Bpitch label founder, fashionista, and techno maven Ellen Allien doesn’t set out to prove herself to anyone on her fifth LP, Dust. The applicability of the title can be heard during the chiming opener, “Our Utopie.” There’s a well-worn timbre to the samples and guitars used here, as if each element reacts with the environment immediately surrounding itself.

Tom Waits trusted Jesca Hoop with his children, Andrew Bird chose her as an opener, and Elbow’s Guy Garvey coaxed her to move from Los Angeles to Manchester. Listening to the nine tracks that make up sophomore album Hunting My Dress, it’s easy to understand why. Crafting quirky folk with enough angles to appeal to those who don’t usually head to San Francisco with flowers in their hair, Hoop exudes such grace that even when all that glitters isn’t gold, you might momentary believe otherwise.

Maya Arulpragasam—better known as M.I.A.—successfully assembled the title of her third album into a series of lines and dashes, spelling out her first name. She also collided every sound she’s ever heard onto its 16 tracks. The over-the-top clatter could be interpreted as a consequence of a generation with no attention span, but it could also be a sign that /\/\ /\ Y /\ doesn’t measure up to the rest of M.I.A.’s arsenal.

On If I Had a Hi-Fi, Nada Surf accomplishes the rare feat of producing a covers album that won’t just waste space on your CD shelf. In fact, the album wants for, rather demands, repeated listening.

An early-‘80s Athens, GA band that never got the level of attention bestowed upon even the scene’s second-tier commercial contemporaries (Pylon, The Love Tractors), The Method Actors were a flat-out terrific post-punk band, with a stentorian push-pull sound as equally indebted to Television as Gang of Four. Their records have aged remarkably well, as evidenced on this terrific compilation that culls pretty much everything the band did during their 1980-81 prolific peak.

Summertime and escapism were the themes that pervaded The Drums’ debut EP Summertime! The sweet rush of “Saddest Summer” and their U.K. hit “Let’s Go Surfing” were evocative of innocent summers long gone, rife with lithe melodies and blithe handclaps.

A notoriously rudimentary, inchoate home recorder, Ariel Pink has crafted some great pop songs over the course of a litany of obscure album releases. Sadly, they’ve largely been gems obfuscated in grime, their lo-fidelity a disservice to the brilliant melodic instincts at their core.

Recorded live in the empty Georgia Theatre on only two microphones over the course of four days in May of 2008, and with no editing or post production magic, Sand & Lines: The Georgia Theatre Sessions gives listeners the feeling of their own private concert from the totally underrated Venice is Sinking.

When The Roots signed on to be the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, it promised to be the first domino to fall in the famously accomplished band’s evolution from hyper-competent musical innovators to near-ubiquitous NPR-friendly hip-hop stars.