Featuring former DNA drummer Ikue Mori on drum machines, the guitars of punk savant Robert Quine and downtown NYC journeyman Marc Ribot, and the production of post-everything avant-garde impresario John Zorn, one might expect some kind of no wave splatterfest from this mid-90s joint. But Painted Desert is nothing of the sort. Instead, we have one of the missing links in the evolution of ambient country, an astonishing melding of skeletal machine rhythms and big sky guitars.

Horse Lords return with what may well be their strangest and prettiest album yet. Here the Baltimore-Berlin quartet adds Protestant hymn-singing, swamp boogie, early computer music and even robot funk to their signature brand of phase-shifting krautrock groove. It is an alluring, compelling mix that plays with themes of religious devotion and utopian longing. Fifteen years into their career, Horse Lords are still making some of the most radical, captivating music of our time.

Arigato is wide-open pastoral bliss. The natural extension of Happy End with a bit more of a singer-songwriter orientation, Kosaka pieces together what could be the finest example of American country rock through the lens of a Japanese perfectionism. Don’t let that fool you. The tunes are loose. They linger like a haze of humidity long after the sun has departed beneath the western horizon.

Released in the year of clashing sevens (1977), African Dub All-Mighty: Chapter Three captures Joe Gibbs and Errol Thompson—The Mighty Two—in their finest hour, mixing up a surreal and hypnotic set that still stands tall as a pillar of ’70s dub. Working from updated Treasure Isle and Studio One riddims, Thompson transforms each track into its own sonic chamber of mystery, where thunder, synths, cuckoo clocks, telephones, and doorbells point toward the future of dub while remaining deeply rooted in its past.

Recorded at the height of the Black Ark with Lee “Scratch” Perry at the controls and The Upsetters firing on all cylinders, Musical Bones gave legendary trombonist Vin Gordon the rare opportunity to step out of the backline and into the spotlight. Originally released in 1975 as a UK white-label pressing of just 300 copies, it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, becoming one of reggae’s great collector’s grails.

Spend a few minutes talking with Styrofoam Winos and it becomes obvious why Any River feels so effortless. There are no fixed roles, no designated leader, and very little interest in conventional band hierarchy.

With a resume boasting intermittent stints with MV & EE and heading up the brilliant Humito label, Rafi Bookstaber is an absolute maestro of mellow. Hanging out somewhere between the Croz’s If I Could Only Remember My Name and Panda Bear’s Young Prayer, this is music to float in that will carry you safely to the other side of the season.

Following the timeless Reset, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom return with A ? of WHEN, another playful act of musical curiosity. Steel drums, pedal steel, and harp loops from Mary Lattimore drift through an ever-shifting collage of samples and melodies, revealing themselves like sonic subtext. Optimistic without being naïve, it’s a record that meets experimentation with open ears and a sense of wonder.