Captivating a cappella intros, soaring choruses, tintinnabulating codas. Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Fini Bearman's fourth album La Loba limns an intriguing picture of her development as both songwriter and storyteller. The album's incredibly distinctive sound-world is created almost entirely by Bearman alone, from the dramatic, stacked up vocal harmonies and rippling layers of stringed instruments (including not only guitar but also charango, mandolin and uke), to an array of percussion. The only other timbre you hear which isn't supplied by Bearman is the beautifully expressive playing of cellist Zosia Jagodzinska, whose complete engagement with the music adds immeasurably to the overall effect, nowhere more so than the beguiling ‘Holding On’.

An album which sparkles with insights into memory, self-discovery, femininity and creativity, the vocal arrangement of ‘My Ideal’, a song which moves from blissful stasis to an urgent pulse, is one of the most transporting things I've heard this year. With stringed instruments intertwining in dancing counterpoint, Bearman's depiction of the pitfalls of social media in ‘Beholden’ is as poignant as it is alluring. Inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés's best-selling book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, the title track's energizing chorus lingers long in the memory. One of the year's musical highlights, La Loba marks Bearman out as one of contemporary music's most imaginative song stylists.