Sure, Max Martin's hooks, and especially Dr. Luke's neon-colored throb push these tunes into your head--they're in top form, aided by the tight focus of an eight-track EP, Cannibal's brevity trumping the scattershot Animal--but what makes them stick is Kesha, a pop star lacking pop star looks and a pop star voice.

In the end, Pink Friday is an ambitious, glossy stunner if fashion week is your favorite time of year, but Minaj didn't earn her diva status this way.

Fantastic Explanations (And Similar Situations) makes something fresh and powerful from Novak's influences, and if the ingredients to this cocktail are pretty simple to figure out, that doesn't mean it's not strong enough to knock you out.

With the high-gloss Flo Rida, less is more, meaning this eight-tracker is entirely right-sized.

Heard as a whole, this set doesn't sound nostalgic but revelatory, for the simple fact that its slow, deliberately restrained brutality is not only engaging, but hypnotic, doom-laden, serpentine, even beautiful.

Highly desirable for Currensy fans who like his material at its most loose and free, just don't start here.

All Day is too playful to be considered mature, but for the first time it feels like a consistent album and there are definite signs of Girl Talk maturing as an artist. Above all, it's a whole lot of fun.

Blurry Blue Mountain is an album full of heart, soul, and wit, and this music confirms that no one does quite what Howe Gelb can do with such remarkably innate grace and feel; Gelb's songs find pretty remarkable things in the odd details of simple lives, and there some very real magic to be found in the elegant force of Blurry Blue Mountain.

With the illuminated big head and all, Canadian producer Joel Zimmerman's Deadmau5 alias is a blast to see live, but you can also bring quite a bit of that tech-house-meets-slammin'-electro excitement home with 4 x 4 = 12.

As far as pop albums go, this one strikes a rare balance between familiarity and novelty.

Besides whittling the number of special guests down from three to one, casual fans will have problems telling this one from his previous release, but these ten smooth cuts go down easy and give no sign the formula has stopped working.

He may have lost the plot for a bit, but Page is back and his pop sensibility remains sarcastically, unsparingly intact.

At 13 tracks the album feels right-sized, not overstuffed, and Banks himself is in fine form throughout, delivering stone cold and slow punch lines that are as lethal as ever. When it comes to evolution, there's really none, but even though he's been here before, veteran fans will appreciate his return.

Uptight types who want him to save hip-hop will hate on this one, but this ain't nuthin' but a party y'all, and a fun one at that.

The once bold, sometimes shameless Simon Le Bon sounds a bit tentative in this post-Killers world, and when compared to the tight, original, nine-track version of the album previously made available via digital download, this final, fatter version borders on "too much of a good thing." Fortunately, the emphasis will be on "good thing" for longtime Duran fans or anyone with a taste for melodic, synth-driven pop/rock.

There are no upbeat pop-oriented songs, and stylistic diversions are not part of the program, either. It is something of a refinement of Cole's first two albums, and yet it involves a revolving door of songwriters and producers.

Like all BSP records, Valhalla Dancehall aims for the nosebleed section while remaining oddly detached.

While the grand and sometimes snotty lyrics might not be to all tastes, anyone who misses the days when rock radio loved Nirvana and Blur will find his retro rave-up easy to embrace.

It's a refreshing change from the usual compilation of bibliophile, sea shanty/murder ballad, and while the Led Zeppelin III-style rural overhauling may isolate fans who prefer the serpentine, progressive art rock of albums like The Crane Wife and Hazards of Love, it opens up a whole new continent for the band to explore.

They've rediscovered what made them vital.

2011's Showroom Of Compassion, still finds John McCrea writing like he's tossing off random thoughts as he struggles not to be overwhelmed by the voices in his head, and singing as if he's waiting for that grilled cheese sandwich he ordered to finally show up.

Standell-Preston's vocals can border on grating, and sometimes the band's approach feels formless instead of abstract. Nevertheless, Braids' uniquely feminine experimental pop is largely a success.

If this was meant to be an experiment in art rock, it's an admirably efficient one, and it rocks out, too.

Social Distortion sounds just as you would expect on Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, but that's to say they sound like a fine and fierce rock & roll who have beaten the odds and stayed around to keep making music long after many of their peers gave up, and the commitment that holds them together can be heard bubbling under each tune.

Some Kind of Trouble is a step in the right direction for Blunt, a move toward love songs free of pretension.

