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.