The other two tunes here, the instrumental 'Ponce of the Flaming Peace Queer' and a once-again-relevant cover of 'Fortunate Son,' work fine, but, coupled with the album’s brief tracklist and tossed-off nature, they make Peace Queer little more than a focused stop-gap between proper albums.

Who Killed Harry Houdini?, the band’s second full-length release and first on major-label affiliate Mute Records, continues the group’s tradition of making happy, light-hearted pop music that’s simultaneously fizzy and sticky.

Religious Knives’ latest recording doesn’t implore repeat listens the way "Resin" did and still does.

As a whole, Reefer has proven its capacity for producing sunshine hits, but only time will tell if it will be able to push itself past the spaced-out beaches of Maui and towards more diverse soundscapes.

Yet, for each of these highlights, there’s a much weaker counterpart.

Dark Developments is another remarkably fine album from a musician who has been around doing what he does so long that he’s often unjustly neglected.

That is part of Lambchop’s charm--irony might be the hipster flavor for the time being, but you’d be hard-pressed to find less ironic and more modestly beautiful sentiment than on OH (Ohio).

It shouldn’t offend, but it might be slow to engage.

You can add this record to the pile of fun, entertaining albums that is sure to get people moving at any party, although it offers little else.

While keeping the same mix of hushed beauty and spooky old-time feel, Holland seems much more direct and confident, a forwardness that risks losing some of the mystery, but instead ups the awe factor.

The resulting record plays like a soundtrack to a non-existent film, skeleton-framed and dramatic.

That she is able to incorporate these technical talents into solid songwriting is what makes This Is It the success that it is.

The organic lushness should please indie-pop fans reluctant to embrace synth music, while the emphasis on sound instead of structure holds appeal for fans of loop music who’ve grown bored of its now-familiar tropes.

This is music at its most carnal.

Despite Andrew Barr’s attempt to develop new rhythmic ideas in every song, the tracks tend to bleed together, impairing each song’s distinctiveness.

It’s his intensity of focus coupled with an impressive range of motion that gives this album its real strength and maturity.

Props are due for not recycling the same album over and over again--something he could probably do for awhile before anyone would call him on it --but, unfortunately, the new approach results in Bianchi’s most banal album yet.

It’s no mistake that the title of this superbly fun album ends with an exclamation point; El Guincho has created an album that’s relentless in its ferocious rhythms and beats until the very last track.

This is not going to appeal to a wide swath of people, but DJs who take advantage of the late hours of a petering-out dance party to play dubstep and spacey ambient techno will surely appreciate the vibe here.

Elverum is reveling in his honest moment of awe. In doing so, he has sloshed away the Norwegian frost with a mittened hand, a frost that kept these songs so chilling.

Black Forest (tra la la) is a nice little record made by an ambitious group of musicians from whom I expect excellent things. Three or four songs here are downright wonderful, and the rest, at the very least, aren’t entirely unpleasant.

It’s the endearing uniqueness of this coupling that give Catfish Haven an edge over the plethora of contrived Americana wanna-bes currently littering the musical landscape.

The laid-back feel of White Van Music ultimately hinders it from being a truly creative and distinct work.

Every track on Women serves a purpose to the overall stereo image, resulting in a debut that sets the bar very high.

Koushik effortlessly summons the hazy feel of running around stoned at noon on a summer day in hot pursuit of a grape soda or some other ridiculous craving to be satiated.

Drawn In Basic is an enjoyable electronic pop record, one well-suited to late, sleepless nights. With echoes of a distant club resounding in its subdued beats and hushed vocals, this is a dreamy record of lullabies for the dance-floor set.

Aside from these conceptual assertions that it evokes, Feed the Animals is a good record. Though it’s broken up into 14 tracks, it functions best (and as Girl Talk intends) as a single 53-minute mash-up.

Using a combination of brilliant textures and powerful, atypical chord progressions, Mogwai paint a picture equivalent to an auto-stereogram, popularized in those Magic Eye books 15 years ago. You almost need to loose your focus to let the music really sink in.