Devendra Banhart returns with Ma, perhaps the multi-disciplinary artists most fully realized work to date.

Last year, Sandro Perri returned with In Another Life, his first proper long-player in the better part of a decade, and a self-proclaimed experiment in “infinite songwriting.” Now Perri has turned around with something of a companion piece: an extension of his immeasurable pop sensibilities in the form of an album entitled Soft Landing.

Sheathed in obscurity following its 1972 release in Italy, Peace on You – the sole long-player from Ghana’s Mack Porter – is a true outlier gem of blues, soul, and psychedelic rock. With its dramatic David Axelrod-esque arrangements and Porter’s blurry, mirage-like lines between Hendrix soul and doomy Sabbath riffs, the record exists on a plane of rarity entirely its own.

Tinariwen’s eighth album, “Amadjar,” was conceived on the road. Following an appearance Taragalte Festival in the Moroccan Sahara, the group traveled to Mauritania trailed by their French production team, in a camper van. Songs were put together during this road trip in a traditional Tamasheq manner, built up via conversations and playing around campfires.

The album that keeps on giving – Shintaro Sakamoto’s 2011 debut, How To Live With A Phantom. Following his two decade involvement with Japanese psych-rockers Yura Yura Teikoku, Sakamoto eased into second gear with Phantom, assembling a heady quilt with nods to euro-lounge, exotica, funk and 70s crystalline pop.

June 14th marked the return of Bill Callahan, via his latest record — the double lp, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest. One of our favorite listens this year, we asked singer/songwriter Jerry David DeCicca to catch up with the artist on our behalf as they embarked a short west coast tour together. Their conversation can be read, here …

The second song released from her upcoming lp Like the River Loves the Sea, Joan Shelley’s “Cycle,” feels suspended in mid-air, a tale of a romance that keeps finding back itself where it started. “The best music would be a conversation with the divine…” says Shelley. “These songs are partly that conversation, at times through the lens of lovers.”

The songwriting vehicle of Erin Birgy, Mega Bog bathes in the multiplicity of the human condition via an ever-eccentric blend of oblique pop experimentalism. Anchored by Birgy’s ethereal yet fixed vocals, sonically, the project leans as deftly into Badalamenti-esque jazz-scapes as it does biting, angular art-rock.