Here’s J Mascis with another batch of understated and partly unplugged tunes for Sub Pop. Mascis surprised everyone with the intimacy of 2011’s Several Shades of Why.

Last Weekend follows very closely in the footsteps of other family dramedies, in which various family members who are not compatible with one another are squeezed together in literal and metaphorical claustrophobia.

Shockingly, The Rentals’ first LP in 15 years may also be their best. Lost in Alphaville finds a happy medium between the heavy fuzz and Moog synths of the group’s 1995 debut, Return of The Rentals, and 1999’s over-stuffed and too-ambitious left-turnSeven More Minutes.

When Grumbling Fur released their Furrier debut three years ago there was little indication that they would soon be topping Album of the Year lists (well, one list at least) and collaborating with internationally-beloved musical superstars (well, The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess at least).

What Basement Jaxx presented to the world 15 years ago beginning with their debut, Remedy, is what today’s high profile dance music artists are fervently trying to capture. Seven albums down the line, Junto verifies that the British duo is still the leader in sketching the blueprint for house music.

The whole premise of Willis Earl Beal‘s Experiments In Time is that recorded albums are time capsules. Listening to a record is reliving a past moment. Beal takes this concept and explores it in a richly introspective work that is both challenging and thoroughly satisfying.

Life Of Crime is a pleasant enough movie—but “pleasant” probably isn’t the primary adjective you should want to describe an Elmore Leonard adaptation.

Listening to Diplo‘s Random White Dude Be Everywhere “greatest hits” compilation feels like being in a ginormous cement rave hall with the only light show being green lasers—basic but visceral.

Over the course of Under the Skin‘s 108 minute runtime, the film is alternately a Tarkovskian sci-fi meditation, a digital video art installation, and an extended candid camera punking riff.