The secret weapon on their second album is an unironic embrace of the elegant, harmony-rich hooks and wide-eyed lyrics of rock forebears the Righteous Brothers, which gives the Orralls' blistering tunes their own earnest, romantic edge.

With Wiley's vocal attack as sharply acerbic as ever, 100% Publishing is a boldly independent declaration.

From chintzy keyboards to karaoke-style performances, Maus exaggerates the stereotypically artificial to tap into something real.

Player Piano's handcrafted tales of loneliness and bad romance draw quiet power from Hawk's charmingly reedy vocals, while the layered synths and other scruffy keyboards evoke subliminal longings and anxieties.

Rock'n'roll pioneer Buddy Holly was no stodgy purist, an idea the best of this all-star tribute adopts gracefully.

Pitting his manly baritone against squishy feminine keys in the sexually ambiguous '80s tradition, O'Regan gives his transformation a thrilling edge, not least because there's real danger involved.

The few moments where star power wanes, Teddybears suggest they don't have much to offer on their own.

By any math, though, Candidate Waltz is a solid entry point, showcasing the band's mid-tempo stomps (reliably 4/4, despite the title) and Johnson's Zevon-cribbing rasp and wit.

Just as his piercing voice and languid tunes echo Neil Young's rustic side, a Neil-like tough-mindedness runs through Green's stark meditations, which confront despair head on.

Despite the occasional mosh-pit flare-up, though, Taking Back Sunday emphasizes the band's crafty songwriting rather than the psychological intensity that defined Tell All Your Friends.

The lack of in-your-face future-funk arrangements isn't a sign that Beyoncé has lost her appetite for domination; indeed, as a singer's showcase, 4 will probably end up bested this year only by Adele's 21.

The weird miracle is how natural singers Scott Paterson and Adele Bethel sound harmonizing (well, singing together) over subdermal synth buzz.

On Shangri-La, YACHT add sinewy live instrumentation to their previously chilly electro, and when frontwoman Claire Evans, possessed of Kim
 Gordon's cool authority and Annie's playfulness, 
espouses her utopian "belief system," the 
bubblegum beats make it easy to buy into the philosophizing.

He still enigmatically declares solidarity with the urban proletariat and critiques pop-culture clichés, but Black Up impresses most with its beguiling sounds.

Occasionally, Boeckner and Perry replicate the 
lo-fi bustle of city life too well, achieving only a dense, dirty muddle

This time around, ATR's protest platitudes ("Are you ready to testify?") and electronic skronk-thud ("Digital 
Decay," with female member Nic Endo holding forth on Internet freedom), sound awkwardly dated.

After several albums of caustic, cryptic scuzz-punk, San Francisco's Ty Segall finally cleans up his act--or, at the very least, dustbusts it around the edges.

Nadler's fifth album benefits from a newfound directness. Over acoustic fingerpicking, splashing cymbals, and languidly twanging steel guitar, Nadler inhabits her strongest set of songs yet, pining in a barely adorned soprano for both lost loves and a conjoined twin.

The musical spitting 
image of his dad Neil Finn (Crowded House, Split Enz), Liam blends sophisticated melodies and wistful vocals with masterful authority.

All 6's and 7's is an admirable attempt at balancing Tech's heavy-metal rep and hard-won maturity.

Accordingly, In Light is best absorbed in small portions, allowing you to savor the seriously catchy melodies and uplifting vibes.

Fortunately, his muse digs punk and trash--these 16 basement screams are the B-sides of rock history.

Some marriages end with shrieks, others with sighs. On Loud Planes Fly Low, Rosebuds co-conspirators Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp set their breakup sighs to a Greek chorus of lo-fi keyboards, singing things they can't bring themselves to say.

Since 2004's Last Exit, Junior Boys' main man Jeremy Greenspan has couched his plaintive voice in various strains of modern electronic music, flitting between 2-step and synth-pop, with diminishing returns.

Though restlessness is the dominant lyrical theme here, Nothing Is Wrong sounds familiar and comforting (see the airy, aching "Fire Away," featuring Jackson Browne)

The title of Gomez's seventh studio album reflects the low-key, easy-flowing attitude these boyish Brits have maintained since winning the U.K.'s coveted Mercury Prize with their 1998 debut.

On the band's sixth album, they're most comfortable in the spot where Guided by Voices ("Any Other Day") bump into 
the Kinks ("What Faces 
the Sheet") -- slightly psychedelic and frequently sticky, breezily charming and pleasantly woozy.

Two Matchsticks evokes the Everly Brothers' sibling intimacy, but Kenny's lonely campfire songs cling to a limited number of minor keys, similar tempos, and virtually identical arrangements.

At times, F&L rival Ariel Pink for eccentric sonic pastiche, while there's enough elasticity in "Too Much Midi (Please Forgive Me)" to hold up an entire generation's leg warmers.

ATL kingpins Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane, and T.I. pay their respects, and Mike mimics their strip-club homilies, but he shines brightest as the trap's "book reader" and "gang leader."

