4. RADIOHEAD “A Moon Shaped Pool” (XL) The sounds are often gauzy and pretty on Radiohead’s long-gestating “A Moon Shaped Pool”: bell tones, hovering vocals, shimmery reverberating keyboards, string arrangements. But that’s no protection at all against the malaise that fills the songs. Gazing at demagoguery, environmental ruin and intimate betrayal, Thom Yorke croons threnodies, not lullabies. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)

5. LEONARD COHEN “You Want It Darker” (Columbia) Mr. Cohen’s entire catalog was, in a way, a mediation on love, death and spirituality. His last album remained somber and sly, still pithy and still skeptical about both the human and the divine; it was also attentive to musical detail. Mr. Cohen’s sepulchral, deadpan intonation is set within angelic voices, Gypsy violins and often an organ that can be churchy or bluesy; each verse could be last words. (Read the appraisal | Listen to the Popcast)

6. BON IVER “22, a Million” (Jagjaguwar) Justin Vernon set the homespun aside for his third album as Bon Iver. It applies Auto-Tune and other gadgetry; it unleashes samples and distortion; it tucks phalanxes of overdubbed saxophones and backup vocals into its mix. And its songs take the cryptic introspection of his previous work into even more convoluted realms. Yet somehow, something comes through all the multitracking: a yearning, a compulsion to explore, a vulnerable heart within. (Read the review | Read the interview)

7. MARGARET GLASPY “Emotions and Math” (ATO) Ms. Glaspy’s stubborn songs need nothing more than drums, bass and her own voice and electric guitar. Her sinewy music finds an intersection of roots-rock and indie grunge, as she sings, mostly, about relationships in various states of misapprehension and unequal expectations. Her voice wraps her lyrics in burlap: flexible, sturdy and a little rough to the touch.

8. ANOHNI “Hopelessness” (Secretly Canadian) The intent is vociferously political in this set of songs by Anohni, previously known as Antony Hegarty. Her voice remains arresting and androgynous, while the perspective, often, is dystopian and blatantly ironic: calling down a drone bombing, welcoming constant surveillance and looking forward to boiling oceans and burning forests. Anohni trades the chamber-pop of Antony and the Johnstons for caustic, arresting electronica — veering between stark and vertiginous — produced with Hudson Hawke and Oneohtrix Point Never. It’s not exactly dance music, but it pushes hard. (Read the interview | Read the live review)