Robert Plant's pilgrimages to the Deep South led him to Nashville for Raising Sand, an imaginative, seductive collaboration with bluegrass goddess Alison Krauss that explores the desolate valleys between his Delta blues and her Appalachian folk.

By coming back down to terra firma to detail her disconnection with love, Björk reconnects with the people of Earth.

The craggy acoustic set sandwiched between electric workouts (metallic "Black Queen") counts off the hits ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart," "Guinevere," "Teach Your Children"), never better than Nash's breathtaking piano rendition of "Our House" at Wembley. Glimpse it on the rather short-shift, bootleg quality 40-minute DVD, where the foursome's harmonies cut through the cynicism of the times like a dove finally vanquishing the hawk.

You're inclined to not like the too-self-aware man of I Love You, Honeybear, rejecting his moodiness because you can't stand another white man taking himself so fucking seriously. Then again, making fun of him is just falling into his trap.

Spare, swirling keyboards and gently urgent guitar pluckings anchor this minimalist masterpiece, allowing Romy Madley Croft's plaintive, laudanumlike vocals to tentatively soar above the albumwide ache that is her and Oliver Sim's (e)vocation.

World Music sounds like a truly panglobal operation, a remarkably organic siphon of dozens of musical traditions.

RAM has the immediate appeal of disco, but never overstuffs with candied hooks, even when we want it to.

Arcade Fire's Neon Bible stares down the sophomore jinx with a pissed-off preacher's penetrating gaze.

After a while -- a familiarity period if you will -- it becomes clear that these songs are not only fully realized, they're damn near brilliant.

As thoroughly self-possessed as Portrayal of Guilt's celebrated bow resounded in punk and metal pits, follow-up We Are Always Alone now standardizes the locals' splatter into a trademark sound. Success breeds fearlessness, focus, certainty; No. 2 harnesses No. 1's tempest.

With The Suburbs, the baroque pop outfit attempts to reconcile its past and present.

Two decades later ... these weighty collections still earn and own those [accolades].

While the tale and methods of In Colour are well-worn, Jamie XX, like Burial and Four Tet before him, proves himself a master storyteller.

An astonishing debut.

A pair of trad-style instrumentals, "Snake Chapman's Tune" and "Pacific Slope," underlines Fulks' sublime stylistic mastery.

Zack de la Rocha's fevered shout doesn't sound any more graceful now than it did then, but Tom Morello's riffs still cook, the grooves still burn.

Boldest album to date, Freedom highlights "Miki Dora" and "Skipping School" grapple with masculinity and its illusions. "Satudarah" offers stoned-eye hallucinogens.

As Matthew Gallaway's extensive accompanying history recounts, Bedhead intentionally recorded over potential alternative takes and variations. Thus, the final disc collects the band's equally requisite EPs along with singles, but no revelatory outtakes or even live tracks save for the unreleased "Intents and Purposes" and a cover of the Stranglers' "Golden Brown."

They borrow from Cheap Trick, the Beach Boys, Big Star, Roxy Music, Buzzcocks, and Robyn Hitchcock, and concoct a dizzying potion that sounds remarkably fresh and unlike anything that's come before it.

For all its dissent, Let England Shake is a fairly muted album, yet it demonstrates where PJ Harvey is now: more chronicler than provocateur.

Someone please get this man his edge back.

Garbus is a "new kinda woman," declares closing track, "Killa," and it's about damn time.

Cultists are now treated to the best-recorded live VU documentation ever.

Dancing desert blues refract Parisian pop while still best at home in the title trance, 'Africa,' and hard-jangled closer 'Sekebe.'

Self-production and guests like Loudon Wainwright III and the Roches scales back Are We There in all the right ways, letting the drama ooze from vocal performance above all else.

The expansive arrangements fill the edges of Bon Iver, Bon Iver's sound without losing Vernon's haunting aesthetic, balancing both a fullness and ethereality.

The whole much greater than its parts, Dead Cities is creation imbued and then muted again.

Made In California's hefty price tag won't endear it to serious fans, but it's the first release to encompass the Beach Boys' entire inspiring, frustrating, contradiction-laden tale.