand straight up. “Lawless”, another top track, also benefits from this treatment, as its choral strings and mountainous beckon, which could sound cheesy in the wrong hands (and, honestly, almost do here), instead skyrocket towards some intensely tall target that they somehow successfully reach.

Danilova takes risk after risk here, walking the paper-thin line between near-artless radio fodder and beautifully composed, deeply moving synthpop across eleven tracks in forty-two minutes. Where her former strain of Gothic pop dealt in idiosyncratic restraint, Taiga instead pounds forward forcefully, taking chances on some rough stakes. “Hunger” clomps along menacingly, with its shifting percussion and acute synth spikes drastically spicing up its standard pop form. “Nail” is approximately every mainstream pop ballad distilled into a more chilling, primal form; “Ego” too reads like an overused formula given new, meaningful life. These are very calculated risks: Danilova’s tightrope walk between vapid and intense is deft, at times almost scary.

And this is all thanks in no small part to her incredible voice. Listening to the elementary descriptions on “Hollow”, the slightly bereft words of “Dust”, or the weird lecture of “Long Way Down”, it’s clear that few other voices could actually make these lyrics tolerable. Danilova has such an all-consuming, vital, vast, gorgeous voice that she could say anything not outrightly offensive or crazy and still sound fierce. Her roar only further enhances the sweeping choruses of songs like “Dangerous Days” and “Hunger”, both of which are guilty of boasting some of the more commonplace poetry of recent tunes. It’s interesting that Taiga works by sacrificing lyrical quality at the benefit of vocal expansiveness; it’s bound to infuriate listeners in line with Rostam Batmanglij’s philosophy, but with a voice this drastic and urgent, who needs a deeper, possibly pretentious meaning?

Yet there’s one moment here where Danilova’s songwriting is bound to please all camps. This song is “Go (Blank Sea)”, Taiga‘s second single. An immaculately crafted work of synthpop introspection, its lyrics depict something more universal than the often somewhat failed connection to nature pervading the album: a desire to escape, to be alone. Here, Danilova goes “downtown/where they don’t/know [her] name”, finally freeing herself from the forest which Taiga is named after (it’s Russian for “boreal forest”). It’s a theme anyone can relate to, and it’s not disguised in bourgeois metaphors or imagery. It’s also interesting that her words and sounds succeed most outrightly when she ventures forth from the very theme of her album (the forest and nature), with a supreme, omnipresent chorus that only the most sour of ears could deny.

And sour ears will surely deny Taiga; as established here, there’s a few small reasons to. In light of these oddities, it’s all the more shocking that this album is so unforgettable, so piercing, so righteous. The music is so tremendous that its obvious weaknesses and risks simply fall to the wayside. That a voice and some synths can still do this in an era where Top 40 songs instead use these tools for generic money-making tunes is a testament to something even larger than a boreal forest.

Phantogram’s career to date has proven that an artist’s musical approaches can be scattershot and haphazard without coming off messy or amateurish. Their debut LP Eyelid Movies dabbled in a wide range of styles: faintly dark, electro-tinged dream pop, terrifying, urgent, 90s-style hip-hop, and contemplative yet forceful indie rock all received equal space on this album. Follow-up EP Nightlife demonstrated the duo’s proficiency in even more modes: eerie acoustic hymns, distant electropop, and dreamy, stadium-oriented rock all appeared within. However, the band’s second full-length and first in five years, Voices, sees Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter ditching the stylistic indecision of their past releases, resulting in their most consistent work yet. Although such a decision might plague the band’s fluctuating sound with sameness, these two cleverly avoid this problem by delving further into the darkness and sexiness their catalog had previously only hinted at.

From the get-go, though, it’s not entirely obvious that Voices marks any new territory for this duo. Opener “Nothing But Trouble” explores the same musical motifs and vocal methods employed on Eyelid Movies highlights “Mouthful of Diamonds” and “As Far A I Can See”, but this is certainly not a bad thing. Acting as a gateway between Phantogram’s former doings and their newer ways, it provides a proper segue into newer terrain, leading directly into the sensual moodiness of “Black Out Days.” Constructed upon ominous synths and thrilling vocal loops courtesy of Bartel, this song begins Voices‘ journey into more affecting, lust-speckled themes, somewhat uncharted territory for these two. Elsewhere, the deceivingly-titled “Bill Murray” exudes warmth and sensuality despite the murky, bleak synth crests forming its core; “Howling at the Moon” employs Western-tinged guitars and haunting synths to achieve an aching, evocative synthpop tune. The chorus’ main lyric of “at night I crawl and howl at the moon” can easily be mistaken for “at night I cry and howl at the moon”; in fact, maybe that’s what the words really say — it can be hard to distinguish through the flickering percussion, background howls (no coincidence), and longing guitars. Regardless, it’s downright afflicting since Bartel’s voice is so flexible.

