Add Future Islands to the list. Their second album, In Evening Air, is one of the most cohesive records released this year. In Evening Air, and Future Islands generally, are steeped in synth pop while constantly defying it. Nearly every song on the album takes its hook from the synth, yet rarely in the typical background texture way. These are punchy, aggressive synths, tending more toward a marimba sound than a Lookbook-esque cool.

But the synths aren’t the focal point of In Evening Air. The trio propels its songs forward with powerful bass guitar, forgoing the six-string completely. Songs such as “Long Flight” and “Swept Inside” gather their energy from rumbling 4/4 basslines, passing up more obvious melodies in favor of slippery, emotive movement in the lower register. This dedication to the bass guitar and the bass clef is a defining characteristic of Future Islands, grounding songs in weary emotional territory where they might otherwise come off as melodramatic.

All of that said, cool synths and driving bass ain’t gonna earn you a vaunted Radio K Weekly Release Spotlight. You gotta have a voice. And do they ever. Frontman Samuel Herring sounds like a six pack a day smoker you’d find sitting in the back corner of the bar telling war stories, gravelly-voiced and out of breath. Herring is the backbone of the band’s bizarre, affecting sound, gruffly fighting through weighty lyrics with dramatic sincerity where other bands would fall back on irony. Herring ends a lot of his words with a flair (“alway-zuh”) that is also employed by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, with Herring adding extra lament where Murphy smirks at the idea of trying that hard. It’s one of the most refreshing things about Future Islands. They’re not here to impress you with fancy guitar or snarky worldviews. They came to get some stuff off their chest, and they’re not embarrassed in the least about it.

Lament and pain are central to In Evening Air, inasmuch as you can actually understand what Herring is saying. Standout track “Long Flight” copes with discovering an unfaithful girlfriend, asking poignantly, “Who are you thinking about?/It couldn’t be me.” Fragile relationships and disappointment recur throughout the album, with Herring’s desperate wail battling the feeling of impending isolation. Even when, in “Tin Man,” Herring repeatedly asserts, “I am the tin man” at the end of the song, the words somehow take on a significance that outweighs their ridiculousness.

There are a lot of bands out there trying to do New Order right now, and the cynic might place Future Islands in their company. But Future Islands isn’t trying to “do” anybody. While they certainly draw from post-punk and new wave, the way that song after song fearlessly dives into heavy, tangled territory and navigates it with such efficiency and innovation is a trademark that is all their own.