With its sophomore album, Chicago’s The 1900s has said goodbye to two band members and the anachronistic orchestral pop of its debut.

The Coral keep making the same record over and over again. If you’re into sea shanties with great harmonies, then you’re in luck. The Coral has turned that blueprint around for the sixth time on The Butterfly House. Instead of sounding stale, this group from the wrong side of Liverpool’s Mersey River, the Wirral, is getting better at their branded sound.

Like the shark documentary it’s named after, this collaboration between Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg and Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart reveals a frightening menace lurking beneath a placid surface. The dulcet finger-picked acoustic guitar in “Song for the Greater Jihad,” for instance, is suddenly severed by what sounds like a vicious power tool

1988’s Big Thing is widely regarded as the worst Duran Duran album. But similar to Notorious, released two years earlier, the music on Big Thing sounds better now than it did 20 years ago.

Now that we’re a few decades out from the often terrible but always fun musical landscape of the 1980s, it’s easier to get some perspective on some of the era’s biggest bands and biggest releases.

Modern music is just as guilty of setting the stage for a mega ’80s comeback as are the artists who defined the era. The synthesizer has pushed its way back to the top of the mix and so it makes—musical—sense for the instrument’s masters to give things another go.

This has been a banner year for San Francisco’s Fresh and Onlys: a U.K. tour with Deerhunter, an invitation (via Matt Groening) to play All Tomorrow’s Parties, festivals in New York and Big Sur, and a rapid succession of 7” records that have been selling out as fast as labels can release them. Ending the year with Play it Strange and a November tour with Clinic puts a fine feather on their 2010 hat.

Much like their synth guru forefathers, Hot Chip write and arrange music that was meant to be remixed by people who were born to make us dance. Although they’ve released three consecutive critically acclaimed records, Hot Chip albums as beginning-to-end complete musical statements are—frankly—overrated.

Swedish-born singer Robin Miriam Carisson, better known as Robyn, has a proven track record of making effortless, forward-thinking, and sophisticated pop music. She’s never made a bad album and since her 1995 debut Robyn has consistently kept critics and listeners on the edge of their seats always wanting more.