Publishing this biography only a year after Patti Smith’s brilliant memoir Just Kids was either a good or bad idea: Dancing Barefoot could appeal to fans of Smith’s book or simply pale in comparison.

Dance records are typically coated in layer after layer of sound, tracks of synth piled atop one another like a cake with so much icing that it oozes through the sides. The Rapture doesn’t subscribe to that philosophy. They never have. An undone quality washes over their songs, giving them some edge.

White Hills have honed their mellow-harshing space rock into an effective brain-drill with H-p1, now expertly wielding that Hawkwindian heritage with spitfire fury and a newfound lyrical purpose. The band calls it reactionary— “symbolic of the simplification of complex ideas to keep the masses from questioning the system,” says the band’s Ego Sensation (birth name, no doubt).

After running (or rather driving) into the sunset with a bleeding Captain Jack in her car, Ester and the team have reassembled in Wales to stage a final stand against…well they’re really not sure.

The final issue of Flashpoint bids adieu to the old DC Universe and ushers in their rejiggered line, dubbed as “The New 52.” If you have the choice, it’s better to skip this issue and pick up the OK Justice League #1. You won’t miss much.

How Hella can have the energy to keep cranking out their spastic, ludicrous-composition noise rock, let alone the brainpower required for memorizing all the parts, is anyone’s guess. But sure enough, the duo—just the original two-piece for this one—is at it again.

In the past nearly 30 years, Tommy Keene has established himself as one of the preeminent champions of power pop. His ninth album, Behind the Parade, makes a further case for his continued reign on the genre.

Seattleite Grant Olsen once played in the indie-pop duo Arthur & Yu, but his Gold Leaves project is decidedly more morose.

Justice League #1 is the first salvo in DC’s line-wide relaunch, and how better to relaunch a line than with a book by storied DC muckity-mucks Geoff Johns (Creative VP; writer of a ton of stuff, some of it very good) and Jim Lee (Co-Publisher; penciller of more best-selling books than you can shake a rolled up comic at). It’s a flashback tale of how the world’s greatest super-team formed.