Although Bartel usually takes the vocal lead on most of these songs, Carter gets his fair share of time front-and-center. This is a continued trend — Eyelid Movies‘ “Running from the Cops” and Nightlife‘s “Turning Into Stone” feature Carter on vocals, but Voices marks what’s possibly the best use of his vocals yet. On “I Don’t Blame You”, Carter alternates between monotone storytelling in the verses and skyward, longing tones in the chorus. The bare instrumental composition of the verses — rhythmic, repeating percussion, background synth hum, muted brass samples — perfectly contrasts the explosive chorus, its synths and percussion both accentuated to far greater heights. It’s arguably Phantogram’s best tune with Carter as frontman to date, although Voices‘ sparkling, heartbreaking “Never Going Home” could also qualify for this title. “If this is love/I’m never going home,” emotes Carter during this song’s chorus, and though the sentiment may be ordinary, his pleading delivery makes it fully believable.

Preceding the somewhat introverted dynamics of “Never Going Home” is the heaviest, most adrenaline-rushing song on Voices. “Fall in Love”, released as the album’s first single way back in December of last year, proves to be Voices‘ strongest track despite how familiar it feels by now. Synthetic strings unassumingly open the song, but quickly pave the way for huge synth blasts, slamming percussion, and digitized oohs and aahs. These elements disappear quickly as Bartel croons the first verse, but reemerge thereafter as the foundation of the song’s absolutely giant chorus, in which the background voices strikingly underpin Bartel’s cries of “You were fallin’/I’m sorry.” Its bridge contains a contender for Phantogram’s most disturbing lyric yet: “The lights/on my face ate away my smile,” laments Bartel, adding more ghostly feelings to this already eerie track.

“Could it be that I’m/falling apart?” asks Bartel during the bridge of “Fall in Love”, yet, if anything, Voices implies that Phantogram are just coming together. As Phantogram’s darkest, steamiest, most cohesive effort to date, Voices establishes that Phantogram’s career has not been a series of flukes, of disparate ideas that just happen to click. Here, they’ve channeled their varied ideas into a document that speaks to their strengths like never before.

Every week, the online music magazine Stereogum publishes a list of the week’s five best songs. Being the integral component of the hype machine that they are, Stereogum often tops the list with a new song by a well-established act, so when Gardens & Villa’s “Bullet Train” topped this list on November 22 of last year — ahead of psychedelic buzzboys Temples — it came as somewhat of a surprise. It’s likely that many readers were unaware of Gardens & Villa before this list was released, but those who actually took the time to listen to “Bullet Train” were equally likely to feel excitement upon discovering a great new song from a rising group. “Bullet Train” is certainly a standout on this outfit’s sophomore effort, Dunes, but that’s a tough label to assign, since every track shines so brightly.

Dunes begins with “Domino”, a pretty synthpop tune that lightly dips its toes into chillwave’s summer of 2009. Subsequent track “Colony Glen”, the first track released from this album, further cements Gardens & Villa’s fascination with thick synthetic pulses, and displays vocalist Chris Lynch’s uncanny ability to meld his voice into an imitation of James Mercer’s. This similarity, in combination with the track’s eerie electronic elements, absolutely screams Broken Bells (who, coincidentally, will be releasing their sophomore effort After the Disco on the same day as G&V will release Dunes, also their sophomore effort). “Bullet Train” continues the fun, and combines the chillwave leanings and Broken Bells reverence of its two preceding songs.

However, despite Dunes‘ excellent opening triforce, it’s not until fourth track “Chrysanthemums” that Gardens & Villa truly come into their own. What may damn well be a faded recording of a flute loops around deep pianos, computer-programmed clicks, and Lynch’s earnest voice, which reaches nearly harrowing heights in its chorus. “Give back your love,” coo Lynch and a female backing vocalist at the chorus’ end, providing a perfect emotional segway into this track’s flowering (pun intended, although there’s no better description) second verse. It’s Dunes‘ best example of how this band’s songwriting has expanded into an emotionally potent force.

Of course, Gardens & Villa’s sounds wouldn’t ache so brilliantly without DFA co-founder Tim Goldsworthy’s expert production. Goldsworthy’s presence brightens G&V’s sound considerably, and, in the process, provides it with optimism that wasn’t always present in the band’s past works. Whereas older tunes like “Black Hills” and its B-side “Orange Blossom” occupy spacious, somewhat downbeat environments, Dunes is far perkier, its synths blaring colorfully rather than defeatedly. A great example is the Holy Ghost-esque tune “Avalanche”, whose dark undertones are very well-concealed by its lucid guitar notes, pumping bassline, and transcendent synths. The flow and hue of these synths, as well as of those on “Thunder Glove”, are surely Goldsworthy’s contributions, his dance-punk background bleeding directly into these tracks.

It’s hard to pick out flaws from such a strong album, but if Dunes makes just one mistake, it’s that its final track feels like filler. “Love Theme” is a short (one and a half minutes) ambient piece that lacks percussion, focusing on its two or three computer-programmed synth parts. Although ambient music can be thoroughly moving, “Theme” underwhelms as the album’s final moment; an introverted track that still skirts the boundaries of synthpop — something very similar to “Minnesota” — might have provided a more appropriate ending for such an exciting album. But really, degrading Dunes for a brief sidestep is like throwing our your favorite sweater when a millimeter-sized hole forms somewhere near its bottom; it’s cutting off the nose to spite the face. Dunes is an excellent listen over its not-quite-forty minutes, an album on which most tracks could easily top Songs of the Week lists.