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.