Again working with Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann, they graft 4AD atmospherics ("A Darker Forest"), frosty power-pop hooks ("Magnets Caught in a Metal Heart"), and Mogwai pedal-effects crescendos ("Stay True") onto their post-hardcore template, which now churns even more fiercely with an expanded palette.

The ex–Drive-By Truckers guitarist shares his former band's lyrical penchant for the dark end of the street.

No longer the self-obsessed antihero, Slug continues his shift to serious storyteller, but the narratives here lack coherence and detail, while the music - ominous piano, lonely guitar - feels sketchy, like partial demos.

His 15th album--counting those as Smog--is a spare, rambling mix of country, blues, and '70s rock, but it detonates with lines so direct they barely sound written.

Wasting Light is much more than a salad-days nostalgia trip -- it's Grohl's most memorable set of songs since 1997's The Colour and the Shape.

Little Me reveals a variety of textures over time, and when you can decode the lyrics, memorable scenes emerge.

The Raveonettes haven't sworn off droning melodies and minimal percussion, but the duo's morbid Psychocandy métier gets a slight makeover on their fifth album.

Given Alison Mosshart's recent adventures with the Dead Weather (and Jamie Hince's escapades with fiancée Kate Moss), it's no shock that the new Kills record presents a more expansive sound from the London-based blues-punk duo.

Crossing the garage rock of early Strokes with the dance rock of Franz Ferdinand a decade too late, this suburban Los Angeles trio makes a tired idea sound viable by sheer force of postadolescent will.

The melodramatic tunes masterfully push up against the antihero's downward narrative spiral, making Defamation the rare contemporary album that insists on being heard in full, in sequence, until the story ends.

Somehow the group manages, with masterfully restrained piano and strings, to wring joy from bygone heartache.

Those Darlins open up their sound even more -- to '60s girl groups, surf-punk guitar, and song structures that imagine the Quarrymen wanting to be Patsy Cline instead of Buddy Holly

Slower tempos and fewer yuks mean less fun, but tougher backing vocals pump the essential estrogen.

On her debut full-length, the 22-year-old songwriter (see Miley Cyrus' "Party in the U.S.A.") nails a variety of roles: crotch-grabbing punker, '70s soul diva, Kelly Clarkson–style bellower.

The songs are powerfully wiry and declamatory.

Julie Budet chirps exclusively in French, which helps her Auto-Tuned singsong remain vaguely mysterious, even if her childlike melodies are far simpler than the subtly finessed synths.

Snoop's 11th album unevenly celebrates his all-over-the-map persona.

If the least they do is keep revealing new shades of the familiar, it's worth sticking around and seeing this band through.

For Belong, they step up in class with producers Flood and Alan Moulder, who have overseen alt-classics from Depeche Mode's Violator to PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love.

As usual, the North Carolina trio's latest is musically contemplative (mostly acoustic guitar or piano, bass, drums, maybe strings) and lyrically bountiful (camera-ready metaphors, idiosyncratic settings, characters with warts).

Warm, soulful, occasionally political, Wright was a private-press gem who deserved more.

This gorgeous 1970 folk-blues masterpiece teams a gnomic songwriter from Leeds with David Bowie's future guitarist (Mick Ronson), and Elton John's future producer (Gus Dudgeon) and string arranger (Paul Buckmaster).

Ignore the lyrics, Spears sounds even more like a programmed Britbot than on 2007's Blackout.

On W.A.R., the Queens MC is still in a linguistic fervor, rapping about being in the streets "like catalytic converters" on "Clap (one day)" and comparing himself to a preacher with a ".38 snub-nose" on "Let My People Go."

The competition is tough for Emo's Most-Avowed Dramatist -- Gerard Way? Jared Leto?! -- but Panic! at the Disco singer Brendon Urie might take the golden compact.

Keren Ann's languid orchestral pop is suffused with equal parts Parisian lounge, Golden Age of Hollywood, and polished folk song.

Though indebted to the brassy blasts and pleading yelps of James Brown, as well as the riffs of the MC5 and Stooges, Lewis and Co. avoid sounding either self-consciously retro or awkwardly modern on Scandalous.

All hands sound fully engaged on their first album since 2006, which opens and closes with glorious echoes of X's overdriven guitars and yowling male-female harmonies.

On Angles, the Strokes' trick isn't fooling us into thinking these tunes fell to Stanton Street fully formed (though that occasionally happens, as with the goofy fake-reggae lark "Machu Picchu"). It's that a group of reunited rock stars somehow come on like wide-eyed kids.

With dance-rock standouts like "Julius" and "Bury Us Alive," the Portland quartet's third album is its best yet.

Minus the mock-heroic guitars, frontman Tjinder Singh's globalist critiques lose some of their pop-political punch.

