September’s best includes Young Thug, Vile, Henley

A ranked selection of notable new recordings heard in September.

1. Young Thug, “Slime Season”: Remember back in May when dozens upon dozens of Young Thug songs leaked onto the Internet, suddenly making the young Atlanta native look like the most prolific and inventive rapper alive? This new mixtape finally scrapes up the best of that cosmic slop and uses it as spackle between some newer tunes that feel every bit as exhilarating.

2. Fetty Wap, “Fetty Wap”: His summer jam “Trap Queen” initially felt like lightning in a bottle, but after hearing his 20-track debut, it turns out Fetty Wap actually manufactures the stuff.

3. Kurt Vile, “b’lieve i’m goin down …”: The music itself still sounds something like Tom Petty fronting a post-apocalyptic Meat Puppets, but lyrically, this hairy Philadelphian has taken one step closer to becoming our poet laureate of existential zone-outs, examining his own brain-lint with a sharper eye.

4. Windhand, “Grief’s Infernal Flower”: There are many ways to forge heavy metal nowadays. This Richmond, Va., quintet makes it ooze like molten sludge, then lets it evaporate on the breath of Dorthia Cottrell, a lead-singer who does light as well as her bandmates do heavy.

5. Julia Holter, “Have You In My Wilderness”: Finally, Holter has squeegeed all of that gunky reverb off of her fourth album, revealing an alluring bundle of pop songs that nod to Joni Mitchell’s discreet jazziness, evocative lyricism and wild imagination.

6. Dungen, “Allas Sak”: This Swedish band keeps finding nirvana on the margins where they’ve spent the past decade making bright, blissful psychedelic rock songs out of electric guitars, horns and lots of drum-circle bump-a-lump. Exquisite stuff.

7. Drake and Future, “What A Time To Be Alive”: After getting famous by making fame sound like a bummer, Drake commits the ultimate act of hubris by signing up for an album of duets with Future, a rapper already well acquainted with darker, danker, naughtier, gnarlier, way-lower lows than Drake could ever imagine. Guess who steals the show?

8. Don Henley, “Cass County”: It’s disorienting when rock stars in the highest tax brackets start singing their blues, but Henley’s first solo effort in 15 years finds him confronting old age and mortality through a heap of traditional country songs that ultimately feel sour and sincere.