A key component of the ‘90s alt-rock scene was that many of its musicians had an ambivalence bordering on downright contempt for the very art form they practiced.

Easily his most commercially viable film, indie worker-bee Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies is a serviceably masculinized update on the oft-hackneyed romantic comedy.

Travis were championed by Oasis’ Noel Gallagher in 1997, back when that might have meant something. These days that doesn’t mean much and Travis doesn’t either.

Loud City Song is that rare, refreshing, and inspiring album that simply aspires to be a world unto itself. Pulling equally from modern classical, Tin Pan Alley musicals, musique concrète, and what can only be described as avant-pop as descendant from forebears such as Kate Bush and David Bowie, the album resists and even violently squirms away from attempts at categorization.

Uh-oh, No Age is messin’ with the formula. Their sound had its expansion and now it’s time to retract a little, to lean toward some of those punk roots rather than reveling in all that blissful guitar/noise wash.

After releasing their debut single “Born Again” in 2012, DIANA (Carmen Elle, Paul Mathew, Kieran Adams, and Joseph Shabason) got slapped with the descriptor “indie Sade,” which is as good a place as any to start describing their impeccably-constructed tunes.

Relationships between two artists are common, and, in heterosexual couples, even more commonly reflect the gender inequities of the environment in which they create. This complicated dynamic is the subject of Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer.

Charles Rowell and Brandon Welchez roar back onto the scene with their fourth full-length as Crocodiles. This time they’ve found the perfect partner in producer Sune Rose Wagner (of The Raveonettes) who tosses a fistful of Hollywood glamour all over their already glorious celebration of sex, drugs, and death.

A young woman storms across an open field, the sun glows lights her hair up like a halo; she wipes away tears. Her husband chases her. She thinks he’s leaving her; he assures he won’t. He tells her she can’t leave him, because he’ll follow her wherever she goes.