The aptly titled Wake Up the Nation hardly feels like a nostalgia trip; in the taut, two-minute boogie-punk number "Fast Car/Slow Traffic," Weller could be describing himself in relation to his heritage-rock peers.

Monumentally caustic but hypothetically a dance band, Sleigh Bells sculpt infectious double-dutch funk from an unlikely acid bath of distorted drum machines and nasal pigfuck guitars.

King Buzzo, et al.'s 19th studio album is downright sugary, a sludge-pop romp that mostly plays like a distortion-charred version of the Bay City Rollers or Sweet.

Ravishing yet famished for attention, this overachiever would be bloody irritating if she didn't demonstrate a savvy command of pop hooks.

Elson leans toward both bluegrass and chamber pop--the fiddle-laced "Cruel Summer" is worlds away from the twee, jewelry-box twinkle of "100 Years From Now." Her twangy, echoing soprano recalls Jenny Lewis and Loretta Lynn, aided craftily by husband/producer Jack White.

What keeps Murphy from being an insufferable know-it-all is how he folds deeper emotions into his references....Older, snottier, his edge remains.

Not long ago, Ben Bridwell's reedy vocals and slow-burn guitar were compared to Built to Spill's Doug Martsch; Bridwell himself is now a touch- stone. But when does "consistent" translate to "rut"? For Band of Horses, not yet.

At times, the results are a bit aimless; even a cute kids' chorus can't save "My Generation" from Joss Stone's wailing or Lil Wayne's awkward motivational turn. When the two principles catch a groove, though, it's impressive.

At times, Lidell seems determined to overcrowd his genuinely soulful and lyrically strong music, whether it's with silly, pitched-down vocals ("Your Sweet Boom"), laptoppy clicks, squiggles, and washes ("She Needs Me"), or blasts of aggro rock ("You Are Walking").

Some songs fade out just as they're transforming into something else; others split into several movements, and poetic lyrics psychedelicize hefty topics like war and slavery. Even at 18 tracks, The ArchAndroid feels condensed.

This reunion with producer Hi-Tek, Kweli's partner in late-'90s underground champs Reflection Eternal, fuels both camps with smart essays on addiction ("Lifting Off") and celebrity culture ("Got Work"), as well as forced, throwaway couplets.

On the Dead Weather's second album, they harness this icy alpha-dog tension into a distorted call-and-response aggression that's now greater than its parts, a rudely heavy swath of rock'n'roll authority.

That's the National's insidious brilliance: No other band makes dark and stormy seem like ideal weather.

That toughening process continues on this intrepid eight-song mini-album.

The sound is too slick by half, but Craig Finn's rhymes still resonate.

If the ranting occasionally suggests generic provocation for its own sake, Smith's fury, amplified by the pounding grooves, is oddly uplifting--in moderate doses.

Their fourth full-length has certain recurring quirks: skittery hi-hats, guitar lines to whistle along to, junk poetry sneered as if into a wind chamber. Blame a new emphasis on songwriting, never their strength, over sound-making.

Warm and inviting, his latest opus occasions swan dives into future soul, funky dubstep ("Dance of the Pseudo Nymph"), Theo Parrish–styled house ("Do the Astral Plane"), and astonishingly, Sun Ra jazz ("Arkestry").

The sharp riffs only occasionally add up to anything with a pulse, but the Pornos have always been bad mathematicians. Archaeology -- that's their subject.

Blissed-out and surreal, featuring queasy slides between loud and soft, it's a work of patient design and bloody fantasy. Brutal beauty abounds, but for the first time, Deftones are imitating rather than exploring.

Ritter's wordplay can be dense, but his warm, inviting voice makes it a pleasure to unravel.

With Courtney Love the only original member involved, Hole's return is nominal, but Love's resurrection is very real....It's only when Love throws a pity party on a series of slow jams that sincerity eludes her.

It's no Super Taranta!, but Hutz's minor-key odes to erotic revolution and cosmic evolution still pack a heady, sweaty punch.

The Adventures of Bobby Ray is a hip-hop Scary Movie, tossing off references (Vampire Weekend sample, Rivers Cuomo cameo) while struggling to establish a distinctive identity.

