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.