Timber Timbre’s Taylor Kirk has joined the ranks of so many songwriters by working with a changing cast of musicians under a collaborative name. His self-titled album debuted earlier this year on Out of this Spark but, after signing to fellow Canadian-based Arts & Crafts, the album is set to be reissued in Canada and internationally released over the summer.

1995’s wonderfully weird Bunny Gets Paid is a great rambling mess of post-punk, blues, and lo-fi haze. It also happens to be the first step toward the incredible music that Tim Rutili, Ben Massarella, Tim Hurley, and Brian Deck would go on to make as Califone, and hints at the style that Deck would come to refine as a producer for Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, and Modest Mouse.

Was anyone really crying out for a Stay Hungry reissue? Regardless, here it is, and even if it’s not particularly groundbreaking, it still holds up well as a reminder that the band weren’t the cartoonish buffoons they’re often viewed as having been.

To say expectations were low for Mos Def’s fourth album is being far too generous. But by the shameful standards Mos Def set for himself, any album with some semblance of effort was bound to be heralded as a return to form, and The Ecstatic puts forth that modicum of effort.

It was only a matter of time before The Onion‘s “Area Man”—that semi-anonymous schlub feted in the trade for often the most mundane achievements—would be awarded his own anthem. And he couldn’t find a more able chronicler than bandleader Matt Wilson, whose stick-strikes give the icon a confident metropolitan strut.

Fresh off the spring release of its U.S. debut, Colonia, A Camp—Nina Persson (The Cardigans), Nathan Larson (Shudder to Think) and Niclas Frisk (Atomic Swing)—have released a three-song digitally-released EP of covers that provides welcome complement to the band’s other recorded work.

Gringo is the seventh—count ‘em, seventh—album by Robert Pollard and longtime collaborators Tim and Todd Tobias. Previous Circus Devils albums were crazy, psychedelic, noisy, and, well strange, but Gringo is billed by the band’s website as, “Circus Devils goes acoustic!”

Detroit musician Josh Epstein is no stranger to explosive melodies. After all, his main creative outlet, The Silent Years, released an indie-pop gem only last year. As with most craftsman-like albums, The Globe‘s jovial ethos was contagious but largely flitted under the noses of the rock intelligentsia. In turn, Let Go reads like a classic stopgap EP but actually is a full-fledged bound in aesthetics.

The legions exposed to a glimpse of The Vaselines via Nirvana’s ragged crunch pop takes on “Son of a Gun” and “Molly’s Lips” from Incesticide were given a panoramic view when Sub Pop reissued the act’s entire discography with 1992’s The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History. The collection, which included their sole LP Dum-Dum, along with the Son of a Gun and Dying for It EPs, evinced an unlikely yet brilliant meeting of C86 effeteness with the roughshod, reckless strains of The Velvet Underground circa White Light/White Heat.