The results range from sublime ("Remember") to so-so ("Safe Tomorrow"), while the beat-broken "Move On" and the oscillating breakdown of "Future Tense" keep things inventive.

Mercer rants like the end is extremely nigh and songs refuse choruses, stapling together shattered fragments of classic psychedelia and the bits of Springsteen riffs that their countrymen Arcade Fire left behind.

Her enthusiasm immediately leaps from the grooves, but this debut also reveals an emotional and musical range her neo-retro peers lack.

Here, on the band's first album in seven years, he returns with the profoundly playful shrug of a cosmopolitan busker.

Though Swim is less referential, the artist that does come to mind in these sprawling pieces is Arthur Russell, whose outsider disco and house featured warped cello and ghostly vocals.

Now 22, she's full-on pissy and proud, pulling from some reliable forebears on this fascinating follow-up.

The album also features songs written and sung by other Apples, and while they're perfectly pleasant indie pop, they only accentuate Schneider's mastery.

Rise Up doesn't always meet the occasion, but it's Cypress' most consistently listenable album in 15 years.

Two dudes from bong rockers Witch, including Dinosaur Jr. ax god J. Mascis, and two more from middle-aged glam junksters Cobra Verde, including singer John Petkovic, make for a three-guitar, super-ish group that actually gets somewhere rather than just revving its engine (see Them Crooked Vultures).

With Cash gone and Willie spent, hopes hang on Hag to deliver classic country, musically and poetically. And he doesn't disappoint.

The goofier aspects of his earlier work are missed here, as are his usual naturalistic beats, which have been replaced by squelching, ominously snaky G-funk.

Troubled frontman Anthony Green and his mates have embraced glossier production while reconnecting with At the Drive-In's teeming passion.

His latest release (aided by fellow Texans Okkervil River) is wizened and epic, marked by squealing guitars and a deep wistfulness.

Despite being haunted by the group's flip from rock-star charade to reality, Congratulations still brims with mischievous energy.

It's rarely as lively as 2007's Last Light, but the interplay of organ, cello, and acoustic guitar on "Brooklyn Fawn" has a genuinely comforting warmth.

Matsson is a Harry Smith acolyte, but his understanding of Americana (and American English) is fractured, and his songs are jammed with enough surprises to make him seem like a singular new talent.

If you're not already aware that this prog quartet's fifth album serves as both a prequel and a finale to something called "The Amory Wars," bemusement is probably the best you can hope for while enduring their overwrought, topsy-turvy blend of spiky metal riffs, Gollumesque vocals, and ambient melodrama.

Sam Amidon works similarly quirky alchemy here [as Moby did a decade ago], reinventing public-domain songs (plus one modern-day ringer) as rustic mood music for watching distant super-novas explode.

Junior could be just the thing for still-mourning Sleater-Kinney fans or anyone who likes their licks righteous and their indignation more so.

Her stormy folk songs (which, on occasion, recall PJ Harvey's) are primal and dark, crammed with ancient mythology and portentous warnings.

On his solo debut, Jonsi Birgisson--Sigur Ros' spectral voice and six-string skyscraper--embraces a lithe, lush pop his main band is too monolithic to accommodate, and it's revelatory.

The added vocalists flesh out the simple bed of guitar and handclaps on the crestfallen "Mama Don't Like My Man," and play her pragmatic foils on "Money," barking, "Whatcha gonna do?" while she pleads in a Tina Turner rasp for the green stuff to stick around.

Grooming their jam-band shagginess and spotlighting their songwriting chops, Philadelphia indie poppers Dr. Dog produce a clean, big-sounding album that uncannily evokes Summerteeth-era Wilco and Soft Bulletin–era Flaming Lips.

Man From Another Time cuts a steady rolling groove that wears well, from the opening salvo of "Diddley Bo" (which turns the Bo Diddley backbeat sideways) to the closing cover of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."

On her Dum Dum debut, assisted by Blondie and Go-Go's producer Richard Gottehrer, she cages contagious odes to husband-Crocodiles singer Brandon Welchez (as well as anxious ruminations on losing him) in metallic distortion.

