Josephine Davies The Celtic Wheel Of The Year Suite

Songs from the Street, the boxed set that stretches back to "Sesame Street's" 1969 debut, is the kids' record of the year, if not the decade: Big Bird and the gang might've pulled it off themselves–for a crew of fix-it store workers, shopkeeps, and goofball monsters, the talent quotient's off the charts–but when you've got this many names to drop, they've got to land somewhere. What impresses most in three discs is the lack of a single thud. Cab Calloway, Pete Seeger, and James Taylor mosey in on disc one; Johnny Cash, BB King, and Tony Bennett take seats on the stoop for disc two; and the Dixie Chicks, Gloria Estefan, and R.E.M. raise the brownstone roof on disc three–and that's leaving out stars like Lena Horne, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Trisha Yearwood. When it comes to inspiring preschoolers and their parents to sing the praises of rubber duckies, bein' green, and the people in their neighborhood; "The Street" gets busy. –Tammy La Gorce

On 2012's bold A Church That Fits Our Needs, Lost in the Trees mastermind Ari Picker mourned the suicide of his mother with equal parts grace, empathy, and fury, effectively turning what could have been the biggest downer of the year into a surprisingly stirring and transformative experience that found the sweet spot between meticulous, music school artistry, and baseline, heart on the sleeve humanity. 2014's Past Life finds Picker and the rest of the Chapel Hill orchestral pop outfit dialing back the bombastic melancholia in favor of a more refined, almost monastic approach to songcraft that introduces a few stray rays of sunlight into the room without disrupting the glow of the candelabra.

An "intriguing, insightful" look at how algorithms and robots could lead to social unrest—and how to avoid it (The Economist, Books of the Year).