Here’s more from lifers Obits, with the crew doing just what they do: amped-up, straight-up rock & roll served raw, with churning guitars framing a shit-tight rhythm section and vocalist/guitarist Rick Froberg mercilessly beating up his voice box.

Despite releasing three terrific LPs in the ‘00s and one of their songs being used as Grey’s Anatomy‘s theme song, Psapp never really received their due.

Grounded in a loose tradition of Northwest indie, Quasi are defined, if at all, by their expansiveness. Their raucous yet cerebral—and highly creative—brand of party rock has grown to stadium size and left genre in the parking lot.

Studio gloss, softened songwriting, and the ever-dicey decision to convert to a heavy reliance on synthesizers have rendered nearly unrecognizable the Forest Fire of 2011’s Staring at the X.

Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound looks back to a forgotten generation of Minnesotan musicians-1970s purveyors of R&B, soul, and funk-who fuelled the trajectory, filled the ears and paved the way for a youthful Prince Nelson Rogers.

It’s a long time since Matthew Caws was angrily railing against the iniquity of high school social structures on Nada Surf’s college rock anthem “Popular” and it shows.

Gelb’s voice here is smooth and whisky-soaked to the point of parody. “It used to be much cheaper/To find a love and keep her,” he intones over a smooth lounge jazz piano and drums on the album’s opening track, and the whiff of forced nostalgia never dissipates.

Pearl Jam is the new classic rock. With Lightning Bolt, the second album into what seems like a new return-to-classic-Pearl Jam era, the band has even further shunted any self-imposed notions of what it “should” be and seemingly morphed into what it is, or at least what it will be moving forward.

An entire record of Nina Simone covers is probably not how most people expected Xiu Xiu to follow last year’s Always. Yet given the capricious nature of Jamie Stewart’s avant-garde ensemble, it’s unlikely to be a decision that surprises many.