The way he blazes through so many songs in such a short space is a little overwhelming, but Cloud Nothings is a solid step forward for Baldi as he gets ready for what comes after teenage wasteland.

Where previous outings like This Night and Streethawk: A Seduction mined the '70s for inspiration, 2011's Kaputt utilizes '80s sophisti-pop, New Romantic, Northern soul, and straight-up adult contemporary to deliver a flawed but fascinating record.

Characteristically, Mondanile's outings have a sketchpad feel to them, and there are quite a few half-finished ideas onboard, including a dreamy ten-minute outro of simple fingerpicking to the echoes of faraway fireworks. However, a few standouts bring Arcade Dynamics to life.

The best thing the album does is to showcase Adele's titanic vocal ability, which -- more than a few times on 21 -- is simply spine-tingling.

This pair of grizzled old vets, together with their seemingly indestructible, mutton-chopped leader, still constitute a formidably powerful and a well-oiled rock & roll machine, there's no doubt about that. And that's one thing that certainly has been repeated many times over on most every Motorhead album, The World Is Yours more successfully than others.

Little was done to clean them up: they're rough, woolly, and loose, but they rock.

If you want to know why Snider has a loyal and growing following as a live act, Live: The Storyteller will tell you all you need to know about his rapport with a crowd and his way of making his songs and stories come to life.

These may be Bird songs, but they are not played the way Bird played them. Lovano and crew tend to slow them down and consider them, as if appending musical footnotes; if Parker was the quintessential bebop player, this is a determinedly post-bop interpretation.

A firebrand debut album, Talk About Body celebrates the struggle and freedom in defying easy classification.

All in all, Stay Home is a step up from the Beets' debut, though it's hard not to imagine they're going to have to face the choice of either learning to play or hitting the creative wall some time in the future.

Life Coach is surprisingly mellow considering the heavier and louder sounds Manley has pursued for most of his career, but it's never boring: the way it encompasses the pop and avant sides of his music will please fans of his other work.

While there are a few moments where Violet Cries' potent atmosphere turns meandering and atonal, this is still a promising and often captivating debut from a band with a bold sound.

Mostly, though, the album is burst after burst of cheerful, weird pop songs that will have you in a state of nostalgic happiness.

Any band can go out, buy the right pedals (or dial up the right effects on a computer), and come up with a reasonable facsimile of the shoegaze sound, but it takes a band with extra skill and imagination to make it sound fresh and vital like No Joy do on Ghost Blonde.

Mayfield's songs are darker, with more discontent, and all contain elements of the subtly sinister or perverse.

It's true that Tre3s still finds Chikita Violenta seeking a sound completely their own, but they're closer than ever, due in large part to the improved quality of the songwriting and arrangements.

At times, it almost feels like too much at once, but the band's music is so buoyant that to bring it down to earth too much would be a shame.

Perhaps it lacks ballast and gestalt, but Bright Eyes arguably operates better on a smaller scale, trading pretension for fractured pop that cuts into the cranium with skewed precision.

It's a melting pot to be sure, and the band has a tendency to go heavy on the atmosphere and light on the hooks, but there's never any doubt that it's a brew tended over by some awfully talented cooks.

While Savage and Kelly clearly get big kicks from genre-jumping and trying to trip out listeners, "Baby Boomer," "Michael Kelly," and "The World Never Stops" show that they can rock earnestly as well.

Jonny's 2011 self-titled debut is a collection of bright, literate, and catchy '60s-influenced pop.

Dulli thrives on atmosphere, and while his inability to write the kind of sharp hooks or memorable choruses that have elevated other semi-dystopian malcontents into the relative mainstream is evident throughout the album, that sense of place makes Dynamite Steps feel less like a collection of songs and more like a long, dangerous, and unpredictable night on the town.

It's a confident debut, bristling with energy.

So while this disc is clearly aimed at Killswitch fans, anybody with an appreciation for modern metal and hard rock generally could find much to like here.

Lowery might not want to make a career out of his serious side, but The Palace Guards shows he can wise up and still make music that's smart and satisfying.

Grown Unknown explores a kind of lost elegance: it's half drowned-in-gorgeous-reverb country of the kind Gram Parsons could nod sagely at, half stately post-'60s rock & roll as elegant mood music via the Band rather than Roxy Music.

