In the press release for his band’s latest offering, Tell Me I’m Pretty, Matt Shultz of Cage the Elephant declares “We wanted to capture the sentiment of each song, and whatever emotional response it provoked, to be really honest to that.” At first, it’s tempting to investigate whether that’s an old quote regarding their last record, Melophobia.

It’d be easy for Jay Watson’s solo project, GUM, to be dwarfed by his involvement with Australia’s psych-rock poster boys Pond and Tame Impala, easy, but not fair. The comparisons write themselves, but his second record under the moniker, Glamorous Damage, doesn’t attempt to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the grandiose acidity of his various other projects.

The first of a series of collaborations on the excellent Mexican Summer label, Myths 001 brings together the charmingly sleazy alt-pop of one Connan Mockasin and Devonté Hynes’ infectious charisma.

Somehow able to continuously skate the cliff of insanity for extended periods of time without falling, Deerhoof is a true pearl of progressive rock (while still holding off on the proggy bullshit, thank God).

Anomalisa tears past its artifice to tell one heartbreakingly human story.

With each project essentially squatting on borrowed time, existence is fragile in the start-up world. Mike Donovan, a longtime staple of the San Francisco music scene, seems to have that frenzied mindset in common with his new neighbors.

The news of Pope Francis’ “prog rock album” went viral when it was first announced, but, like a lot of seemingly exciting things on the Internet, the concept turned out to be a little misleading.

Since forming in 2007, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have released three full-length albums along with a series of 7” singles and EPs. While the albums are all very good to excellent, they tend to try out ideas that would be otherwise out of place on their EPs and occasionally that leaves weaker material.

Fred Armisen and Bill Hader spend much of their time during their day jobs impersonating others as comedians. So it’s no surprise—and a pretty natural extension—when they decided to form their own soft rock spoof band The Blue Jean Committee.