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Crazy for You
After a string of low-fi pop singles last summer, indie-rock teen prodigy Bethany Cosentino – cat lover, foodie, Breeders fan – decided on a simple recipe for her debut LP with partner Bobb Bruno: Beatles-ish drums, Ramones-ish guitars, Phil Spector-ish vocals. The result: reverb-frosted tunes full of girl-group tunefulness and ...

The Suburbs
When you call your first album Funeral, you set the bar high in terms of your maturity level. How can any young band evolve toward that full-grown third album after starting out with a meditation on death and grief? It's no problem for Arcade Fire – these Montreal indie rockers ...

100 Miles From Memphis
Sheryl Crow grew up near Memphis, long enough ago to know the tradition of Stax/Volt and Hi Records firsthand – those labels' fusion of R&B, rock and country has always informed her best music – so the ease she brings to this explicit tribute isn't surprising. Her smoky rasp is ...

Teflon Don
In the past two years, Miami MC Rick Ross has been dissed by 50 Cent, mocked as a phony gangsta when photos surfaced of his tenure as a corrections officer, and slapped with a $10 million lawsuit by his namesake, reformed drug kingpin Freeway Ricky Ross. He's also made the ...

Body Talk Pt 1
"Don't fuckin' tell me what to do," chants reformed teen-pop prodigy Robyn. No worry, girl, things are under control. With help from Klas Åhlund – who co-wrote her 2005 cred-maker, Robyn – the singer drops a near-perfect mini-album, launching a planned trilogy. Beats from Diplo and Röyksopp drive high-heeled heartbreak ...

Korn III: Remember Who You Are
Korn have intellectualized their splenic new-metal as they've declined commercially. But their ninth disc jettisons layered samples and pointy-headed craft for a live-band blitz, mutating the bleakest aspects of rap, rock, funk and industrial into a molten attack. "I'm such a stupid fuck/Listening to my head and not my gut," ...

Maya
Joe Strummer would be proud. Maya Arulpragasam, the British-Sri Lankan hip-hop art-punk guerrilla, has his genius for stirring up trouble, his wide-eyed humor, his zest for turning fury into wonderfully fucked-up music. But not even Strummer could piss people off with what he had for lunch. Three years after sampling ...

Fables of the Reconstruction
They hated making it and have often dismissed it, but R.E.M.'s third record, a dark meditation on the soul of the South, has aged brilliantly. Recorded with producer Joe Boyd, Fables explored a craggy interiority they'd later smooth out; Peter Buck's moss-hung jangle and Michael Stipe's benedictive mumbling lent themselves ...

Masts of Manhatta
"I'd like to be my own best friend/Turns out there's no reciprocal feelings," sings Tracy Bonham. A relatable sentiment, but there's no adolescent angst on her fourth disc, a gorgeous celebration of adult love. Manhatta has a pastoral, jazzy pulse and is full of crafty details the "Superfly" bass ...

Disconnect from Desire
The Edge has cited this New York loops-and-dance trio as a recent inspiration. It's only fair, then, that a bit of U2 comes through in the pulse and hosanna of "Windstorm," the first track on their second album. But Benjamin Curtis (guitar and electronics) and Alejandra and Claudia Deheza (vocals ...

Custom Built
Every rose has its thorn, and every airport bar has its 22-year-old divorcee. But not every album has two songs from different reality shows starring Bret Michaels, or the theme from the prison movie he wrote, directed and starred in. Only Bret Michaels albums have those things. Michaels is an ...

Flesh Tone
Kelis doesn't shake much milk on her first record in four years. Instead, she brings it to a slow boil. Flesh Tone is a foray into the percolating house, moody electro and hard trance grooves that pump up airplane-hangar-size Euro clubs. She's always had an impressionistic vision of R&B, but ...

How to Destroy Angels
Having wrestled with world annihilation in Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor is dealing with his scariest subject ever: marriage. His new trio is fronted by his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and married life doesn't exactly sound like bliss. In an eerily comatose voice, Maandig imagines the couple's guts getting ripped out ...

Aphrodite
According to mythology, Greek sex goddess Aphrodite rose out of the sea. But Australian sex goddess Kylie Minogue rose out of the Eighties, an even more mysterious and frightening place, and she's been one of the planet's favorite club divas ever since. Aphrodite is her finest work since 1997's underrated ...

Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
Big Boi's first official solo album is a stunning reminder of the OutKast rapper's hall-of-fame skills: He's got an inimitably slick and speedy flow and a personality bigger and more forceful than anything his producers can throw at him, from Scott Storch's clobbering electro funk ("Shutterbugg") to Lil Jon's eerie ...

Night Work
When these New Yorkers debuted in 2004, their flamboyant glam pop made them stars in Europe – not to mention a welcome new queer voice in rock. Three albums in, the Sisters are as gleefully hedonistic as ever: The beats still have that mirror-ball gleam, the slinky tunes still lodge ...

The Pretty Reckless
Gossip Girl star Taylor Momsen has a voice that sounds older than her 16 years – a throaty wail that suggests somebody's been buying her loads of cigarettes. It's the most interesting thing about this debut EP, which is long on generic hard-rock riffs and gothic poetry. "Goin' Down" is ...

Where Did the Night Fall
The fifth studio album from these British trip-hop pioneers suggests a dream sequence set in a posh club, delivering meticulously fabricated electronica full of whispery vocals and cushy synths. Tracks like "Joy Factory" a blend of busy drums and sci-fi sound effects, give off a dark, sleek vibe that gets ...

Love King
The-Dream has said his third album is "deeper than space," but it's more like a victory lap – a plush, pleasure-packed album on which the Atlanta singer-songwriter plays the hyperconfident Lothario and avoids risks. At times the self-described "R&B Gorilla" keeps his touch too light: The melodies here don't stick ...

Street Songs of Love
Alejandro Escovedo is a classicist, weaned on punk verities, schooled in American roots music. Now pushing 60, he's making some of the fiercest music of his career. His latest evokes Eighties heartland rock: "Anchor" feels like a long-lost radio hit; Ian Hunter adds scruffed harmony on "Down in the Bowery," ...

Streets of Gold
"We could do an album or we could do it viral/Spread it like an STD you got back in high school," boasts Sean Foreman. Give the Colorado "crunkcore" duo accuracy points: Streets of Gold is about as pleasant as a case of genital herpes. The formula is the same: dopey ...

Lazarus
Gym Class Heroes' Travie (formerly Travis) McCoy invented his own market by mixing emo, hip-hop and tween pop, and on his solo debut he makes good on a life of passing out business cards by pulling in everyone from T-Pain to Colin Munroe. He writes what he knows: money ("Billionaire"), ...

True Blood: Music from the HBO Original Series, Vol. 2
With its extremely hot naked people eating each other, True Blood is HBO's most rock & roll show. No surprise, then, that it snagged new songs from major artists (Lucinda Williams, Beck), along with some devilish oldies (13th Floor Elevators, Screamin' Jay Hawkins). Williams explores sex, death and regret with ...

That's Mister Attack to You
Like their Swedish elders the Hives, these young Danish mods take their Sixties garage-R&B assault seriously: They recorded this brazenly titled album in mono with White Stripes producer Liam Watson. Thee Attacks are also solid songwriters who personalize their debts to the Who and the Kinks with thoroughly modern enthusiasm: ...

We Walk This Road
Hooking up with the jam-band scene may have been the worst thing Robert Randolph could have done. Though amazing live, he has never recorded a great album – until now. Randolph puts overcooked funk on the back burner and offers up his specialty: pure gospel spiced with steel guitar. Producer ...