Sounding grand and intimate at the same time isn't easy, but on Old Friends, I Was a King make it seem as simple and as pleasurable as walking barefoot through the grass on a warm day.

These are the album's best songs, but the rest are good, too, and the whole is a worthy addition to the ever-growing catalog of sly Texas country-rock.

Doin' It Again is unlikely to cross over in the same way as its several collaborators have done, but hardcore grime fans should be satisfied that at least one of their originators hasn't surrendered to the ubiquitous electro-pop sound just yet.

Much of the album is ruminative in a way that leans heavily on Dylan and Costello. Despite these echoes, the album is quite clearly Geldof's creation.

The Year of Magical Drinking is a solid pop album in its own right, with all the economic hooks of a Fountains of Wayne record but none of that band's antiseptic production.

Genre-hopping, Indianapolis-based singer/songwriter Liz Janes' fourth studio album for Asthmatic Kitty plays fast and loose with traditional indie pop themes.

For 12 Desperate Straight Lines, the songs are still there, only this time some of the looseness of the self-produced sessions comes into play and the end result ends up being a marked improvement.

Masters of mood that they are, Radiohead digitally weave stuttering, glitchy loops of drums and guitars with real instruments, Thom Yorke's mournful moan and keening falsetto acting as a binding agent, creating an alluringly dour atmosphere.

What My Disco might lack in dynamics, they more than make up with atmospherics, showing again and again on Little Joy that sparse arrangements can feel just as spacious as grander recordings.

Peanut Butter ... might be just a little too left-field to capture the zeitgeist in the same way that Skinner did a decade previously, but it's a hypnotic and ultimately rewarding debut which, along with recent efforts from James Blake and Jamie Woon, proves that the words chill-out and challenging don't have to be mutually exclusive.

He definitely deserves credit for going beyond the usual sounds you might hear on a modern singer/songwriter album and it works often enough to make the record a treat for anyone who wants something confessional and real but not boring.

Non-vocal tones do occasionally pop up here, most notably some well-placed piano lines, but Barwick's voice is undeniably the focus here, in all its evocative, otherworldly glory.

Malachai remain a fascinating, worthwhile, and essentially unique proposition, and there's still plenty to enjoy, for fans and newcomers alike, even in this somewhat diminished Return.

Fans of his live sets will wish this was mixed, but with a Skream mix of Major Lazer, a collaboration with Borgore, plus a freaky Lil Jon team-up you don't want to miss, the Diplo faithful should be well satisfied.

It hardly feels coincidental that My Main Shitstain was released on a label called Big Dada, because that's almost exactly what it is: a statement that borders on nonsensical; cynically upbeat garage punk that's equal parts entertainment and introspection. No matter how it's described, however, it's definitely something you won't forget.

While the record may just seem like a pleasant diversion for two friends glad to have a chance to hang out and make music, it turns out to be fun for everyone else as well.

The Deep Field finds her alone but not lonely, still searching for something and finding beauty and even happiness, if not answers.

More confident, explosive, and produced than their lovable but ultimately flat-sounding debut, the aptly named Departing finds the trio ditching the living room scene for the road, carving out a solid collection of fiery, understated, nostalgia-laced indie pop gems that fly by like mile-markers.

Moments of band interplay showcase their collective ear for the nervously romantic-sounding post-punk that's helped inspire the group's sound.

Since the singing is in Zulu for the most part, the focus on nature, children, and animals may not be immediately apparent to an English speaker, who will hear the disc as a typical collection of a cappella singing, with Shabalala taking a lead part in front of the group's harmonies on short, repeated phrases.

Tyevk are still at the best when they keep things short, snarky, and catchy, as on "Underwater 1's" sunken mental asylum rave-up or the road rage rant "Pricks in a Car." Nevertheless, Nothing Fits proves that they can change things up and still deliver music with visceral impact.

The 12 songs on Thrawn have been culled from six studio albums released between 2003 and 2009 (Anderson has released more than two dozen albums independently) and serve as an excellent introduction to his work.

This broadening of the palette is as deliberate as Accelerate's reduction of R.E.M. to ringing Rickenbackers, and while it occasionally feels as if the bandmembers sifted through their past to find appropriate blueprints for new songs, there is merit to their madness.

If it won't change worlds, it's engaging enough for what it aims to be, and when "Bumper Car" hits a lower-voiced break over a clattering beat with an easygoing grace, the whole thing feels like even more of a treat that could turn even better with time.

