Whether you think the world needs another Public Image Ltd record depends entirely on how you feel about John Lydon. The cantankerous master antagonist rarely invokes an ambivalent reaction in people: it’s either love or hate.

Shaun Fleming’s second solo album under his Diane Coffee guise, Everybody’s a Good Dog, has as many personas as it has tracks. Fleming doesn’t worry himself about timeframes or styles—or cohesion, for that matter.

The act of reinvention is a time-honoured tradition in the world of pop. From global megastars like Madonna and Bob Dylan to lesser-known indie outfits like The Horrors, a shift in direction can often lead to rejuvenated results.

In the last two years since he was plucked from homelessness and obscurity, signed to (and quickly released from) a big record label deal, man of mystery Willis Earl Beal has been relishing his reclaimed life as a “nobody.”

It’s pretty much a given by now that Foals are the leading arena-rock band of the indie-rock era. With 2008’s Antidotes, they started out as a niche interest—a precise and calculated math-rock band.

When a record is pushed as a ‘cosmic ideal’ by its PR team, you expect something different. And when that record has been produced by Angel Deradoorian, famed for her work as vocalist and bassline creator for New York progressives Dirty Projectors, there’s a pretty good chance it will be.

The Lost Worker Bee EP comes across as the sound of Elbow taking stock of their improbable (though highly deserved) ascent from U.K. indie also-rans to stadium-headlining behemoths, delving into new textures and ideas, yet still recalling the sort of subtle wonderment that made their early records so rich and rewarding.

Listeners never know what a new Destroyer album will sound like. Much of that is by design, of course-mastermind Dan Bejar is known to try to totally revamp the act’s sound with each record. But from album to album, that uncertainty can grow frustrating, particularly in follow-ups to well-received and well-reviewed albums.

Oh, the burden of expectations. After a promising self-titled debut, and then two consecutive knockouts in 2010’s Teen Dream and 2012’s Bloom (which must go on the shortlist of most beautiful albums of the 21st century), one could forgive Beach House a clunker.