Sniper's voice still sags and drags, but Land and Fixed is remarkably feel-good, even when channeling the Cure via the Breakfast Club bounce of "Blurred Tonight" or Joy Division on cold-wave throbber "Collides."

On his first solo studio album, the granny-spectacled guitar god unplugs for a set of gentle acoustic ditties.

Featuring Farfisa, sax, strings, anything but loud guitar, Dancing Backwards doesn't even try, and that's its virtue.

Pairing dreamy synths and tight riffs, the result is confident and exhilarating.

Let Me Come Home goes widescreen with a vengeance, trading in too much of the band's unhinged jig and bounce for a more generic-sounding epic soundtrack -- guitar and bass to the front, strings in the middle distance.

Rise Against's strident anti-ignorance messages have coursed through several albums of tightly wound, good-intentions punk.

In contrast to Miller's usual earthiness, this Americana super-session is sonically lighter than air--thanks to spectral six-string ambience from Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot, and pedal-steel ace Greg Leisz, who adorn heavenly voices including Emmylou Harris and Patti Griffin.

Journeymen that they are, though, McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) and Wynn (ex-Dream Syndicate) understand the poignant vindication in being remembered at all.

Expansive yet intimate, ornate yet seductive, this is capital-A Art rock without pretense, but with tremendous heart.

You know you're in trouble when Avril Lavigne starts sharing song titles with R.E.M. and Pink Floyd.

Pedals reveals a group of reenergized vets who've hardly mellowed with

Compiled by Stones Throw's Peanut Butter Wolf, this set features singles, club mixes, and unreleased tracks, including the George Clinton-esque electro of "On the Floor," plus mid-'80s synth-dance tracks that recall Prince and DeBarge.

Though made by only two people, Civilian never feels less than fully realized.

Lasers works best when the grabby hooks, electro beats, and conscious rap rants are all turned down a notch.

On this debut full-length, already a U.K. No. 1, she glides through blippy anthems ("Starry Eyed"), pumping disco ("Animal"), and delicate grooves ("Lights") with a pixie-ish voice that's one notch sweeter than Metric's Emily Haines.

"Turn the dial on my words," she suggests, and the band's glorious noise obliges time and again.

Their Discodeine debut is surprisingly devoid of frothy sensationalism.

Collapse mostly sounds like a familiar friend -- reliable in all the best ways, but still capable of quietly insinuating surprises.

When the band's clattering, it's great fun ("Why Not"), but leave the tongue-in-cheek (or is it?) spoken-word title track at home and release the rock instead.

The songs appeal broadly, but they're tailor-made for two people.

To compensate for the loss of [drummer Jerry Fuchs], the band gets by with help from former Outhud/!!! alchemist Justin Vandervolgen, who mixed the album to accentuate its disco grooves (see the title track), and Zombi's Steve Moore, who added synth arpeggiations to the epic arc of "Oaxaca."

Using lo-fi digital techniques to play up rough edges and raw emotion, Blake's rare talent is to make music so naked seem unshakable.

Getting away from his brother really does seem to make Liam happy.

Li's new album, Wounded Rhymes, is equal parts seething ice princess and lonely snowwoman, vacillating almost track by track between fury and despondence over a scotched relationship.

Playing like 12 unmastered seven-inches varying wildly in style and volume levels, Nothing Fits vacillates between feral Wire putter, psych-addled Wipers soar, and bleary No Age blur.

While the production's scope doesn't quite fit Chikita Violenta's knack for scrappy Superchunk-style guitar pop, the busy shimmer usually complements the songs' energy instead of burying it.

Blessed feels more like a country-blues toast to the pissed-off side of interpersonal relations, set to coproducer Don Was' sturdy barroom roots rock. And Williams calls 'em like she feels 'em.

How to write authentically about a mundane life? Smith's answer involves screwball hooks, surreal evangelizing, and drunken-troubadour gusto.

On 2006's What Are You On?, he was too cranky by half, but here he returns to hopeful melancholy, lonely drum machines, everyday drug stories, even a '70s yacht-rock sketch ("Tommy Made a Movie"). Glad you're still breathing, man.

No Time for Dreaming wails in a world of "Heartaches and Pain" (see the memorable closing track), but Bradley's despair is never less than stirring.

Though Blow Your Head leans hard on the Diplo cohort (Major Lazer, Rusko, Borgore), its colossus is James Blake, whose shower of warped arcade-game synths and butchered old gospel vocals is stunning--heaven for believers and headaches for everyone else.

Cheerfully ignoring stylistic boundaries, Brit duo Malachai (formerly Malakai) polish their cut-and-paste skills on this follow-up to last year's tantalizing Ugly Side of Love.

