Our music staffs lays out their favorite local releases of the year.

The Hopscotch Music Festival isn’t a typical music festival. Yes, there’s a central stage with some hefty names on the bill, but that’s only a small part of the package. The festival is spread across nearly twenty venues throughout downtown Raleigh and crowds are just as likely to pack venues for relatively obscure acts like Lady Lamb the Beekeeper and Sylvan Esso as they are for the big name acts on the marquee, or even the mid-level acts whose shows we’ve already covered. It’s the place where biggest star of the festival was Merzbow, a Japanese noise musician who came to town for the Sonic Circuits Festival in 2010. It’s almost more like a miniature CMJ or SXSW than it is like Sweetlife or Virgin Mobile Freefest.