From Feist, Björk and Laura Marling, to Noel Gallagher, Roots Manuva and Tom Waits – plus a promising debut by one David Lynch, director – our writers run you through the most anticipated releases of the season

BJöRK: Biophilia

(One Little Indian)

Usually with each new Björk album comes the often wishful mutterings of it finally representing her "return to pop", as if she's about to recreate Debut, move back to London and start dating Goldie again. Needless to say, Biophilia – an album prefaced by an elaborate iPad app and thematically encompassing the entire universe – isn't loaded with singles. Björk chooses instead to flit between the beautiful ("Cosmogony"), the downright creepy ("Hollow") and, in "Mutual Core", the world's first song about tectonic plates set to a ravey mesh of bleeps and whooshes. Lyrically, it finds Björk musing on both the universal and the personal in a way she's only hinted at before,...