For the past eight years, I've compiled a year-end album of favorite songs released in the 12 preceding months, with no artists repeating from previous years. I've done it again.

Beyond the artists presented here, my favorite album was O'Death's Out of Hands We Go - which, if not quite as consistently great as the band's 2011 record Outside, is a stunning accomplishment - a warbling, adventurous, authentic backwoods blend of introspection and primal emotion putting bluegrass instrumentation through the aesthetic amp of folk, punk, lo-fi, and indie rock. The band's "Vacant Moan" is probably my favorite song of the past decade (it was on my 2008 album), and since then O'Death has largely abandoned thrashing furor in favor of a more measured sound that finds its power in places other than speed and volume.

My initial effort at compiling this album was decidedly pop-oriented, with a few digressions into my natural proclivity toward the odd. But 19 songs became 16, and as I pared away tracks I loved that felt a little too reliant on formula, I recognized a thread of elemental music. Sometimes it took the form of naked aggression (another proclivity), but just as often it was songs stripped down to base emotion - concentrated states of the heart and mind. I ran with that.

The Soil & the Sun. Photo by Rotten Photography.

Given the expansive, spacious, and precise sound that Michigan's The Soil & the Sun achieves on Meridian - the band's third record - two things leap out from its history: that what's now a seven-piece ensemble started as a duo, and that its first two albums were home-recorded by people who didn't really know what they were doing.

Meridian - released in August - marks the first time the group worked with a producer, and the most obvious difference from its predecessors is in its choir-like group vocals, particularly on "How Long." The band has retained its orchestral breadth and adventurousness, but with its soaring collective singing the album becomes something more celestial; songs dominated by gloomy clouds have given way to bright stars.

Working in a proper studio "was a little bit overwhelming, actually," said frontman, primary songwriter, and co-founder Alex McGrath in a recent phone interview, promoting The Soil & the Sun's December 4 performance at Rozz-Tox. "We had the whole world opened up to us, really for the first time. We had to exercise some restraint and not get too caught up in effects ... ."