Antony And The Johnsons

Joan Wasser spent most of the '90s and 2000s playing with everyone from the Dambuilders to Antony and the Johnsons to Jeff Buckley (with whom she was involved when he died), but of all the projects she's been involved in, Joan As Police Woman is the the finest. Real Life seems like an immediately brilliant debut, but, as is usually the case, years of experience went into it.

It is a mathematical law: every ten years, a singer from England named Anna releases a first album as a document of her times. In 2011, it was Anna Calvi.

Majke Voss Romme, the Danish singer/songwriter operating the gears behind the curtain of Copenhagen's Broken Twin, has a voice that perfectly (and sonorously) evokes the Old English word uhtceare, which means to "lie awake before dawn worrying." It's both a balm and a tinderbox, delivering bad news soulfully and slivers of hope with great caution, and when paired with equally austere instrumentation, which consists largely of piano, electric guitar, and the occasional courtly/processional thrum of a single drum, it carries with it the weight of the world.