John Lucas

I like music.

Midlake
The Courage of Others
Want to thoroughly depress yourself? Put Midlake’s apocalyptic The Courage of Others on Repeat and hunker down with a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. When you finally pull yourself out of the fetal position, you may or may not feel inclined to do something about the mess we’re all in, but you’ll definitely have a new appreciation for doomsaying, Pentangle-inspired folk-rock.

Listen to "Rulers, Ruling All Things" by Midlake.

Die Antwoord
$O$
WTF. On every conceivable level.

Listen to "Evil Boy" by Die Antwoord.

Horse Feathers
Thistled Spring
The silken-voiced Justin Ringle makes acoustic music of hushed elegance that shimmers like the promise of spring to a world held in the dank grip of winter.

Listen to "Belly of June" by Horse Feathers.

The National
High Violet
The best thing about Matt Berninger is that he never claims to have any answers, but his lyrics pose some of the most profound questions in all of contemporary rock music. As for the rest of the National, the band of brothers has somehow managed the unique feat of becoming more delicately orchestrated while still injecting the songs with a pulse-quickening momentum that counters the frontman’s doubt with unshakable sonic certitude.

Listen to "Bloodbuzz Ohio" by the National.

Blonde Redhead
Penny Sparkle
The eighth album from New York–based stalwart Blonde Redhead showcases such a sublime melding of melodic art rock and dreamy electronica that you’d never know its birth was fraught with intense creative tension.

Listen to "Here Sometimes" by Blonde Redhead.

Autolux
Transit
Transit Autolux’s sharp-angled alt-noise is frayed-nerve raw but still beautifully spacious, and it also happens to boast some of the most understatedly powerful drumming I’ve heard all year.

Listen to "Supertoys [aka. Let it be Broken]" by Autolux.

Klaxons
Surfing the Void
What singer and lyricist Jamie Reynolds is on about most of the time is anyone’s guess, but his pseudometaphysical musings are admittedly a perfect match for Klaxons’ dense and driving space rock. If Syd Barrett had spent his youth reading Philip K. Dick novels, gobbling E, and trying to fuse Ziggy Stardust with the Shamen”¦ Uh, what was the question?

Listen to "Echoes" by Klaxons.

These New Puritans
Hidden
Before I heard Hidden, I never realized how much I desperately needed a record that combined post-dubstep industrial beats and postpunk attitude with brass figures and choral harmonies from some forgotten Benjamin Britten canticle. Throw in some Steve Reich–inspired percussion and the odd G-funk groove, and you’ve got an astonishingly ambitious piece of work. (The astonishing part being that it doesn’t sound like 43 minutes of pretentious bullshit.)

Listen to "Attack Music" by These New Puritans.

Avi Buffalo
Avi Buffalo
Nineteen-year-old Avi Buffalo frontman Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg isn’t quite a fully formed artist yet, but his angst-filled lyrics and occasionally off-the-rails guitar-playing are perfectly charming just as they are.

Listen to "What's In It For?" by Avi Buffalo.

Warpaint
The Fool
Remember that trippy dream you had? The one where Chan Marshall, Polly Jean Harvey, and Natasha Khan got together and smoked a bowl, then decided to play a bunch of Perfume Tree covers, only they were all too baked to remember how any of them went, so instead they just made a bunch of songs up on the spot? Yeah, that dream. Someone made an audio recording of it.

Listen to "Undertow" by Warpaint.