The Moroder-indebted tunes on Real Life are more pop-friendly, but the chopped-up vocal samples on opener "Looking for What" are guaranteed to meld minds, while airy centerpiece "Keep It Up" defies gravity via handclaps and delicately chiming bells.

My Dinosaur Life, on which the band strikes a radio-ready balance between mayhem and melody, may well trigger their long-awaited breakthrough.

As usual, though, Willett also tries to showcase his brainpower, clumsily referencing works most commonly studied in AP literature....But the four-song EP is perfectly short; if you focus on the sturdy tunes and ignore the pseudo-smartness, it's plenty sweet, too.

Supergrass' Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey deliver 12 blasts of stylistic tinkering that never subsume the songs' original intent: to rock.

Contra is more fully formed, a '70s-style record-type record. It's their version of the Talking Heads' "More Songs About Buildings and Food," the disc on which they see how well their gold-star ideas move.

Unlike Beck during his purple-paisley "Midnite Vultures" phase, Damian Kulash employs a soul-freak falsetto that's sincerely accurate, and with the help of Lips producer David Fridmann, he and his power-pop pals master the Okie pranksters' baroque whirls.

As he has for two decades, singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston plays the unreliable narrator in this exquisitely unsettling folk-rock collection.

The result is minor Mary--strong by many standards, a bit tepid by hers.

These guys once flailed like a future-prog version of Slipknot (whose Shawn Crahan served as executive producer on L.D. 50), but now their doomy riff-o-rama comes equipped with mellow-bellow butt-rock choruses.

Last year's Merriweather Post Pavilion, SPIN's 2009 Album of the Year, forwent such formlessness, but the haze returns on this five-track EP. Fortunately, Merriweather's hummable, techno-indebted delirium also returns.

Playing to splintered attention spans, This Is War insistently splices bits of other artists' work into a facile crescendo of mega-angst and ephemeral drama.

The album's most striking moment is "Fallin' Down." Over a ominous guitar riff, the 20-year-old sings, "It's getting heavy / I think I'm getting ready to break down." It's the most honest moment of his short career. The kid sure needs a vacation.

In fact, throughout, older brother gets the best of his carefree little sibling. Breezier doesn't always equal better.

Gucci is not always so reflective; sometimes he's as broad and bracing as a ball-peen hammer....But more often than not, the prolific MC (in 2009, he released more than 100 songs on mix tapes) limits his id, and emphasizes a surprisingly gripping superego. Case closed.

Their petulantly plagiaristic third album--mired in singer Sam Endicott's uncharismatic Robert Smith–in-a-wind-tunnel moan (imagine that hair)--continues to stuff downtown Gotham streets into predictable, rhyming-dictionary couplets.

Last year's remarkably lewd "12 Play: Fourth Quarter" may go down (so to speak) as one of the great unreleased albums in pop history. Fortunately, several of its prime cuts, including the silky-smooth 'Go Low,' surface on Untitled, which contains no shortage of fresh raunch.

As a memorable exploration of the intersection between hip-hop and the blues, it ain't much.

"I want us thinking outside the box," Shakira tells a lover on her third English-language studio disc. And musically, at least, she succeeds throughout the wildly eclectic She Wolf.

Everyone from Lady Gaga to Muse chips in here with perhaps the strongest, most flavorful batch of tunes to reach an AI vet, and Lambert's polymorphous vocal skills unite dancefloor strut and hard-rock pomp in a convincing glam package.

Rated R, Rihanna's first album since her brutal confrontation with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, wants to recast her as a searing woman scorned. It doesn't quite take.

It's comforting to learn that Lady Gaga's supposed dark side--The Fame Monster offers a flipside to The Fame's sexy fun--is just as fun-loving and club-rousing as the songs that made her famous, because, really, her playful façade is a huge part of her appeal.

Yet even this fits with Kid Sister's vibe of retro irrepressibility. Dream Date's every track virtually dares you to resist her.

The typically droll Video Star includes a cowbell-enhanced rave-up ('Do You Mind'), a bit of Lady Gaga–ish electro-pop ('Last Days of Disco'), and one track named after Transformers ('Deceptacon'). It's a charm offensive with stars and stripes.

Don't Stop boasts gleaming dance-pop production from first-album collaborators Richard X and Timo Kaukolampi, plus Bloc Party/Kate Nash producer Paul Epworth and Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos.

The Fall has been billed as Norah Jones' rock album. In fact, it's something even more surprising: a hot-blooded soul record from the queen of the even keel.

Believe it or not, though, this appealingly lightweight set of funky robo-rock jams actually makes good on Homme's promise.

Too bad that the production here is decidedly mortal.

Before I Self Destruct starts with 50 Cent literally growling, and it ends, on 'Could've Been You,' with Kelly crooning about sniffing his own excrement. Both sound equally laughable.