So many great albums/EPs have come out this year:

Torres - Sprinter
Sharon Van Etten - I Don't Want to Let You Down
Other Lives - Rituals
Courtney Barnet - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I just sit
Sufjan Stevens - Carrier & Lowell

Alright albums this year:
Modest Mouse - Strangers to Ourselves
The Decembrists - What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
Amos Lee - Live at Red Rocks

I'm stupid excited for a new Jason Isbell album, his last was a favorite of mine.

If you can wrap your head around a mash-up between the Archies ("Sugar, Sugar") and Broken Social Scene, then there's a newly released collaborative effort between Andy Kim of Archies fame and Kevin Drew, which seems so incongruent on the face of it as to bugger the imagination.

I haven't yet heard it, but I'm intrigued enough by my memories of pop insensibilities ("Sugar, Sugar"?!) and most importantly, enough of a Kevin Drew/BSS fan that I've popped for it.  I'm actually hopeful of the combo.  But then I've been known to go off into the esoteric weeds.

Thanks for mentioning the Tallis Scholars Arvo Pärt album! Listened to some samples last night and will definitely have to pick up a copy.

I have a couple of their older albums but never thought the recording quality was quite up to par with material like Magnificat, under Philip Cave (Linn), the Trinity College Choir,  under Marlowe, or even certain Chanticleer and recent LA Master Chorale albums.  This release sounds wonderful though. If you happen to have any other choral recommendations in this vein, I'd be much obliged.

Two that I'm planning to check out this weekend: Polyphony's new recording of some 20th Century American choral works on Hyperion (I got sick of Randall Thompson after I sang so damn much of it in high school, but I think I'm ready for some more now), and a Latvian Radio Choir recording of the Rautaavara Missa a Capella on Ondine (available at Pro Studio Masters).