Novelty is only part of what makes pop work, and on Don’t Stop, Annie brings enough of the other stuff--hooks, grooves, and a combination of sass and sincerity--to make you forgive her tardiness.

Yeah, the alternate/alternating track sequence is screwy for the first seven songs or so — Deerhunter build momentum only to lose it. But it gives the album’s backside something of a black-and-white-to-Technicolor moment.

On Kiss Each Other Clean, Beam's muse must have told him to pull back on the reins.

Disorienting at first spin, Wild Smile rewards by reconciling the easily digestible and the weird with each subsequent listen.

The 12 songs are rhythmically warm and appealing thanks to Jay Bellirose’s spare-cymballed drumming and the beautifully knotty guitars of Henry, Bill Frisell, and Greg Leisz.

This New Jersey quartet is one well-oiled muscle, and they flex it to hypnotic effect for 40-plus minutes.

The heart is here, but the lyrics have him sounding like a man who’s turned healing into a systematic process — a man who’s heard too much kind advice or maybe sat through too much therapy.

Subdued but not entirely resigned, Mitchell sings in a strong, assured voice that’s still warm and welcoming, though lowered by decades of ecologically unhip tobacco smoke.

The lyrics do little to stand out, but that hardly blights the rest of the experience. And none of the 13 tracks on Nothing Hurts tops the 2:45 mark, so it’s a speedy listen.

If at times the album works as dancefloor aerobic-pop, its true utility is in providing the soundtrack for two people to get lost in the vortex dance of each other's eternal-seeming embrace.

This may be the most uncharacteristic of his albums, but by venturing outside his comfort zone, Hawley has in turn made his best.

Who's Feeling Young Now? strikes a perfect balance between flash and form, running blistered fingers on otherwise scholarly templates.

Un Día takes everything the former Argentine TV star used to establish her musical style in the 12 years since she released her first album--her sometimes grainy voice, folk-leaning acoustic guitar, odd sampled sounds, and an impossible degree of looping-- and shows Molina’s music in its weirdest, most mesmerizing, ideal version of itself.

Speech Therapy has a lot going for it: it's a solid confessional debut about the singer's experiences as a black South Londoner, the backing tracks are inventive jazzy jams played by sympathetic musicians, and the upshot is an uncompromising suite of female-empowerment snapshots.

Their third album sticks to the Neil-Young-meets-Gram-Parsons folk rock of their first two but finds Sykes and [Phil] Wandscher experimenting with rockier blues and psychedelia.

His crafty postmodern bubblegum is a treat well worth chewing.

Give You the Ghost is only as transfixing as its singer.

Lack of body heat and dynamics aside, the ideas on Warm Heart of Africa are pretty strong, perhaps awaiting ironically fairer treatments in the hands of future remixers.

The new BSS album may already have a lock on most dynamic record of the year.

Johns’s stylistic schizophrenia might set you off here; even his singing on Young Modern changes from cut to cut. Everyone else: dig in--this thing is quite a feast.

whereas Krell's keening, pleading falsetto dominated Love Remains, Total Loss finds him granting the rest of his sonic palette more prominence.

Langford and co-vocalist Sally Timms lead listeners through tales of country, God, and man with a weather-beaten grace that would make Nick Cave fans squeal.

With Room(s), Travis Stewart has somehow managed not only to wrangle in the off-the-cuff tendencies of the genre, but also create one of the more fully realized dance LPs in some time.

At first, the minimalist, glitchy grooves sound like a lot of the neo-electro trend these days. But Mason’s off-kilter lyrics and psychedelic sense of melody soon overpower the thrift-store Gary Numan and Depeche pastiches and the trite S&M vibe.

For now, these four remaining songs from their indie days are perfectly competent, reminiscent of the Pixies, and hard to remember even though they're perfectly tuneful.

It's great to know the band still have some ire burning, but White Crosses is a crushing listen for someone who bought into Against Me!'s revolution.

A few songs in, I was reminded that I hate mixtapes--or at least, I find it hard to make it all the way through them, especially when they're made by other people and especially when they're filled with weak endless dub reggae.

Alas, at this stage of the game, The Chaos may satisfy, but it rarely excites - something of a snag for a band whose whole purpose seems to be capturing in song the thrill of a thrill.