Here, though, watery, joke-free confessionals like "This Is Home" and "After Midnight" sound comparatively adrift.

Delivered in a frail squawk recalling Seattle singer-songwriter Perfume Genius, his coming-of-age songs carve intuitive, 
idiosyncratic paths (spidery guitar, buzzing electronics) to mountaintop indie-rock catharsis.

While her sound is still dominated by typical darkwave elements--doomy synths and the pishy patter of minimal drum machines--the rest is unexpectedly warm, illuminated by her indomitable voice.

The Kid's voice has tarnished, but his wit-intensive, cross-genre revisionism still grooves like a multiculti Mensa disco party.

Employing a variety of producers, Everything undertakes a cathartic reinvention via late-night, sex-driven trips through dim, sweaty basement parties.

The Less You Know, the Better 
is equal parts frustrating and admirable.

The result is alternately audacious and befuddling.

Ignore the mouth-breathing rock bangers, and Mockingbird is as comfortable as well-worn denim.

Bellowing hoarsely while ivories tinkle and muted guitars gently twang, he comes across like a scenery-chewing Method actor marooned in a stoic Ingmar Bergman flick.

For all the period-piece lethargy of "Warm Summer Sun" and 
"I Fall Asleep," though, they balance it out with the blistering "Space in Your Face" and "Honey Bear."

Gundred's richer-than-you-expect voice is the key to these jagged little pillows.

For all its languid rookie charms, In Heaven might be best remembered as the harbinger of a more consistent sequel.

Her tender songcraft grows stronger.

The Whole Love feels more of a piece with 1999's Summerteeth, the caustic pop opus on which Tweedy sped away from alt-country (or y'allternative, No Depression, whatever) in a car far sleeker (and blacker) than the one Hank Williams supposedly died in.

Again Into Eyes only truly perks up near the end when they call up their inner Psychedelic Furs on more straightforwardly swooning ballads like "Faith Unfolds."

With Father, Son, Holy Ghost's exquisite, beyond-indie melodies, arrangements, and musicianship (the playful "Magic," the elegant "Just a Song," the fiery "Die"), he [Christopher Owens] and bassist-producer JR White flirt with perfection.

Sequenced like an upside-down bell curve, the band's fetching fourth album opens with the vintage hippie wisdom, musique concrète, extended space rock, and lush, jazzy Americana of "Isadora."

The Devil's Walk creates a compelling mix of programming virtuosity, songcraft, and plaintive vocals, with spastic blips fluttering amid languid string washes, while a 
mechanical scrim obscures and accentuates the underlying emotions.

Amos' classical-label debut is a wildly imaginative ride full of orchestral fireworks and fairy-tale melodrama, though anyone with a Ren Faire aversion should stick to more straight-ahead songs like "Edge of the Moon" and "Job's Coffin."

We need to find a way to smoke this.

Even with its sonic detours -- the slightly nutty percussion, a lot of general yelling -- the record feels a bit monochromatic, like a just-fun-enough surrey ride whose background keeps repeating.

It's an overly gauzy, booming-echo epic that doesn't leave much trace after it's over.

The muffled, placid Daybreak lacks the burn of the first two parts and never illuminates.

Era Extraña picks up as if that criticism (and 2010) never happened. Some tracks sound 25 years old and they're one Martin Rushent assist away from being genuine synth-pop hits.

Guitarist Adam Kessler's exit makes room for a more overtly expansive approach on the Drums' just as solid sophomore outing.

The male-dominated world of dubstep may dismiss all this as too lightweight and precious, but Katy B may transform into the queen of this boys club yet.

Transpose the communal exuberance of Los Campesinos! to the U.S. and you've got this quintet, who prove that sunny, adolescent, pop-rock catchiness will never go out of style.

Memories does indeed trigger some, particularly when a big-chorused rocker ("The Afterlife") opens up like a razor-blade suitcase. As for the ballads, you're better off YouTubing "Glycerine" -- or one of the tearjerkers ("Forever May You Run" ) from Rossdale's underappreciated 2008 solo disc.

Blitzen Trapper's Eric Earley performs the amazing feat of making alt-country seem fresh on the band's gripping sixth album.

Green Naugahyde is all rubbery, aggro Bootsy, picking up where 1999's nü-metal-chasing Antipop left off.

Mountaintops has plenty of upbeat romps, but the most compelling moments are the epic, minor-key laments.

Lowe's sexagenarian years have real sparkle.

Legendary Weapons attempts a reinvigoration by employing session band 
the Revelations to muster up grooves that recall the sort of '60s soul songs that RZA once loved to sample. It's a quaint idea, but the execution is too slick to mesh with the raps, and fails to evoke the Wu's murky pall.

You don't really hear that stylistic growth, though, on this slab of down-tuned chug-and-glug, which finds the band returning to the grim recriminations of early tunes like "Mudshovel" and "Suffocate."