There are moments when a few different "shades" of heavy are detected, including the beginning of the aforementioned "Shitlist" and the album-closer, "Lend Myself to the Night." However, for those who like excuse-free metal cranked to ten from beginning to end, DevilDriver have assembled one gnarly Beast for you.

This is the work of a master guitarist who has taken his time to come up with a quality record.

Kraus and her various collaborators throughout--notably Christophe Albertijn, who both performed and recorded the overall effort--are a bit more plugged in overall, but if the feeling of the the album is misty folk-rock at many points, it's the folk that still predominates throughout.

Tignor's musical apprenticeship in the avant-garde world shows through as well, and between the minimalist motifs, flowing violin lines, and brass interjections, Light Science sometimes suggests the likes of Steve Reich, LaMonte Young, and Pauline Oliveros letting their hair down for a garage-band jam.

The vocals and flourishes are strongly Punjabi -- songs are often sung in the language, not English as they usually are on a Cornershop LP -- but these are essentially trappings for a collection of multicultural dance-pop not too dissimilar from the group's albums since 1997.

When Elbogen adds some additional keyboards to the mix, Um, Uh Oh feels downright colorful. And the songs themselves boast a level of craftsmanship and quality that's striking for somebody whose last batch of tunes was released less than two years earlier.

In a way, the album seems like a bit of a farewell to an old friend, with lots of wistful moments to be found under the layers of synths and fuzz all throughout the album, really nailing home the Death Set's method of mixing the old with the new to create something that strides boldly forward as it fondly remembers where it came from.

While the New York Dolls struggled to balance past and present on their previous reunion albums, Dancing Backward in High Heels is a product of the here and now as defined by two guys following their muse in their own way, which is just what they should be doing at this stage of the game.

At times, the band appears single-minded in its determination to turn over a new rock, and the album suffers whenever Last Night on Earth focuses on presentation -- the polished production, the overdubbed handclaps -- instead of content.

Rise Against are still a band with plenty to say. All the d-beats and raw vocals in the world don't mean a thing if you don't have a message you believe in.

Like its predecessor, Bootleg, Vol. 2: From Memphis to Hollywood is essential for Cash collectors and hardcore fans, adding even more depth and weight to his enormous stature in American popular music.

It's a shame this little team [Dee Dee, producer Gottehrer and Raveonettes' Wagner]couldn't make more records like this.

Its members share a similar sensibility, so that, although they alternate selections as if participating in a song pull, the album holds together in the same spirit... the familiar one of the drunken slacker full of gallows humor, and the folk and folk-rock music, appropriately, is played in ramshackle, thrown-together arrangements.

Blank Dogs is the work of an artist who has found his voice in the sound of another era, and it speaks quite eloquently on Land and Fixed; anyone who enjoys the chilly rush of classic era synth pop will be jazzed by this music, and even those who prefer "real" pop music may find they're not immune to its charms.

No Color is a welcome return to form, and a nimble balance between the extremes of Dodos' previous work.

The result is a sunny, homemade-sounding record, but these aren't throwaway songs -- there's enough melody here to warrant attention regardless of Ebert's success with the Magnetic Zeros, and while that band's blissed-out bombast is an obvious touchstone, Alexander covers significantly more ground.

There aren't any weak points, and it drifts along dreamily, from one understated jam to the next.

Ultimately, Angles' best moments are reassuring rather than exciting, offering proof that the Strokes can still make an album together, and hope that it'll come more naturally to them next time.

While Welcome Home Armageddon isn't quite in a class with 2005's Hours or 2007's Tales Don't Tell Themselves, this 2011 release nonetheless indicates that Funeral for a Friend have a lot of life left in them.

Listening to the Naked and Famous' guttingly good 2011 full-length debut, Passive Me Aggressive You, one thing is clear: this band loves a hot chorus.

This all makes F.A.M.E. the equal of Forever, if not slightly better, and it hints that Brown's best is yet to come.

Anyone who arrived here because of underground mixtapes will be happy to hear the radio-friendly numbers and polish removed, and even happier when they notice Southern street producer Drumma Boy is responsible for all the beats.

At times, they clearly outpace her singing and lyrics, which often betray the fact that English is a second language. Still, Keren Ann remains a striking songwriter (listen to the interesting device she employs on the title track for proof), while her range of musical techniques has grown.