In Ouran High School Host Club, Haruhi Fujioka is an awkward female scholarship student who stumbles on the flamboyant rich-boys-only Host Club when looking for a quiet place to read. When she promptly shatters an expensive vase belonging to the club, she must pay for it with her body-no, pervert, not like that; she is made to dress like a boy and must learn to be a “host”-which consists of running a business that entertains the girls of the high school.

On If I Had a Hi-Fi, Nada Surf accomplishes the rare feat of producing a covers album that won’t just waste space on your CD shelf. In fact, the album wants for, rather demands, repeated listening.

An early-‘80s Athens, GA band that never got the level of attention bestowed upon even the scene’s second-tier commercial contemporaries (Pylon, The Love Tractors), The Method Actors were a flat-out terrific post-punk band, with a stentorian push-pull sound as equally indebted to Television as Gang of Four. Their records have aged remarkably well, as evidenced on this terrific compilation that culls pretty much everything the band did during their 1980-81 prolific peak.

Benicio del Toro is Lawrence Talbot, an English thespian of some aristocratic lineage, and The Wolfman of the film’s title. Lawrence returns to his father’s home after his brother Ben goes missing.

Summertime and escapism were the themes that pervaded The Drums’ debut EP Summertime! The sweet rush of “Saddest Summer” and their U.K. hit “Let’s Go Surfing” were evocative of innocent summers long gone, rife with lithe melodies and blithe handclaps.

A notoriously rudimentary, inchoate home recorder, Ariel Pink has crafted some great pop songs over the course of a litany of obscure album releases. Sadly, they’ve largely been gems obfuscated in grime, their lo-fidelity a disservice to the brilliant melodic instincts at their core.

Recorded live in the empty Georgia Theatre on only two microphones over the course of four days in May of 2008, and with no editing or post production magic, Sand & Lines: The Georgia Theatre Sessions gives listeners the feeling of their own private concert from the totally underrated Venice is Sinking.

When The Roots signed on to be the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, it promised to be the first domino to fall in the famously accomplished band’s evolution from hyper-competent musical innovators to near-ubiquitous NPR-friendly hip-hop stars.

The annual KCRW World Festival had its second 2010 event at the Hollywood Bowl last night and it was an eclectic mix music from around the world. Without any sort of introduction, Oakland’s Merrill Garbus (aka tUnE-yArDs) walked onto the stage and suddenly started yodeling and playing a ukulele. She then looped her voice using a digital voice recorder, added drums to the mix and became a one-woman music machine.