Antony & The Johnsons

Leave it to Antony Hegarty to turn a club-clobbering Beyoncé single ("Crazy In Love") into one of the most heartbreaking things you've ever heard. Not that it's surprising. After all, the Antony & the Johnsons mastermind has been a Downtown New York City icon for decades — the kind of alien but awe-inspiring voice that makes jaws crash to the floor like a ton of bricks. The accompanying songs are some undisputed fan favourites, including a hugely affecting cover of a song that's regularly slaughtered in guitar shops ("Knockin' on Heaven's Door") and a handful of standout selections from Antony's breakthrough album, the Mercury Prize-winning I Am a Bird Now. In Next Steps, Antony considers motherhood and joins forces with Yoko Ono.

While many of Antony's songs are subtle, bittersweet chamber-pop pieces, the singer's pitch-bending vibrato is capable of cutting through just about anything — including, alongside Yoko Ono, the echo chamber effects and ambient washes of "Toyboat". Built like a navvy, yet capable of expressing infinite subtleties and sensitivities, the Sussex-born transgender artist surprises and delights at practically every turn, especially on third album The Crying Light, on which his subject matter varies from a kind of sideways environmentalism (check out the lovely yet sepulchral "Daylight and the Sun") to a strange meditation on motherhood ("Her Eyes Are Underneath the Ground").

Don't worry — you're not the first person who's confused Antony Hegarty with the restless, reincarnated spirit of Nina Simone. As Lou Reed once said: "When I first heard 'Cripple and the Starfish' I knew I was in the presence of an angel." That song was one of Antony & the Johnsons' first proper singles, a show-stopping masterpiece that revolves around windswept strings, masochistic lyrics and minor-keyed melodies. A perfect way to set the scene for the rest of Antony's career, in other words, whether we're talking about incredible collaborations with Boy George ("You Are My Sister") and Mr. Velvet Underground himself ("Fistful of Love"), or such chilling blends of darkness and light as "Hope There's Someone", "My Lady Story", and "River of Sorrow".