For a band who are hyperconscious of their image and place in the music industry, Arcade Fire's official major-label debut is possibly their most accessible album yet.

Despite her critics' relentless efforts to discredit her as a musician and songwriter, Del Rey proves again that she controls the medium and the message of her music and creative expression.

Out on Virgin Records, Beth Ditto's powerful 'Fake Sugar' is the Album of the Week. 'The record not only shines on a light on her physical voice, but her lyrical voice in dealing with love, life, and where she stands as a person at this stage of creative existence,' writes Jill Riley.

Fleet Foxes' long awaited, much anticipated third album is their first in six years and is their most ambitious album to date.

Benjamin Booker has a great ability to make retro appreciation sound very modern. On his second album -- filled with brightly lit, rocking blues, soul, and gospel-inspired tunes -- Booker clearly is brimming over with new ideas and thoughts about the world we occupy.

Built on a theme of an imaginary, idealized Italy, Phoenix's sixth full-length, 'Ti Amo,' is an album that creates a mood. It envelops you in a state of nostalgia and longing for a better time and place, even if it only exists in your mind.

Lorde's second album is a clear statement of who she wants to be, and it showcases her distinctive mezzo-soprano range and her affinity for minimal beats informed by contemporary rap music. The outcome is alternative-pop perfected.

'Relaxer,' the third album from alt-J, is our Album of the Week. The new release 'proves to be a compelling record with plenty of intriguing rewards,' writes Mac Wilson.

'To listen to Chastity Brown,' writes Andrea Swensson, 'is to lose yourself completely in the sorrow, joy, yearning and wonderment of a hopeful voice that never stops searching; a voice so enormous and evocative that it seeps down past your skin and bones and settles right down into your soul.'

Harry Styles's authentically produced solo debut is likely to distance him from his former bandmates and could enable him to establish a credible, viable, long-term career as an artist who is both popular and critically important.