On their eighth album, spouses Brett and Rennie Sparks continue to put a brilliantly surreal twist on everyday subjects, using nature imagery to evoke the weird intensity of all-consuming passions.

Herren's stream of consciousness favors laptop techniques and restless exploration, and the results are Ampexian's modestly satisfying minute-long grooves, which seemingly end as soon as they get started.

With a squeaky Neil Young falsetto, backed by shambly wah-wah guitar and mop-bucket percussion, Earl chirps blithely inscrutable lyrics through a strand of airy, bedroom-psych pearls.

Two Suns is the rare concept album that's better for the bedroom than for bong hits.

Mica Levi leads her trio through this 28-minute cockeyed burst, each song a bizarre little post-punk contraption that sounds like it’s ready to fly apart and wreak havoc. Yet her debut is also insanely disorienting fun.

It's familiar, sure, but Kingdom of Rust has a welcome warmth.

The miserable bastard can still write melodies that make the medicine go down, and ultimately, that's his redemption.

Playing songs about cops on the take and dying in Penn Station with a hurtling forward motion that prevents the music from sounding (entirely) like a book report. Killer accordion solos, too.

There are no such standout cuts here.

It leaves us with a streamlined New Romantic sound, but one that at times feels like emotional Teflon.

After ranting against Christian extremism on their last outing, they're back to mindless fun, and with new drummer Westin Glass, they've resurrected the savage, speed-strummed fervor that once made Kill Rock Stars matter.

Black Dice are the perpetually esoteric older Crumb brother Charles: inscrutable, agoraphobic, undeniably brilliant but just as undeniably demented. All descriptions apply to their fifth album, with each track bursting at the seams with warped sounds.

Costas coos anachronistically whimsical and hallucinatory lyrics as if she were the ghost of an ill-fated fairy-tale heroine, and the haunted results suggest the greatest psych-folk obscurity you'll never afford on eBay.

On this debut, Lerner's gorgeous vocals, sunny melodies, and ultra-catchy choruses sound like a Fab Four fantasy trip as he logs extensive mileage in a rush of crisscrossing travelogue songs.

The sad sacks who populate such bitterly funny songs as 'Already Gone' and 'R.I.P.' linger in the mind long after the toe-tapping grooves have faded.

Their chops aren't superhuman, and groupie-trouble ballads drown Cormac Neeson's high wail. But when they up the tempos, they kick it.

The result is the alternative pop album of the decade--one that imbues the Killers' "Hot Fuss" and MGMT's "Oracular Spectacular" with a remarkable emotional depth and finesse.

For their second album as a duo, longtime collaborator John Parish gave Harvey finished songs to write lyrics for, and his sometimes brittle, sometimes thundering guitar work provides the skeleton for an array of fleshly narrators.

Living Thing won't double as anyone's dance-party playlist. But it's an uneasy, bracingly honest soundtrack to life after fame.

A New Tide also contains some of the band's most straightforward material yet.

Thunderheist is all about the quick dance-floor fix, but Isis imbues her characters with quick-witted wickedness, and producer Graham Zilla churns out Spartan synth tracks that have an undeniably funky buzz.

UGK 4 Life is a fitting capper to this Texas duo's storied career--nothing groundbreaking, just funky, rough-hewn, celebratory tracks.

Hills and Valleys, their third studio album since reuniting in the late '90s, holds zero surprises--mixing Tex-Mex bounce, outlaw twang, and folkie sincerity--but it feels utterly right, like your favorite greasy meal at the local diner.

Nothing here quite matches the effusive, quirky 'Montreal -40C' from 2006’s Trompe-l’oeil, but 'Luna' sounds like Animal Collective gone mainstream and 'Dragon de Glace' sambas with Air--both fine rues to traverse, oui?

The follow-up (without Chao) is a more straightforward Afro-pop record, with a few exceptions.

Her solo debut slightly tones down the Knife's electro innovation but turns up the creepy affect, making lyrically tender tracks like 'Concrete Walls' and hallucinatory sketches like 'When I Grow Up' into reverse Rorschachs.

In a narcotized haze of lounge blues, New Orleans jazz, gauzy retro soul, and understated guitar pop, he has made the most compelling record of his career.

Even at his most contemplative and nuanced, Deacon remains a DIY trickster at heart.

The Hazards of Love feels like a gambit, with the Decemberists betting that increased bombast and literary aspiration will make up for decreased attention to pop craft. It's a hazardous bet that yields spectacular sparks but ultimately asks for much more than it's willing to give.

Despite their wintry chill-out origins, Nordic keyboard pair Svein Berge and Torbjorn Brundtland create smooth, sunny sounds perfect for roller-skating on rainbows.

While the band still lack a truly distinctive vocalist, it's become clear that with their mastery of water, earth, and skye, Mastodon's music now feels as powerfully elemental as its subject matter.

The riffs have gotten sharper and more jagged as the punch lines have grown duller and less imaginative. Minus his smart-alecky cheek, it's increasingly difficult for McKeown to hold your interest.

