Morrissey is one of those artists now—inarguably not in his peak era, still adored by an (incredibly, near-sycophantically) fervent fanbase, and still cranking out music with some degree of a predictable pace. He’s one of those living legends, to some degree, iconic of an older form of popstar, iconic of an era of alternative and college radio to which many contemporary bands are indebted.

Greg Cartwright finds a new home on Merge for the latest incarnation of Reigning Sound, and continues his heart-on-the-sleeve, southern-fried mining of ‘50s and ‘60s R&B, ‘60s Nuggets psych and garage rock fodder, and—still, despite the softening edges and string arrangements—a sprinkling of punk swagger.

Rarely do bands pull off such a marriage of sound and visuals that it’s this hard to separate the music from their graphic palette. Gorillaz are probably the most famous recent example of this; Belle & Sebastian’s consistently monochromatic artwork worked to a similar, if lesser, degree.

Slow Club have never quite got the credit it deserves. Too fey to be hipster, too awkward to be mainstream, the Sheffield, U.K.-formed/London-based duo of Rebecca Taylor and Charles Watson has ghosted in and out of popular consciousness since 2006.

Revelation is the 14th album by Anton Newcombe and his Brian Jonestown Massacre, and the first to be fully recorded and produced at Newcombe’s Berlin recording studio. In typically atypical Newcombe fashion, the album begins with a song sung entirely in Swedish by an artist named Joakim Åhlund.

There was a time in the early ‘90s when R.E.M. could confidently call itself the biggest band in the world. The run of Out of Time and Automatic for the People shifted units by the bucket load, while Michael Stipe was the unwavering voice of the ordinary man; a Bono without the complications of actually being Bono.

If you’re not familiar with this Danish group, run to YouTube and find their brilliant “The Swans” video: the nine-minute space opera finds our spacemen-musicians landing their ship on a strange planet and confronting a monster-sized puppy, like something out of a Roger Corman film.

W. Cullen Hart’s latest Circulatory System LP—a collage of Beatles-eque pop experiments and other sound scraps—offers a handful of inspired snippets mired in too much sluggish, avant-garde muck. Highlights include the whimsical “Aerial View of a Heart (From Above)” and “If You Think About It Now”—this project works best when Hart is dabbling in Sgt. Pepper/Kinks territory.

First things first: how do you feel about gamelan? Are you keen on malleted metallophones? Take note of this album’s title and know that you are in for a heavy dosage.