From the start of Elizabeth & the Catapult’s debut LP, Taller Children, frontwoman Elizabeth Ziman makes a strong impression with two charming, straightforward pop tracks carrying the message that adults just don’t want to—or can’t—grow up. In “Momma’s Boy,” she taunts, “Don’t expect the world to clean up for you, ‘cause they don’t have to,” and in the playful title track she sings, “In the end we’re all just taller children.” The theme doesn’t stick so well throughout the rest of the record and, unfortunately, neither does the strength of her songs.

Fact: there are enough Black Mountain side projects to make Black Mountain seem like a side project. Other fact: said side projects are consistently worthwhile.

It’s too bad that Dirty Projectors singer and bassist Angel Deradoorian must have wanted her debut EP, Mind Raft, to go unnoticed, as she released it only a month before the Projectors’ newest LP Bitte Orca. Throughout the modest five-track set, Deradoorian (she takes just her surname for the record) often plays off of clashing harmonies and stream-of-consciousness verses that evoke the EP’s title and prove her talents as a solo artist.

An album for our Prozac-ed, Xanax-ed times, Bibio’s Ambivalence Avenue, as the title suggests, doesn’t reach any emotional highs or lows. It fits squarely in the middle, and seems to be just fine there.

Stardeath and White Dwarfs sounds like a Spinal Tap-rejected band name. However, from The Birth‘s cover art image of a man in mid-scream, to singer Dennis Coyne’s falsetto, it’s difficult not to view them in relationship to another motley crew—The Flaming Lips. The ties run deep: Coyne is the nephew of lead Lip Wayne Coyne, while the other band members have served as Flaming Lips roadies.

Bookended by two exciting tracks, the Jesus and Mary Chain-esque “I Wanna Kill,” and the seven-plus minute builder “Young Drugs,” Crocodiles’ first full-length for Fat Possum shows tons of potential.

Following in the footsteps of both The Kills and The White Stripes, Band of Skulls’ debut sounds like a slicker, poppier version of The Dead Weather. This Southampton, U.K. trio is clearly talented and, with time and by taking a few more risks in terms of song structure and production, could develop into a successful project.

On the scale of rock star vanity, the solo project comes out on top, just above the supergroup. Add to that an alter ego, and things get dicey. Interpol singer/lyricist Paul Banks tries to break this trend, or ignores it altogether, with his Julian Plenti record.

What can a set of remixers do with the pastoral, acoustic splendor of Balmorhea? Well, they can stretch it out, for one: Eluvium takes the six-minute track “Settler,” and pushes it out to a full 17 to kick the record off. And somehow they don’t wear out their welcome. They envelop. If you find your way through that experience—including its beyond-subtle, five-minute fade out—you’re in the right mood (a trance) for the record.