Her fresh attitude eventually gets lost in a slew of downtrodden ballads that sink the album's second half. In other words, business as usual.

The pseudonym and title (a wink to Yo La's mostly-covers Fakebook) indicate how this lark, with oft-inaudible vocals, is meant to be held up against the band's canon.

The distinctiveness of these three weirdos and their democratic approach gives this unexpecedly harrowing album a remarkable cohesion.

While the album is more a series of word puzzles than a memoir, it does occasionally illuminate the man behind the mask.

While Jones' confidence as an MC has grown, his talent still lies more with songs of the streets than with songs of the sheets.

His quietly unsettling aura perfectly suits these childlike love songs.

Opener 'Ashes in the Snow' and 'The Battle to Heaven' invoke the CinemaScope bombast of Ennio Morricone, but even their added orchestral heft barely nudges Mono out of a windy, instrumental morass.

The group's final album (they broke up in October) still punches like a champ, with sharp bursts of intelligent energy.

Their debut begins with a rousing arena-rock anthem called 'Death' and then delivers detached variations on the same subject for the next nine tracks with a professionalism that's simultaneously compelling and creepy.

Oldham remains mostly untroubled on Beware, accompanied by an array of instruments--marimba, cornet, banjo, and flute swirl around placid country-tinged ruminations.

The result: an album exuding wall-punching energy, ugly noise, and raging nostalgia for stale bong water and sunburn.

Fist isn't quite a God punch, but it hits with legit impact.

She lacks the flexibility that jazz demands--she simply can't swing. But when she interprets material (from downbeat bards Randy Newman, Colin Meloy, and others) that matches the drug-ravaged wreckage of her vocal chords, she kills.

Kate Cooper's tales of awkward, broken love and chronic miscommunication don't seem ripe for selling sedans, but her reedy voice and zippy melodic guitar, plus drummer Damon Cox's imperfect harmonies, keep things from getting too depressing.

Throughout, drummers Carl McGinley and Eric Hernandez play tight, tribal beats. The heat subsides at times, but it never breaks.

Too bad the performances are so lamely tossed-off. Borrell's quavering vocals feel showy and shallow, while the quartet's glossy guitar pop could come from any crew of faceless studio hacks.

Produced with a heavy hand by Timbaland, the third solo album from ex-Soundgarden and Audioslave singer Chris Cornell is strangely appealing in its elaborately empty efficiency.

Face Control's programmed electronics, in fact, ring deeply human, and Boeckner's tortured vocals express shared experience rather than alienation.

Not Without a Fight bobs and weaves between chugga-chugga riffs and poppy lead licks, with Jordan Pudnik's well-meaning whine bouncing off Chad Gilbert's more assertive (and appealing) bark.

The emo-punk angst is cut with little of the band's trademark wit or ingenuity: Most of the songs plod bloodlessly to an inevitable, pointless climax of noise, sour humor, and teen nihilism.

aside from the nicely scuffed 'Dirt on Your New Shoes,' a general lack of spark or lyrical acuity makes even the album's catchiest songs of predestination ('The Ancient Commonsense of Things'), passive-aggression ('Don't Hide Away'), and whimsy ('Cue the Elephants') register as little more than charming diversions.

On her fourth album, Portland, Oregon singer/songwriter Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn expands her sound palette, somehow adapting a Carnival parade for the otherwise restrained "Country of the Future."

This hybrid group -- two American indie vets and two Kenyan benga musicians--twist rock and African riffs into drum-head-tight grooves on their third album, a feast for multiethnic guitar nerds but also a lively mix that anyone can dance to.

A ponderous chain-gang stomp and some misty lyrics outline his limitations, but once again, Perkins' loss is our gain.

Bluesy single-note guitar lines compete with jagged chording, the bass thumps out counter-melodies, strained yelping dissolves into pastoral harmony. Yet it all coheres thanks to frontman Benjamin Verdoes' pop instincts and the band's jittery energy.

It's weird to think that these Texas upstarts are largely relegated to the fringes of pop--what they do is so basic, so elemental, it's hard to even come up with a modifier to place in front of "rock."

This strange, fascinating EP dramatizes the desperate fumbling for order amid chaos.

Invaders Must Die is a stirringly workmanlike, if retro, blast of founder/producer Liam Howlett's anthemic breakbeat spazz.

Middle Cyclone carries case's unique vision one step further: here, she truly embraces the beast within.

With coproducers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois explicitly included in the songwriting, it's an effort to tinker and rough up and refine anew their music's essence--with nobly sketchy results.

It's a minor miracle that these Swedish vets' 24-song sixth album clocks in at 94 filler-free minutes, stuffed with late-'60s guitar romps ranging from slow-burn psychedelia to up-tempo struts, and more deliberate mood pieces.

Overall, The Bridge has a very Reagan-era vibe, and not just due to appearances by KRS-One and Big Daddy Kane.

Written in Chalk sounds like a breakup record, with the Millers (and guests Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, and Robert Plant) picking through an emotional boneyard of broken promises, shattered hearts, and spiritual uncertainty.

