Her magnetic debut album doesn't aim to break new ground, but her rustic, Stevie Nicks–ish voice unifies the myriad sounds that position her as both a radio-ready alt-country chick and a young, hip folkstress who pulls off online covers of Lady Gaga and Kid Cudi.

The lyrical immediacy and intimacy lift Black City leagues above much of the disassociated drivel that's labeled vocal house.

Wilson may be most famous for his own good-time rock-and-roll hits, but in underselling the Gershwins he's neglected his own very sophisticated and currently under-utilized capabilities.

There's nothing all that intelligent about anything SSLYBY have said or played, and Let It Sway is no exception--but someone will always love pure, simple, feel-good pop rock.

His simple songs come closer to eclipsing their cliches and becoming classics when they aren't buttered with dobro and pedal-steel arrangements that sound like afterthoughts. But when you're allowed to get close to the raw artist, you witness something truly special.

True, Camu Tao hadn't mastered the art of songwriting: verses and choruses abound, whereas bridges are conspicuously absent. But even half-built tracks like "Bird Flu" and "Intervention" are proof that he could create engaging and catchy hooks alongside vocals that matched his new palette without diluting the hip-hop aesthetic. Such songs are tantalizing examples of unrealized potential--a sad indication of what could have been.

What separates Reed from his would-be contemporaries is just how much Come and Get It! is not a pop-crossover record -- a point that is the album's strength, as well as its potential weakness.

It would help if the songs were better, but with all the up-and-down scales and chirp-chirp-chirpiness, the American Express commercial gradually gives way to a Riverdance special on pay-per-view.

The band's wonderfully detached mood seems born of their music's head-bouncing distractibility rather than any pretentious pondering.

He sounds like the dude from Blink-182 - just another suburban punk whining about this and that.

Praise & Blame casts away the extraneous baggage that has weighed down many of Jones's previous recordings and puts the focus squarely on the voice.

The good news is, this album is going to garner a dozen swoons in her direction for each romantic woe she professes on it.

On their debut, the young Beach Fossils separate themselves from the rest of the pack by coloring the ubiquitous surf-pop sound with a listlessness that makes them seem like weary veterans.

The details are stacked on in such neat pieces--background piano arpeggios here, a couple of skronking guitar notes there--that it's all reduced to very well executed window dressing.

The Tigers have no trouble doing vivacious and catchy without being cloying, so it's a shame they've shelved that skill.

Joe is one of the last remaining beasts from the East, and as he demonstrates on the DJ Premier ringer "I'm Gone" and "At Last Supremacy" with Busta, he sounds better in his back yard than he does in trying to appease pedestrians with unnecessary Wayne and Jeezy cameos.

Anyone digging into Maya (or MAYA, as it's being promoted) expecting club-banging pop hits will be . . . not disappointed, but definitely confused.

Every song here showcases Linkus's gift for pinpointing little benchmarks in hopelessness with brittle gestures of melody and ambiance. It's also another reminder of Danger Mouse's ability to whittle lean pop shivs from gnarly splinters.

But tempos that gait like a swinging pocket watch and Kozelek's drowsy, double-tracked voice make a strong case for a spellbinding kind of sublimity. This uncanny effect is even more pronounced on Admiral Fell Promises.

Aphrodite feels like a disjointed hodge-podge of shallow Hi-NRG dance-floor bangers for a decidedly older crowd.

Here, he recruits a cast of producers ranging from the familiar (Dungeon Family compatriots Mr. DJ and Organized Noize) to the surprisingly appropriate (Scott Storch, Lil Jon) to craft a palette of dexterous futurist funk that seems to be a logical successor to the groundwork laid by 2003's Speakerboxxx.

Again and Again is a beast of a different color, the sound of a classic New Order or Pet Shop Boys track--if someone had first sunk his incisors in and drained the blood from it.

Ambition might sound like an odd thing to chide a band for, but if Wolf Parade had figured out when to push the hooks and when to pull back the excess, Expo 86 would have shone.

There's no risk here, but there's plenty that's right.

Having put aside the gimmicky Atari-melting antics of yore, the Castles have created a dense-yet-airy thicket of pure pop transcendence.

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.

He’s no slouch in his endless catalogue of exhumed pop tropes, and here he treats radio pop’s past with the all-encompassing vagueness of its title.

A good deal of the album (particularly the first half) uses the new-fangled instrumentation sporadically, as an afterthought to a slightly darker version of the duo's time-honored techniques. This is where LP4, though flawlessly produced, is messy.