Dido's third solo album reveals an unyielding fear of intimacy, her mellow trip-pop (coproduced by Jon Brion) buckling underneath sadness and alienation.

Not the Actual Events is probably the grimiest Nine Inch Nails release since The Fragile. Rather than running the gamut between overdriven steamrolling and receding, glitchy ambience as on most of the work Reznor loosed between 1994 and 2008, the EP realizes a specific, portentous mood from several equivalent angles.

[They] downplay the hip-hop boom-bap... in favor of busy pop jams that mirror the overstimulation of 21st-century life. [Apr 2007, p.93]

[They] spruce up their cutesy indie pop with grander melodies, gigglier choruses, and a wider variety of sounds. [Apr 2006, p.91]

This Virginia duo's debut could double as a hypercompressed essay on post-punk's shift into indie.

She follows up 2007’s covers and remixes album Yes, I’m a Witch with another collection that’s just as strong and intriguing, mainly because of the smorgasbord of indie and electro-pop oddballs and A-lister names attached to it.

Never succumbing to mere cleverness, Adem achieves a singularly intimate expansiveness. [Nov 2006, p.96]

Milky keyboard washes and found-sound accents... give the music a darker, dreamier depth. [Sep 2006, p.100]

Packed with sparse, whirring, and danceable noise-rock refinements. [Apr 2005, p.108]

This sort of alternate-universe intimacy with songs we've already come to love makes Versions a wild success, proving that something wemusic once coveted for its desolate nature can be just as warm and familiar when flipped into something else entirely.

Beneath the arena-friendly sonics and the streamlined storytelling of Teeth Dreams lies the same old band that kicked off their very first number with a little bit of Mott The Hoople self-mythology, that fist-pumping Hold! Steady! chant within "Positive Jam."

The growth is immense, occasionally breathtaking, and always immediate.

The Night Marchers follow Rocket From The Crypt's tried-and-true strategy, intertwining punk, hard rock, and rockabilly, with lively if unsurprising results. [May 2008, p.104]

The arresting second album from this five-piece trades the jangly folk rock of their only-pleasant debut for a harsher, more jittery approach.

Her songs are feeling like Jason Mraz's leftovers. [Jul 2004, p.110]

Their bread and butter is still exuberantly juvenile pessimism. [Aug 2004, p.107]

Woozy, smoked-out hooks are strewn like cigarette butts--a Black Moth specialty that Fridmann dials up throughout this consistently twisted half-hour and change.

Its finest moments ('Let It Die,' 'Sunrise/Sunset,' and the beautifully tortured opener 'Hands')--featuring the duo's heartaching harmonizing--capture a uniquely tender gloom amid the droning atmospherics.

The pink-slime pop of Mature Themes is made to epoxy itself to your ears for days on end.

Ultimately, the most appealing thing about American Wrestlers is its lack of obvious guile or pretension.

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

"Indie rock" has long since ceased to be either "indie" or "rock," of course, but Surfing Strange signifies on both counts, just when we desperately needed a refresher on the fundamentals.

A pleasant surprise.

A freaky, moving masterpiece. [Aug 2006, p.80]

Lifeline is a commanding, unjammy take on gospel-influenced rock, featuring his most spiritual singing since 2004's Grammy-winning collaboration with the Blind Boys of Alabama.

Their most relaxed to date. ... Whereas the first installment of the series seemed uneasy and disjointed in its span of styles, Love Yourself: Tear’s genre-hopping sounds like the group is simply having a good time.

As before, the least substantial choruses often repeat the longest, but it's a shortcoming offset by archly charming verses flaunting byzantine puns and rhymes that prove the Maels are as ambitiously eccentric as ever.

Death-metal firebrands still blaze.