Sadly, nothing else on the Whip's debut matches that electrifying outburst, as the Manchester, England quartet downshift into a less savage, more sensitive sound often verging on generic synth pop.

Elbogen pens lively lyrics about car chases and hot DJ ladies, but his arrangements trundle along stiffly, each song rendering an imitation of rock that's as finely detailed as a hobbyist's diorama, and ultimately about as exciting.

aybe listeners trapped in the depths of mourning or an exceedingly bad breakup might find hypnotic comfort here; others will likely admire the pretty vocals, fingerpicked guitar, and spectral atmosphere--then crave songs just a little more eventful.

Fortunately, buried beneath the Lips' psychedelic slop heap are surprisingly exacting pop hooks, clever musical experiments, and insidious grooves that belie the band's wastrel image.

But primally satisfying as it is, the band's meat-and- taters thrash leaves one hungry for some Mastodon- style lateral thinking.

Luke Temple possesses both an eerily high-pitched cry and a facility for his adopted grooves that makes the results far more distinctive than derivative.

Frontman Aaron Aites counters the otherworldly ambience with straightforward strains of classic indie rock (think Sebadoh and Pavement). That combination can be jarring, but mostly in pleasant ways.

The first half of this double EP was recorded with a 19-piece Oaxacan band, who pull the songs away from Condon's reflexive melancholy; but next to their pomp, his sparse bedroom electronics on Holland (under the name Realpeople) feel a tad thin.

It takes a minute for the standouts here to stand out, but it's an enjoyable wait.

Though Moz's vocal range has narrowed with age, he still delivers brilliantly titled odes to depression and hanging out on his own.

Rather than straining for pop sophistication, Fridmann simply brightens and focuses the band's darker, more obtuse corners.

After the proggy overindulgence of their previous two albums, these Texans gracefully balance the dynamic alt rock of 2002's Source Tags & Codes with their more recent multimovement epics.

With Drive-By Truckers, singer-guitarist Jason Isbell learned to embrace some of those [Southern rock] cliches; on his gritty, vibrant second solo album, he begins to transcend them.

The strength of this follow-up is not the defiant antiestablishment fist-pumping (though there's plenty), but the tunes.

Asobi Seksu do something My Bloody Valentine can't--leave Shields behind.

Andy Cabic's balmy folk songs pull from pert shades of doo-wop 'Everyday') and Latin syncopation ('Strictly Rule'). But his whispery voice can take on a Donovan-like sultriness, making a song such as 'Sister' far sexier than a song named 'Sister' should be.

Hitchcock's second album with the Venus 3, who include R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, is less dazzling than 2006's "Ole! Tarantula," yet still pretty compelling.

Sidewinding bass lines and slashing guitar help pull together ballads of marital woe ('The Drifting Housewife'), epic rock­outs ('I Am the Supercargo'), and rousing takes on regret ('Your Acting's Like the End of the World').

The result is a thrilling, hyperpercussive collection of laptop ditties mixed so cleverly that they'll sound great ticking through earbuds or booming out of dad's trusty Cerwin-Vegas.

It's difficult to sound this vintage without coming off as contrived, but Alela Diane, her guitarist/producer father, and assorted friends tap into folk archetypes that are often opaquely generalized but always disarmingly pure.

For all its grim honesty, Whitmore's fifth album also boasts a survivor's tenacity.

with songs as strong as bluesy snarler 'Great Scott!,' the gospel-leaning 'Fear,' and stomp-along 'Tired of Being Good,' the musical debts are easier to forgive, if not ignore.

Sholi deftly incorporates eerie groans, math-rock guitars, la-la sing-alongs, and frenetic drum lines.

The album's rockers are a serviceable change of pace--especially 'Little Foot,' which channels early, Farfisa-laced Elvis Costello--but it's Mandell's torch songs that ignite.

John Shade moves with composure and ease through arch, almost dour indie pop ("The Believers") as well as joyous dollops of Of Montreal–inspired electro pop.

While there's nothing quite as hugely hooky as Alright singles "Smile" and "lDN," the album feels more confidently complete.

Black Keys singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach opens his first solo outing with an acoustic country blues that sounds utterly authentic but signifies mainly as a museum-quality reproduction. Fortunately, the rest of Keep It Hid hews more closely to the Keys’ scuzz-encrusted, blunt-instrument assault.

It's fevered outbursts like 'Lookout' and 'Grey Skies,' where Dex unleashes his slightly sloshed voice and surfabilly guitar, that have real soul-saving potential

When Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck and his band pay homage to Nelson, it feels like a greenhorn hitching on to the pothead patron saint's biodiesel wagon as a credibility grab.

Over punchy, driving riffs and crackling drum work, Stollsteimer howls like a guy with much to be pissed about, while the sharp production and dark pop hooks offer a vision of garage rock that's more grand than grimy.

Their smoky, atmospheric ballads are too languid by half, but Telefon Tel Aviv's bright melodic palette keeps Immolate Yourself from descending into a dull fog.

Changing Horses' Americana journey is hardly inventive, but Kweller's boyish charm and quirky songwriting keep it more promising than predictable.