It's one 
of the most overly complicated hard-rock records 
of the past ten years. It's also one of the best.

Frank Turner gives sincerity a good name on the rousing England Keep My Bones, an exclamation point in an increasingly brilliant career that ranges from early punk spew to more recent folkie testimony.

When the hooks of their surprisingly humble songcraft dull, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. are mostly a spanglier version of the Spoon-fed types that flooded the Internet with serviceable but risk-free indie rock in the mid-2000s.

In the hands of dapper producer Mark Ronson, the glibly sloppy, lo-fi brats are almost sculpted into garage-punk sophistication, adding extended psychedelic guitar lines, fleshed-out percussion, even retro-soul sax.

Suck It blends the deliberateness of that record with the fleet-footedness of their still-stunning 2006 debut Whatever You Say I Am, That's What I'm Not and follow-up My Favourite Worst Nightmare.

Braxton's clever, found-sound loops are missed, but the remaining members' rampant ideas and inexorable groove keep Battles engrossing.

At home with a variety of tonal colors, Alpers is a basement Björk, stacking her multitracked voice until it hits the ceiling.

While the sextet refine their surf-rockin' exotica, Nimol's wonderful Khmer-language covers are missed.

Vernon re-accesses that potent sense of self on Bon Iver, a stunning sophomore set whose landscape-painting cover art underscores the idea that his songs inhabit their own psychological space.

The debut by this Seattle indie-folk group suffers slightly from an abundance of niceness.

Featuring 11 miniscule variations on Fireflies, the giddy worldwide smash that put home-studio boffin Adam Young on the map, this unrelentingly wide-eyed follow-up offers more genteel Christian rock reconfigured as techno lite.

Farther into the cosmos is sister record Attention Please, the least "metal" thing the band have released to date, which focuses on icy rhythms and smoky moods, as if they're slinking up alongside the xx.

Heavy Rocks is a monolithic take on everything from trippy Funkadelic acid sludge to galloping Blue Öyster pöp to lightning-riding '80s thrash; yet it all billows fluffily from the same dreamy doom factory they constructed on 2005's Pink.

Lady Gaga certainly wasn't born this way, but she's making a convincing case that she's evolving into our most surreally brilliant pop star.

Assembled as carefully as he once cut up a cappellas, it's a dance-music textbook.

Though she's celebrated for her post-1960 Chess recordings and '67 Muscle Shoals scorcher Tell Mama, her '50s singles, collected here, trace the development of soul's first queen.

This four-CD live box is so raw that you can almost see the twisting, sinewy torso and smell the sweat and peanut butter, as the sonic levels constantly push into the red.

If you've ever fantasized about Vedder singing you, or your kids, to sleep, consider your wish fulfilled.

Demolished Thoughts is a noisenik's idea of California dreaming; it's also the acoustic record Sonic Youth fans always knew this vintage psychedelia superfan had in him.

While the hooks and harmonies rarely disappoint, the presence of multiple lead vocalists on each record has, over 20 years, led to a niggling colorlessness, which may account for the band's cult status in these lower 48.

The overly smooth production undercuts his righteous fury, suggesting the group harbors dreams of a Green Day-style commercial breakthrough.

With Bazan's husky baritone, Strange Negotiations suggests an Americana vet like John Hiatt more than an indie lifer. But the change serves him well on "Eating Paper," which works simple wonders with a chunky guitar riff and a steady cowbell, just as the Lord intended.

Long stretches of Circuital could even pass for an alternate version of Quadrophenia, albeit one heard as a distant echo with the volume turned down to deathly quiet. James sounds remarkably like Roger Daltrey at 
times, singing with an appealing, yearning catch in his voice.

Gibbard mostly dispenses with his trademark jitters, leaning into Death Cab's tuneful guitar-band thrum with a confidence that eventually sells Codes and Keys' moments of 
eager-beaver optimism.

The results vary: "Lost Weekend" is some kind of romantic peak, while the Lennon-esque "I Am the Psychic" is not.

Repurposing tired metal tropes for ecstatic sensory trips, these songs are steel-tipped pointillist portraits of vitality itself.

Harper sounds most engaged on the disc's loudest, least melodic cuts: "Clearly Severely" is a furious, TV on the Radio–style soul-punk blast.

While that obsession with the "big sleep" gives Own Your Ghost a gloomy power, these cross-cultural pals might consider a less depressing repertoire next time.

her band's seedy synth pop more often recalls Kate Bush's dramatic art songs and the Knife's ghostly techno-pop (and more specifically, the soured vowels of frontwoman Karin Andersson).

Rome has the undeniably high-end vibe of an A-lister's lark. After all, what kind of no-name can book the recording studio once employed by Ennio Morricone?

Mostly, though, Destroyed is about as appetizing as a warmed-over deli tray.

Surprisingly hot to the touch, Wild Beasts' third album does more with less, paring down the quartet's groove-inflected chamber pop to expose raw burning desire.

