Beyond a couple of guest-vocal spots from fellow Ronson client Lily Allen and an out-of-place rap from English MC Sway, Off with Their Heads covers pretty much the same territory as the Chiefs' first two discs.

Although titles like 'Suicide' and 'Drugs' may seem a touch overt, the songs are not overwrought cliches.

The constants are there; the group come off as authentic in their earnestness, even with lyrics ("I love your celebrity/the VPL in the SUV") that might look slipshod on paper. But no new ground is being broken.

Suuns' debut LP is pieced together from a few decent ideas and a lot of bad ones.

Knowle West Boy is a survey of Tricky’s sonic versatility--straightforward rock and oppressive, moody atmospherics all have a home here--and it is frequently gorgeous.

The Orchard cracks open a window to dreamy possibilities.

Within and Without is chillwave 2.0. It takes the same hazy late-night bedroom synthpop, but amps it up exponentially, with live instruments (cello, bass, violins, drums), guidance from superstar producer Ben Allen (who co-produced Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion and Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest), and more meticulously crafted songs.

Gibbard's carving out new musical territory on Former Lives, while amplifying the broken heart of what makes his sound so wonderful.

If the down-and-out, early-MCR-worshipping emo set need the equivalent of an "It Gets Better" video to remind them how awesome life can be, no document could be more spirited and persuasive than Danger Days.

With their debut full-length, Brooklyn pop quintet Friends have released the best pop album of the summer.

Even if the disc’s too long and there’s too much coasting here and there to qualify it as near-classic, there’s more than enough to convince doubters that Snoop can still deliver.

It’s still too lightweight to win any hip-hop race, but at least you’ll want to add K-OS’s name to your mental checklist as you peruse those small-rock-club listings.

Brian Wilson and his karaoke-smooth backing band the Wondermints have instead given us something on par with 1970s Beach Boys--kinda bloated, kinda silly, mostly out of date, but with enough earnestness and pop intuition to be so, so, so puerile that hating it would be like hating Raffi.

Dream Date does more than achieve its purpose, which is to get bottoms leaking.

Cut in Nashville with ace session players, what might have been a disastrous mess in other hands coheres into one of Costello's most satisfying releases in some time.

...The Ever Expanding Universe provides a nice excuse to put on the headphones and look up at the stars. There's nothing wrong with having one's head in the clouds, but this band could stand to make the occasional contact with earth.

In Light is an impressive step forward--it seriously contends for the title of this summer's go-to indie-pop record.

Martyn's early-'70s blend of romantic blues and eerie valentines remains potent, and on this double-disc tribute, 30 participants give him a smooch of respect, trying to update the hazy passion he brought to his best work.

Anything in Return is his most melodic album.

On Smoke, his blog-buzzed debut, he offers a tuneful, mellow bedroom pastiche of trebly early-’80s punk funk, spirited, rhythm-rich worldbeat, and post-Beck white-guy R&B.

When listening to Hippies, it's difficult to forget that Harlem have professed their love for Nirvana, and still more difficult to suppress the urge to tell them to turn down that bass already.

What BYOP now lack is the element of surprise that made their debut such a kick; they no longer sound as if they had something to prove, and that drains their music of much of its charm.

I had to make several return trips to the lyric sheet to clear up which songs were love letters and which were screw-yous. But this sort of tone-deaf emotional bludgeoning tends to work in her favor on monstrous power ballads.

Even if Sainte-Marie tries to cram too much into her joyous return to the limelight, Running for the Drum is proof that a path that began with the powerful "Universal Soldier" back in the early 1960s won't be fading gracefully into the usual sunset of folk retirement.

The mood ... is decidedly bleak- populated by disillusioned lovers and working class escapists, the lyrics splitting at the seams with dark religious imagery.

Sounds hollow and uninspired.

The Inner Mansions is much more interesting than your typical bedroom pop album.

In the end, the record seems an ascetic exercise, complete with drumstick count-ins.