“Abnormal is the new normal.” This is one of the many snappy lines on The New Normal, a show about an affluent, committed gay couple who are having a baby via surrogate.

Algiers is the latest in a long line of unperturbedly consistent Calexico records, the same ones that score the imaginary hip gas stations in the Cormac-McCarthy-by-way-of-Wes-Anderson southwestern border towns of the mind. And while there’s nothing remarkably out of step with what they’ve done before, Calexico trade on their strengths in the “well-worn shoe” tradition of bands like AC/DC or Red House Painters-the same old thing as an irreplaceable standby.

One has to wonder if Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) felt a little in awe of David Byrne, if it was never in the plans for this record to be a 50/50 partnership, or if Byrne’s persona is simply so well defined at this point that it would overshadow most artists. In any case, the mixture here leans heavily on Byrne, which is certainly not a bad thing, but Love This Giant doesn’t take full advantage of Clark’s guitar prowess or hypnotic voice.

In Bachelorette, icy maid of honor Regan (Kirsten Dunst), hipster Gena (Lizzy Caplan), and ex-prom queen Katie (Isla Fisher) travel to NYC to take part in a high school friend’s wedding. Too much booze and cocaine leads to a mishap with the bride’s dress and a night packed with further drug use, strippers, inadvisable sexual encounters, and eventually a little bit of enlightenment, as the chaos reminds the girls why they ever became friends in the first place.

Back around the time of recording Kid A, Thom Yorke professed that he was “bored of melody.” Twelve years down the line, it seems that The xx, a band whose near-eponymous debut album saw them achieve Radiohead levels of acclaim, have reached a similar conclusion that there’s more, as well as less, to a song than a hooky refrain.

Cinematic melancholy? Widescreen romanticism? Yup, must be another Stars album. The Montréal, Canada-based group’s sixth full-length finds them treading on some very familiar ground. As with previous works, the quintet’s output still hinges on three basic concepts: death is approaching (“Do You Want to Die Together?”), bitterness is inevitable (“A Song is a Weapon”), and love is both complicated and necessary (take your pick).

The Fresh & Onlys are cut from the same stylistic cloth as contemporaneous acts such as Woods, Real Estate, and White Fence. They’ve been toiling about the noise pop circuit beneath the radar for the better part of a decade, despite releasing a litany of fine albums, including a trio of solo albums by frontman Tim Cohen.

In his new book, David Todd compiles interviews with 25 “alternative” guitarists, discussing their approach to music, their technique, and the vision they have for their instrument.

Chan Marshall’s ninth album has arrived after a long, six-year incubation process. The album was announced in a 2006 New York Times profile following the release of The Greatest, and the piece even went on to state that all of the songs for the album had already been written by then.