Medicine County is more boisterous than 2008's Dirt Don't Hurt, but there's still something pleasantly lackadaisical about Golightly's delivery, and her songs never feel like they've been blindly co-opted.

Singer-songwriters Becky Stark (of Lavender Diamond), Inara George (of the Bird and the Bee), and Eleni Mandell convene for this relaxed, deceptively sophisticated gem of an album.

For years, Dillinger Escape Plan have been the metal standard-bearers of dizzying, time-signature torture, though they have occasionally eased up to construct NIN-damaged, alt-rock superhero fantasies. The band's fourth album gives these two personalities their most seamless marriage to date.

Sometimes Volume Two drifts in a Valium haze of deep sighs, or its lyrics wanly drain the fun out of romance.

[Love Is All frontwoman Josephine Olausson's] aim is true on the Swedish quintet's third full-length, a fizzy, exhilarating hybrid of bubblegum pop and bratty punk.

On Head First, the singer's bandmate-producer Will Gregory creates a pitch-perfect neon-lit '80s wonderland with Hi-NRG bass lines and plenty of that fat synth sound made famous by Van Halen's "Jump."

Despite personnel changes, Here's the Tender Coming, the Unthanks' third LP, is still steeped in brutal Northumberland lore, and its doomed subjects (drowning sailors, child mine workers, a woman who dies on her wedding day) are well served by the band's dark, gentle strums and ghostly piano lines.

Rob Barber intensifies the band's trademark polyrhythms with snappy post-punk bass and eerie dub echoes on disco-leaning tracks like "On Giving Up," while singer Mary Pearson eschews lyrics about happy trees for stories of loneliness and alienation.

The old comedy adage goes that if it bends, it's funny, but if it breaks, it's not. Tell that to Drive-By Truckers, who break everything in sight yet still strike tragicomic gold every time. The Big To-Do, their eighth full-length, features another cast of walking-dead survivors struggling with their vices in a Faulknerian landscape of rocked-up desperation.

Their third album sports a more generic, arena-friendly sound, as if displaying too much personality was a liability.

It's a jumble. But Albarn's love of "Waterloo Sunset" poignancy adds emotional weight.

Sisterworld veers between frenzy and foreboding, exploring the City of Angels' demonic side, from Charles Manson to Bret Easton Ellis, while producer Tom Biller adds richly detailed Hollywood orchestration.

All three of these projects emanate a tasteful, bloodless efficiency. The songs appear to take chances--sweeping chord changes, symphonic progressions, darts into electronic sound--but there's little at stake.

His proud croon and the band's surging folk rock mean the emotional effect is closer to rebirth than suicide, but by the time the fourth song to feature a metaphorical drowning rolls around, the string parts start to matter more than the sentiments, which was probably not the intent.

With five songs clocking in at more than seven minutes, often thanks to detours down E Street, it's a big-idea album that feels small and personable, even as it's kicking you in the shin.

This mysterious Swedish dream-pop band's music remains hazy--mucho echo, blurry harmonies, soft acoustic instrumentation buoyed by generous synth strings, and a bright white ambience suggesting both sunny Balearic beaches and blinding Scandinavian snowstorms. Yet its emotions are conversely vivid.

Sometimes, as on the Velvets-y vacuum of "Evol," the trio merely imitate instead of inhabit. But those moments are redeemed by many others that prove original thoughts aren't always necessary for a gritty good time.

Leo has now produced more Pharmacists records while we've been at war than not, and in a world that still needs Fugazi's oppositional fire, The Brutalist Bricks' Dischordant burn is welcome.

This Montreal orchestral rock combo's previous efforts were lush and woozy, like a half-remembered dream, but Roaring Night is the stuff of nightmares.

He can't really pull off Dylan-ish literariness, but when he's loose, he more than earns his corduroy vest and Kris Kristofferson beard.

Unbound by a verse-chorus-verse format, the songs meander unpredictably, like a milder Of Montreal, with polymorphous sex replaced by God and health problems.

Pretty much every song on this prog-pop band's sixth disc evokes moodiness via some sort of weather, event, or technological-flux metaphor. It's a suitable theme for elegantly mutable yet hummably compact songs, led by marimba as often as guitar.