The middle of the road was always their destiny, it seems, and they arrive with blatantly pleasant but character-free ditties to accompany you while shopping for a smart new Ben Sherman shirt, though those ditties likely will be forgotten the moment 
you exit the store.

The resolutely midtempo album peaks with the ghostly "Ace of Hz" (recycled from a 
recent greatest-hits record), which polishes chillwave's hazy psychedelia into glossy yet dense ice sculptures.

This full-length debut confirms Taylor's love for Arthur Russell's underwater electronic grooves, but these fussy, avant-prog slow jams rarely come up for air.

A motley crew of producers (Diplo, El-P, Rostam from Vampire Weekend, Drake affiliate Francis Farewell Starlite, one of the dudes from Yeasayer) serves up shinier, harder, louder, thornier beats, and our heroes occasionally respond in kind.

If the Sheryl Crow–isms of the first few tracks throw you off, sit tight: From tempestuous meditation "The Beast" on, every song is chillingly badass.

Like all of Lil Wayne's albums, it's a mess; unlike some of its predecessors, it's not a terribly ambitious mess, nor is it much fun, which for Wayne is a sin.

Clark's complex femininity, both self-possessed and keenly evolving, is what makes her music so powerful and fascinating.

After a 2009 album, assorted seven-inch singles, and a recent live recording for Jack White's Third Man imprint, Jacuzzi Boys have taken their place among the best sloppy racket-makers bashing out easy-boogie soundtracks to your next drunken night at the local rock dive.

Offering a vision more golden age than apocalypse, Thundercat's music sparkles, and the effect is both lovely 
and overwhelming.

With Leisure Seizure, Vek doesn't retool his sound much -- slabs of jittery synths underpin his urgent yelps, which start to grate over 12 tracks.

Her 1976 debut (reissued plus one new song free for download) is brief and unpretentious, a soprano celebrating heaven on earth over harp and piano.

Wild Flag offers odes to volume and youth ("Romance," "Future Crimes"), suggesting the barely contained frenzy of teenagers. It's all the fury you want, but executed with the capability and confidence of lifers.

Processed guitars and keyboards, wordless 
vocals, and muted beats blend into a pastel wash of sound, as shifting patterns hint at familiar styles without assuming a clear shape.

My Morning Jacket sound right at home on "Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas," while Rivers Cuomo and Hayley Williams conjure some bizarro odd-couple energy in "The Rainbow Connection."

Their second album will speak to fans of Built to Spill's squall, Superchunk's chug, and Modest Mouse's string-bending strangeness.

The handclap stomp of "Miss You" explodes at just the right moment, while the house-music piano of "How Deep Is Your Love?" proves the boys' club credentials remain intact.

Watch the Throne is far too good to condemn them thus, but not good enough to erase the possibility.

Sonic strategist Eno is clearly in "oblique" mode here.

Tinariwen's fifth album takes off on an acoustic path following the open-
ing track's otherworldy 
appearance by Wilco guitarist Nels Cline.

Only the electric "It Begins Tonight," righteous of riff and bonkers of solo, plays to his strengths; the rest is like watching Michael Jordan bat .235 in Birmingham.

Endless Now was recorded in the same upstate church where Dinosaur Jr. made 1993's Where You Been, and it sounds like a happy refugee from that alt-rock era, all battering drums and youthful, melodic confusion.

I'm With You is a much more concise record, both thematically and sonically, than 2006's double-disc Stadium Arcadium.

Guetta can't match the inexhaustible bliss of his Kelly Rowland–aided 2009 disco smash "When Love Takes Over," but he can make 50 Cent seem like an edgy Daft Punk fanboy, which is not an insubstantial trick.

Perfect for Magnetic Fields fans let down by 2010's concept-heavy Realism.

This double album (complete with lush art booklet) is styled like a toga party, but some tracks ("Fit for Caesar," "Lucretius") are closer to the 'shroom-chewing highlights of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.

A patient, inviting album that feels like a fresh start from a guy whose recording career spans multiple boom-and-bust cycles, both for indie rock and the economy.

There are unique nods to the band's Latin-
American heritage -- an acoustic flourish here, a manic, Mars Volta–style polyrhythmic breakdown there -- but they're too 
few and far between.

Though still sunny and hooky, Leave No Trace lacks the enigmatic spark of its predecessor, especially now that the words are more readily understandable.

A soulful strut, abetted by a backing singer who's a ringer for Sam Cooke, plus subtle psychedelic touches demonstrate why they 
don't call it classic rock for nothing.

Bridges' country-fried drawl gets wonky (see the shuffling "Blue Car"), but when the pieces come together -- as on laid-back, folksy charmers like "Everything but Love" and "Maybe I Missed the Point" -- the result is as comfortable and unpretentious as the Dude's bathrobe.

Watson gives Nero's robotic skronk a rare injection of humanity, and the U.K. producers are smart enough to build most of their debut full-length around her husky voice.

Wandscher (an original member of Whiskeytown) drives the ship with riffage ranging from gently atmospheric to snarling quasi-metallic. Still, it's Sykes' voice that impresses.

