This week, I'll be continuing my gushing about this year's great music. Without further ado, here are five more great albums I listened to in 2015:

Everything Everything, "Get to Heaven"

"Get to Heaven" is bold from the very beginning but cuts its lyrical darkness with music that is powerfully enjoyable—some of the songs sound happy even when you look past lines that explore the rise of ISIL terrorism, corrupt politicians, suicide bombings and a general increase in global violence and paranoia. Lead vocalist Jonathan Higgs reportedly battled depression and medication side effects during the album's recording sessions, the stress of which added to the raw emotion of the writing and the sound. Anger, pain and regret come through every time he opens his mouth.

Kendrick Lamar, "To Pimp a Butterfly"

Kendrick Lamar opens his album with "Wesley's Theory," a profoundly cynical analysis of the modern music industry's "pimping" of black artists that sounds like it could have been pulled from a Parliament album in 1979. From there he only continues to merge his cutting-edge criticism with elements culled from his music's precursors and progenitors. "Get to Heaven" boldly tackles global violence, but "To Pimp a Butterfly" reels the focus in a bit and, like "Section.80" and "good kid, m.A.A.d. city," explores Lamar's point of view on very personal struggles—race, creative expression in the music industry, fame. At the same time, the album reclaims and puts back into racial and social context funk, jazz, hip-hop, afro-influenced beats and all of the other African-American music inventions that have been appropriated and made mainstream with time.

Jamie xx, "In Colour"

There are a couple of songs on the album that could be mistaken for work by The xx, but the majority of the music here is vastly different from his more famous project's minimalist pop. This is dance music that is closer to its underground electronic roots than radio-friendly EDM. Beats hit hard, ambient noise flows in and out, and half-comprehensible synth sounds loop just outside of easy listening territory. It's not harsh or abrasive, but it sounds like maybe it should be.

tricot, "A N D"

I almost got to see tricot, my favorite indie Japanese math rock girls' group live, but hurricane season made the trip to the venue too dangerous. I'm mad, too, because I'll probably never have another chance to go to one of their shows—not that it matters if they keep releasing albums that are this satisfying. Math rock is an obscure music genre that the layman hasn't heard of and gets a bad rap as a result—but tricot is easy to listen to, sounding almost like Paramore with more prog-rock-style instrument wankery. It's one of the most accessible math rock albums I can imagine, as well as perhaps a path for those who deem non-English music outside their comfort zone. The 47 minutes and change fly by at mach speed, and each song sounds like it could be a Frankenstein's monster mashup of five or seven different ones, but it works from start to finish.

Panda Bear, "Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper"

"Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper" will sound totally alien to anybody who has never listened to Panda Bear's music or any other Animal Collective work before and totally familiar to those who have. It's a miasma of psychedelic noise and Panda Bear's echoey, ethereal voice comes in from somewhere off in the distance and ties the scenes, sounds, and samples together. It's muddy, blurry and confusing but still comprehensible. And it's a beautiful ride, full of emotional highs and lows that finishes with a cathartic explosion of noise.