Save a few deft meditations on the stresses of blog-rap fame ("Flickin'," "L_O_V_E"), rapper Naledge and producer Double-O also sound uninspired, squandering their boyish Ivy League enthusiasm on clichéd odes to nightclub decadence.

Hidden would be unbearably pretentious if Barnett and crew didn't execute their mission with such wild-eyed determination. Instead, it's a chilling thrill.

Drum and guitar free, with stark string orchestration, this imaginatively selected and sequenced collection achieves such a haunting consistency of tone that its spell lingers long after the speakers fall silent.

A jarring, but refreshing, makeover.

With Jonathan Meiburg's luxuriant, lachrymose croon topping the slow-cresting violins of this tasteful rock ensemble, The Golden Archipelago will surely satisfy listeners in need of a melodramatic nap.

But it's with his jarring mix of the banal and the brutal ("I will always be nicer to the cat / Than I will be to you") that Stewart shows his outrageous brilliance.

Hooky, blood-soaked bad-love allegories such as "Draculina" and "Dine, Dine My Darling" (check the punny Misfits nod) satisfy like heartburn-inducing comfort food.

She simply delves deeper and gives what few artists can deliver: a self-contained world of warmth, crystalline detail, and intimacy that lies far beyond a Twitter feed.

After honing their Cure impression on 2007's breakout "Our Ill Wills," these heart-on-sleeve Swedes team up with indie crossover producer Phil Ek (the Shins, Modest Mouse, Fleet Foxes) for a third album of ably crafted sincerity.

The album works best when Black's mood swings between Technicolor dreams and depressing quotidian details.

Masters of atmospheric storytelling since the early '90s, England's Tindersticks showcase the shivery yet forthright murmur of Stuart Staples.

Devonté Hynes pens an indie-rock passion play that picks up the tempo and spotlights his thespian skills

Minor Love still packs some Jonathan Richman–esque quirk, as Green croons in a Lou Reed deadpan about goblins, flatulence, and other concerns over solidly constructed lo-fi tunes.

Alternating meticulous power pop ("Measure") and anxious aloofness ("Let's Write a Book") with relaxed twang ("Clear Water") and pliant balladry ("Curves of the Needle"), the Brewises seek a certain balance on Measure. But over this geekily ambitious 20-song double album, that effort proves entertainingly futile.

Here, awash in bedroom multitracking, she's more diffuse.

On his Rhymesayers debut, Philly's bearded battle rhymer gets consistently meaty beats from producer Jake One, whose soul-stirring tracks perfectly match Freeway's energetic musicality on breathless anthems such as "Know What I Mean." Problem is, proclamations that he's "about to bring that '98 hip-hop back" gradually unravel into bizarrely dated dismissals of other rappers.

As always, Argos stumbles into poignancy on his way to the punch line.

Erasing the gap between the 1930s and today, this striking North Carolina trio brings a modern sizzle to the legacy of classic African American string bands like the Mississippi Sheiks, with fiddles, banjos, and even kazoos sparking an electrifying ruckus.

Thanks to a volatile mix of the uplifting and gloomy--there's a bitter murder tale ("Dust Bowl Dance") and lingering visions of death ("Timshel")--Sigh No More transfixes.

The biggest, boldest, and best moments on their second album nod flamboyantly to influences never before evident -- Erasure ("Ambling Alp") and Haircut 100 (the tropical "O.N.E."), among others -- but somehow they're seamlessly integrated with trippier old jams.

One Life Stand finds the boys settling down and growing a tad soft in the middle.

His weathered voice has fissured in all the right places.

Trip-hop pioneers give doom a romantic tinge.

Old-school romantic Ville Valo croons as often as he screams, so that even when aiming for the stylistic median, a bit of local weirdness oozes forth to make Screamworks more interesting than it's designed to be.

Taking a cue from Shelby Lynne, the Watsons consult vintage Southern styles for inspiration, incorporating touches of country and plenty of hot-blooded soul.

The songs could use more steam, but Crows reveals yet another color in Moorer's palette.

Often gorgeous and never soothing, the damaged pop on Phantogram's mesmerizing debut is pure nightmare fuel.