Every sweetly conflicted track sounds almost exactly the same, but his perverse playfulness makes that limitation almost feel like liberation.

On Gunz N' Butta, Cam'ron and protégé Vado (a rapper with Gatling-gun nuance) are roiling and abrasive, twisting down a wormhole of multisyllabic rhymes and Araabmuzik's skittering beats.

Plenty of bands try to re-create Bob Dylan's mid-'60s apex, but Celebration, Florida sounds like it's conjuring Dylan's mid-'70s Rolling Thunder Revue period.

Hull's greatest skill is making his emotions sound as extravagant as they feel, especially when he screams.

The results are simultaneously raw and symphonic, always ascending higher while on the verge of total collapse.

While string-gilded klezmer ballad "Steak Knives" and steamrolling six-minute confession "Shameless" plod well-trod territory, the mod-pop swing of "Piranha Club" and the wry, multi-suite cabaret of "Oh, La Brea" place Honus' self-loathing in a refreshing, no less bizarre, light.

Eagerly filling the recent vacuum of great U.K. guitar bands, this London foursome draws on the Jesus & Mary Chain tradition of sweet early '60s pop'n'roll married to sour punk noise.

The Antlers still summon widescreen, dramatic moments when their moody tangents cohere, but too many songs sacrifice substance for prettiness, gliding by forgettably.

Stone Rollin's rhythm-and-blues revival can't obscure Saadiq's songwriting talents.

Is the entire thing about 20 minutes too long? Probably. But the obvious lack of outside meddling proves that Tyler's auteur status remains intact. He is, in the parlance of our times, still swaggin'. Now maybe he can get to work on winning that Grammy.

Gang Gang Dance are back to testing boundaries. For them, it's a return to the future.

Compared to the band's clever early hits, the songwriting too often lapses into clunkiness.

A quick dip into glitch seems like a novice move, but all that slide guitar and glockenspiel give Sea of Bees a seasoned sorrow.

Much of the rest recalls '90s rave and jungle at its most shamelessly glossy.

The playing is deceptively forceful, and the songs cut surprisingly deep.

Musically, the hooks are softer, the arrangements more ambitious, and 1960s British psychedelic folk (Fairport Convention, Vashti Bunyan, Pentangle) a far more palpable influence than the Americana that fueled the band's 2008 debut.

Lyrically, he's back to his old tricks--shitting on haters, shouting out himself, somehow rhyming "orange" and having "diamonds like kablooie."

On their second album, this Aussie duo's buzzy guitar pop is more hyper and gripping than ever, as she breathlessly spews dramatic tales that have the immediacy of crazed Twitter posts.

Whether he's drunk on optimism or writhing in psychic pain, his relentless quest for enlightenment is gripping and inspiring.

Although frontman Mikel Jollet still falls on life's thorns, the band's second album supports his weighty themes with more instrumental muscle.

T-Bone Burnett's understated production suggests an aqueous atmosphere, with a few actual sea shanties.

While occasionally meandering or drifting into tempests of digital noise, Herren focuses on a path of rapturous melancholy.

Unfortunately, those songs are slight, unfocused things.

The songs are more consistent, too, flashing a certain lyrical swagger, careening from terrific sex to celebratory violence to uncomfortable cultural realities.

Her street-smart squeak and plastic-fantastic perspective are undimmed, now buoyed by a heartfelt bene-ficence.

Among those still cranking out shambolic odes to the suburban bored, these reformed shitgazers rule.

Whether driving a military tank through Glastonbury or recording a synth-pop tribute to playboy '80s auto mogul John Delorean, Super Furry Animals' frontman makes the gimmicky sublime.

With subtle sonic shifts (such as chanting on the almost-poppy "Trembling Hands"), the songs are reliably dynamic, turning hushed beats and lightly scratched guitar into overwhelming drama.

Coffey is the star, and on tracks like "Plutonius" and "Space Traveller," his monstrously psychedelic groove still kills.

Wit's End is even more hushed and sluggish than 2009's Catacombs, leaving lighter Dylanesque fare for depressive Leonard Cohen depths.

The songs appear to take chances--sweeping chord changes, symphonic progressions, darts into electronic sound--but there's little at stake.

His beat-poet spiel is more character-actorly than ever, but hyphenated-man is also more accessible than you'd think, thanks to Watt's skittery bass lines.

If Diane's songs are more accessible, they're still not easy, creating the Inception-like sensation of wandering around in someone's overheated brain, where urgency and a lack of clarity intertwine to disorienting effect.

Blankly drawn out, they are as unlike expressive human speech as anything in rock.

Chopped gives a thrilling, real-time glimpse into one of indie's true adventurers creating her legacy on the fly.

From the stark black-and-white artwork to the sounds within, Panda Bear's fourth album scales back, proffering succinctness rather than sprawl, exchanging samplers for sequencers, in favor of added warmth and intimacy.