For those of us already pining for the follow-up to Robyn’s amazing Body Talk albums, Icona Pop is here to whet our appetites with some of the finest Swedish pop tracks released this year. Patrick Berger (the man behind Robyn’s massive “Dancing On My own”) produces “Manners”, the breakout single. The tracks are brash and pulsating, and vocally the girls evoke the anthemic tones of fellow female duo Tegan & Sara, but you’ll swear that they brought Karin Andersson in to sing back-up here and there. I’m eager for a proper LP from them.

You’ve heard it by now, so I won’t go into detail about it, but this is just a great debut effort. I will say that Abel Tesfaye has, to me, one of the most iconic new voices this side of the aughts, and his brutally honest depiction of a lifestyle that isn’t always as glamorous as it seems has an undeniably sharp edge, yet remains refreshingly heartfelt. I felt like a total bad-ass The first time I heard the transition from the title track into the menacing “Glass Table Girls”, and I am definitely not a total bad-ass. So. There’s that.

If you like GusGus already, you know that this is their best album in a long time, if not ever. If you don’t like GusGus already, or if you don’t know them, this is a great introduction. Imagine what a spooky, emotive dance album that was recorded in a cottage in Iceland might sound like. Got it? This is that album, and it is amazing. Was that an accordion? Is that an accordion tugging at my heart strings in a house song right now? Yes, it is. And it is amazing. AMAZING.

I love Britney Spears. There, I said it. But I’m not putting this year’s Femme Fatale on my list for that reason alone. I also love Björk, but this year’s Biophilia is not on this list (bu that’s another story for another time). On her newest effort, Britney and her team show a real hunger to push the boundaries of mainstream pop music yet again (Spears did it once before back in 2007 when the critically praised but poorly promoted electropop masterpiece Blackout changed the entire landscape of the genre), and most of the time they succeed.

The big difference between this project and Blackout is the cohesion you’ll find here, which can be credited to the the involvement of hit makers Dr. Luke and Max Martin. Of course, it wouldn’t be a (good) Britney album without a Bloodshy & Avant appearance (“Toxic”, “Radar”). The result of their efforts on this go-around is the groundbreaking “How I Roll”, which was recently named Rolling Stone’s favorite song of the year .

Okay guys, this is an important record. I think what I like most about this album is that it reminds me of what it was like to discover electronic music in the first place. It revisits a time when techno and house music were just emerging from the underground to find their place in the mainstream world, but also finds moments to infuse updated and innovative production into the mix. Sonically the group travels from spaced-out synth instrumentals reminiscent of some of the earliest electronic music, to eclectic echoes and growls over house beats that call to mind the white label records of the early 1990s, and even into a modern big beat frenzy on the wonderful “Undecided”. The album sprawls out like a map of Electronica, and these guys have evidently seen every corner of it. But don’t call it retro. This music has modern ideas for the modern music listener. 

Vocalists Starving Yet Full and Fritz Helder share duties wailing, warbling, crooning and sassing their way around Dinamo Azari and Alexander III’s productions, which are so masterful that I would not be surprised if we see them start churning out tracks for the likes of Britney and Rihanna in a few years. For now, though, we are lucky enough to be treated to a lush and expansive homage to the music they love, which in the process has yielded new music that I love.

Some of electronic music’s opponents have argued for decades now that it universally lacks a human element. A soul, even. And yes, listening to the ongoing bastardization of electronic music by way of major labels and the general masses’ relentlessly bad taste in “popular” music, one might be lead to believe that any soul the genre may have had has since been zapped out of it. But Azari & III have successfully enforced an organic approach to making music that is, by definition, manufactured. Perhaps the most important aspect of this record for me, then, is that it proves not only that electronic music has had soul all along, but also that it is not going anywhere.