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.

Hug is music for the small hours, when the world comes in and out of focus, a record that drifts through the mind’s open windows, carrying with it the sublime and resonant hush of a world at peace in its own unfolding. As warm and comforting as the name implies, Hug embraces you like an old friend, holding space for the warmth of the past, the uncertainty of the future, and the solace of the blossoming present.

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.

On paper, Foxx, whose own Metamatic remains a landmark of British electronic music, makes for an unlikely bedfellow for the minimalist composer. But Foxx had been listening closely: Budd’s 1984 album The Pearl had become a touchstone for his own thinking about sound and space. When they met, Foxx played Budd what he called “primitive imitations” of his music—sketches of where he imagined the sonic world of The Pearl might lead next.

Stunning psychedelic baroque pop meets Latin-influenced west coast jazz. The story of teenage sisters Wendy & Bonnie and their sublime 1969 record Genesis is one for the books, recorded on the Skye label of family friend and vibraphone extraordinaire Cal Tjader and Gábor Szabó. Brimming with gusto and the sisters’ youthful ambition yet confident and chilling sunshine pop harmonies, the duo’s lone album is a maturely stunning accomplishment on several fronts.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would sound like if Air recorded music on a white sand beach, look no further than Guazuncho’s latest album, Forraje. Hailing from Argentina, Guazuncho blurs the lines between chamamé, exotica, Latin jazz, and ambient pop to create the sonic equivalent of a subtropical daydream.

Minneapolis lifer Jim Blaha goes it alone on Hang From A Cloud, a raw, bedroom-recorded set of wistful garage-psych and punk songs that crackle with romantic desperation. From the breathy “Some New Day” to the furious, sotto voce anthems of “D.O.A.,” Blaha distills decades in the underground into something intimate, ferocious, and beautifully unvarnished.

At 80, Neil Young remains gloriously unfinished. Second Song, his latest with the Chrome Hearts, is a weathered, luminous meditation on memory, mortality, love, and the strange passage of time. With shimmering textures, warm harmonies, wandering tempos, and that unmistakably vulnerable voice, Young looks backward without quite letting go of the future. An elegiac, deeply human record from an artist still searching for the song.