Slave Ambient feels like a more back-alley Byrds filtered through a gauzier Spacemen 3 lens.

This stunning Dane's synths-plus-strings slant on singer-songwriter lovesickness offers refinement over innovation, yet Nanna Øland Fabricius beguiles with a gently insistent presence.

Dom's '80s identikit synth-psych ditties ("Telephoned," the title track) are the most fun when he's slyly and/or drunkenly tugging your skirt. Not when he sidles up all polished and proper.

It's indie rock as hearty and art-free as oatmeal, before the line separating it from the mainstream dissolved, before it became so...eclectic.

An indelible quiet-storm jeremiad.

Her deadpan delivery -- a more extreme version of awkward queen Maria Bamford -- and her truly singular material (how she saved the career of forgotten pop diva Taylor Dayne, an impression 
of someone doing an impression) don't need silly faces to be hilarious.

Blue Songs' prevailing mood is deep indigo, not ultraviolet, yet that darkness heightens and complicates.

Romweber is still ruler of his own bossa nova rockabilly kingdom, skipping from surf-guitar rave-ups to spacey instrumentals to sepulchral balladry, with the occasional Xavier Cugat cover tossed in.

Ironically, spitting over minimal head-knock beats from WHY? and Advance Base, Serengeti sounds reborn.

This is the first stateside CD reissue of the stylistically peerless album.

Richard Youngs' 11th solo album on Indiana indie Jagjaguwar ditches the keyboards of his recent releases, instead relying on disjointed guitars, eerily overdubbed incantations, and the rich, multihued drumming of Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi).

Sky eschews the occasional decade-hopscotching of 2007's Traffic and Weather, reaching a new, raw sincerity and cohesiveness.

With pedal steel by Buddy Cage (Dylan's Blood on the Tracks), ominous percussion by Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, and Buckner's usual subtle craftsmanship, he creates wasted-night rhapsodies that demand you lean in close--however warily.

To call some of these 26(!) word-and-riff bombs unfinished would be charitable; a few even seem unwanted.

LaVere sounds like a gifted kidnap victim--scared, angry, resourceful. You just know she's going to set herself free.

With his unnerving falsetto, Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild, frontman for this mesmerizing Denmark quartet, suggests an exotic creature who's fallen to earth, while his bandmates fashion a deliciously minimal version of synth pop that evokes Low-era Bowie.

With contributions from various of-the-moment producers (TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, Santigold's John Hill), the Brooklyn boho's major-label debut is a painfully hip slice of style-mag electro-soul.

Their wit keeps maturing, but TMBG's gentle weirdness is forever young.

Wayward Fire swoons and grooves deliciously, but the lyrics have a distinctly processed flavor.

Little Dragon's third full-length deepens the group's down-tempo mix of icy techno and smoldering R&B.

Pleasure's ten tracks of gorgeously distorted, lo-fi pop glides languidly enough for '90s slowcore, but with woozy rhythms, lovelorn lyrics, and reverb-saturated textures that feel timeless.

[John Gourley's] thin, inexpressive singing and gloopy lyrics lack the mumbo-jumbo grandeur of Marc Bolan, an obvious influence.

For his full-length debut, Greene teams with producer Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley) to revisit his '80s reveries, crafting Balearic bliss ("Eyes Be Closed") and refreshing New Romantic flounce ("Amor Fati"). He even invigorates '90s trip-hop's head-nod ("Before," the title track), making for an even better coast soundtrack.

Producer Left Brain breaks ground on bangers that stitch ambient electronica to cracked G-funk, while Hodgy sports the casual swag of Wiz Khalifa or Lil Wayne, with 
a less cringe-worthy sense of humor than his peers.

Too often on the Antlers' second full-length, their washed-out melodies suggest powerfully memorable hooks that never fully materialize or cohere.

While producer Budo creates melancholy set pieces--from the funereal piano of "Bloody Poetry" to the soulful organ grinding of "Heartbreak Hotel"--Grieves shines as a friendly, thoughtful voice, gladly ready to share secrets.

When Fish Ride Bicycles may pay homage to Chicago summers, but this duo rarely break a sweat, rhyming in dulcet tones about designer sneaks and tricked-out GMCs.

While Damnesia makes a surprisingly strong showcase for the Trio's songwriting chops, they should've taken a few more chances.

There are expected blips of Fiery playfulness -- pinballing "bop bop" vocals, backward-masked beats -- but this is as straightforwardly evocative as abstract pop gets, with the hazy beauty and fractured narratives of a vintage Polaroid slide show.

Tracks like "VHS Sex," the complex yet laid-back "Glawio," and the robotic apotheosis of "Futureworld" send you hurtling back toward electronica's past perfection.

Bakesale was the catchy, coherent 1994 breakthrough--a missing link between Nick Drake and Sonic Youth.

On the band's seventh studio album, Incubus fully embrace surf-bum balladry.