Skins have been shed, batteries recharged and the traditionally difficult second album dashed out with apparent ease.

Fabulously moody third album from British production duo whose roster of gloomy vocalists now includes Richard Hawley and Jason Pierce alongside regular collaborator Mark Lanegan.

Richly textured electro-pop teems with flamboyance and sees Wolf come over like a cosmic Martin Fry.

Amid the sighs and groans, she hits the pop G-spot with her savvy hooks and superlative rhyming.

This is beautifully fragile music, not disposable but built to last.

This is intoxicating psych-indie for heady days in unbroken sunshine.

Played, boys, oh well played.

So let's hear it for Living With a Tiger, which makes a point of scrambling everyone's tastes. Not since Jr Walker & the All Stars in the 60s have a sax-led band reached out and communicated as Wareham does on Gratitude, which is apparently informed by grime.

Chicago's veteran alt-rockers haven't sounded this much fun in ages, their seventh album balancing their easy-going and experimental sides.

Tired of her peculiar singer-songwriter pop being a fringe taste, the Russian-born New Yorker's gone for the commercial jugular, polishing her strangeness with help from ELO's Jeff Lynne among others.

By virtue of its sheer irreverence, Guns Don't Kill... seems to encapsulate everything you always loved about reggae, and perhaps thought had disappeared.

It offers a thrillingly accessible demonstration of hip-hop's limitless creative possibilities to those whose experience of the medium stretches no farther than the occasional random episode of "Run's House."

Somehow, though, it soars, the title track especially.

It's Elvis (or Mr Diana Krall as he's also known) in fine, lovelorn country form.

This exhaustive project is the most impressive retro-fest of recordings, photographs, video footage and digiti sed memorabilia ever assembled.

Veckatimest's only down side is a touch of preciousness, a need for refinement that, unchecked, might nudge Grizzly Bear towards the polite rather than imaginative. It's a small quibble. For now, this is almost perfect.

A trippy marvel.

A perfectly summery blend of Krautrock, prog rock and more danceable grooves.

Euphoric, feelgood electro-pop of the indie rather than chart-topping persuasion, with the Massachusetts quartet's debut substituting lost-boy yearning for outright hedonism.

It's to Lewis's credit that he can credibly convey the romantic notion of hopping on a Greyhound while also moaning about the leg room.

The result is writ large on this brilliant second album, which welds his drifting soundscapes to fractious, rapturous techno.

It's a state of the union address, an apocalyptic protest album. It also sounds phenomenal.

Part-Incredible String Band, part- Lal Waterson, but mostly magnificently unique.

While the listener is largely swamped in this sense of horror and disgust--which no doubt makes the point--Gallows are also concerned with some kind of catharsis.

Wall of Arms is the meticulously evolved sound of a band aiming to bid to breathe life into British indie.

That's the problem with social realism, but the Enemy do their best to vary their sound and mode of address.

It sags mid-album, but the Brits won't demand a recount.

This might just be their best record in a decade.