The Gathering should be a hoot, at the very least, but this Baltimore clan's fourth release is more of a slog, shackled by monochromatic guitar churn and a slack pulse.

Killing Time is no breakthrough, but it does pack actual hard-rock crunch, not just sure-shot emo punch.

Fluorescence, their fourth studio album, has an overwhelming brightness.

So strength meets strength on this unusual album-length remix, as Smith's skittering beats and ghostly soul divas put Scott-Heron right where he belongs: in the future.

Most producers who approach the mic do so at their peril, but on Dropout, West turns out to be a full-service hip-hop artiste.

Upbeat sentiment is scarce, yet there's barely a downcast moment -- no insignificant trick -- and somewhere Alex Chilton nods his approval.

What the album lacks in focus, it makes up for in sheer listenability.

Ices' lush melodies and dreamy voice will convert skeptics and mesmerize supporters of Kate Bush and Joanna Newsom.

Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker frontman David Lowery splits the difference between the former's loose eclectic twang and the latter's tight psych-country on his solo debut.

They might not know where they're going, but they have no doubt they'll get there.

Recorded leisurely over tea at his sister's place on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, Sidi Toure's second album is an intimate gem of bone-dry acoustic Afro-minimalism.

Marion's approach varies, but his surprisingly soulful songs consistently connect, a significant feat considering we only hear his voice through a Fender.

The People's Key proves Oberst has learned to balance a cutting perspective with a bleeding heart.

Hardcore is mostly content to refine the band's epic, frequently breathtaking constructions.

This loud and proud psych-folk trio want some old-fashioned joy on their fifth album -- and they want it now.

It's yet another trip to the part of town where you really shouldn't be, in a district the Truckers call home.

Sung with warmth, these tracks offer a welcome antidote to her more familiar performance mode--spectacular austerity. They're as bloody and forceful as the battles Harvey references.

Gradually, he surfaces along with the band's worldly identity, but the sentiments behind the histrionic symphonics often remain obscured, and the band's desperation lacks focus.

Beans' avalanche of verbiage can obscure his nuances, but a cast of collaborators--disco evangelist In Flagranti, electro-hop eccentric Tobacco, psychedelic beat guru Four Tet, even Interpol's Sam Fogarino--burnish his rhyme schemes into high-tech funk.

Singer Christopher Owens remains unchanged: Choked on teen melodrama and blessed with a documentarian's keen eye, he's the rare indie rocker with a tender hooligan's heart.

Apparently, [Craig Fox's] been stockpiling solid songs: From the slinky "Go Tell Henry" to the stinging snarl of "Underestimator," everything here is taut and lively. The lone drawback: It all sounds terribly familiar.

The record works best at its most focused and extroverted.

The band's typically thunderous melodic sprawl and cryptic musings on life and death perfectly fit the conceptual bill, with everything cranked to its natural extreme.

On the follow-up to 2007's terrific Neptune City, Atkins trades that album's lush torch-song vibe for scrappier indie-garage arrangements that drain much of the drama and romance from her music.

If you're looking for a record that'll make you wanna trash your beloved's belongings and have make-up sex amid the ruins, 21's your jam.

The Israeli threesome's second full-length, though, provides fewer surprises, dutifully thundering through rage-rock history as singer Ami Shalev alternates between growl and yowl to communicate a life-is-short-might-as-well-bash message.

This set of hissy practice tapes varies greatly in quality with the demented trashing of a Beatles melody on "The Masks" and the snotty sneer of "Can You Give Me a Thrill???" abutting stoned instrumentals and solo noodling.

Their diverse third release occasionally finds new ways to induce grins.

The production (from Ski Beatz, 88-Keys, others) adds florid, melodramatic choruses to jazzy boom-bap tracks, blunting the impact of Kweli's dogged street intellectualism.

DeBoer's political poesy lacks his predecessor's acerbic wit, and his singsong delivery is much less bracing than Sok's full-throated rant.

A couple of songs succeed on their own terms, like "Finally Begin"--destined for a rom-com trailer--but most float unmemorably down the highway of not-quite-modern rock.

There Are Rules doesn't contain a single tune that lingers afterward.

Twenty years since their last album of new material, Gill and vocalist Jon King spit out splintered riffs and skewered tropes that approximate the band's peak on grabby party-starters ("Who Am I") and mesmerizing midtempo grooves ("A Fruitfly in the Beehive"). The rest are only slightly damaged goods.

Long on cryptic references (you mean you haven't read Curzio Malaparte's 1944 novel Kaputt?) and Euro-weary mood, the vintage electronic-pop ambience of Destroyer's ninth album recalls the days when MTV emphasized music.

Unlike much of the current post-Animal Collective psychedelia, there's a palpable, full-bodied force and galloping beat behind the bliss.