So much fights for your attention. Do you want to watch TV? Read a book? Listen to music? Even when you do finally put on a record, open up iTunes, skim through a playlist on Spotify, it's comforting to go to what's familiar. Keeping up with what you know and love is hard enough, adding in new stuff can seem impossible. For whatever reason, we feel these albums, all released this year, haven't reached as many ears as they should. It's a long journey of a lot of decisions before you press play, but we promise it's worth it. None of these albums received Best New Music, but they’re all worth another spin.