A wonderful balance of beautiful indie rock and subtle country.

It's enough of a reinvention to suggest that Britney will know what to do when the teen-pop phenomenon of 1999-2001 passes for good.

30 Seconds to Mars has managed to record an album that breathes life into the empty shell that corporate rock has become, and in reanimating an avenue of musical expression that has for many years been on its deathbed, has quite possibly offered the single best rock experience of 2002.

With its subtle textural enhancement, the album renders the esoteric pleasures of Todd's compositions and highly individual songs considerably more accessible.

There's little doubt to Since I Left You's status as one of the most intimate and emotional dance records that isn't vocal-based.

Explosions in the Sky doesn't shift as suddenly or jarringly on Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place; the quartet has applied more structural predictability this time out, but is still quick about setting the sad butterflies in your stomach to fluttering.

Like both Radiohead and Foo Fighters, Cave In is a stylistic chameleon that rarely uses its freewheeling taste as a crutch to present self-indulgent material.

This may not be Mouse on Mars' most ambitious albums, but it's among the group's most successful -- it's not at all difficult to feel a connection to this truly intelligent dance music.

The ladies of Northern State deliver funky breaks and tight grooves on Dying in Stereo, and keep the hip-hop flavor without being vulgar and crass.

Franti and Spearhead almost made a deliberate attempt to stray from the typical hip-hop beats and go for something a bit more organic and acoustic than their previous efforts -- and the experiments more than pay off.

Haha Sound may not be Broadcast's most superficially perfect album, but it's a more challenging and exciting one because of its deliberate imperfections.

Where The Great Eastern was a fairly gentle and tentative record in a lot of ways, this one is bigger and demands your attention. The good news is that it's one of those rare records that actually deserves all of the attention it demands.

Never before has the singer infused more mainstream rock elements (prominent strummed guitars) into her music.

Half dance party, half political rally, Gotham is a rock record for a new era.

For those who have been waiting for Gomez to come up with something that truly rivals their amazing debut Bring It On, wait no longer. This one is great.

Steve Earle proves again and again that he is the original alternative to the glossy side of Nashville.

It may not be country, but that doesn't matter; When the Sun Goes Down is winning, sturdy mainstream pop.

Dear Catastrophe Waitress [is] the richest musical offering yet from Belle & Sebastian.

Warning may not be an innovative record, per se -- it's a pop album through and through -- but it's tremendously satisfying, finding the band at a peak of songcraft and performance. There hasn't been a better pure pop album since Supergrass' In It for the Money, another record by a young band that did it all and did it without a trace of self-consciousness.

Joan of Arc have once more surpassed themselves as artists.

Though Onoffon doesn't quite top Burma's 1982 masterpiece Vs., it manages to sound like the more-than-worthy follow-up they could have cut a couple years later ... only with two decades of experience and musical detours informing its nooks and crannies.

Keith is happy to be a dirty old SOB, cracking jokes, drinking beer, and flirting with the ladies, and that makes Shock'n Y'All a fun, rough, rowdy album that wins you over despite your better impulses.

Everything here is in its right place, making Kesto (234.48:4) perhaps the only Pan Sonic album you'd ever need to own, for every style of music the group has ever recorded is presented at length and it's all produced as masterfully as ever.

This time out, Eitzel has built his arrangements around spare keyboard lines, atmospheric electronic samples, and percussion loops that blend with his voice and acoustic guitar to create an effect that suggest a more spare, organic version of Portishead, or a Jon Brion production that's stuck in a blue funk. But the new surroundings suit the songs quite well...

Carl Newman deserves every last bit of praise thrown his way. In a better world, he would be our Elton, our Todd, our McCartney, and Slow Wonder would be on everyone's iPod, rotating on M2 hourly, and his name would be on the lips of everyone from aged Royalty to teen-aged girls.

Not just the best album of 1999, The Soft Bulletin might be the best record of the entire decade.

Quality is proof that intelligent hip-hop need not lack excitement, soul, or genuine emotion; it's one of the best rap albums of a year with no shortage of winners.

Able to make the timeworn themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll and the basic guitars-drum-bass lineup seem new and vital again, the Strokes may or may not be completely arty and calculated, but that doesn't prevent Is This It? from being an exciting, compulsively listenable debut...