The Last Kiss ends up a reasonable, though backward-looking, outing.

The duo's third album uses its fidgety rhythms and broad palette of synth sounds to create music that's perhaps subtler and more emotionally resonant than any they could hope to fashion using "real" instruments.

An act that thrives on formula continues to mine it with Unstoppable, another celebration of puppy love and sugary hooks boiled down to their simplest forms.

Far from easy listening, the tune, like the album, remains oddly accessible. Harvey is a tornado of anger, lunacy, and regret, but her punishing wind is something to behold.

The vocals come in a robotic monotone on 'I'm Losing My Mind,' and there's not much holding together all the rhythm on the opener, 'The Feeling.' It just shows that finding the right mix between melody and rhythm is a delicate balance, but these dozen tunes strike it more often than not.

Tapping into the sensuous mode of such classic divas of desire as Julie London and Peggy Lee, Diana Krall is at her most seductive on this bossa nova-flavored collaboration with Claus Ogerman.

Their latest, A New Tide, is their most accessible set yet.

Keith Urban's music and the themes that fill it rarely stray from predictable territory, but his pop-friendly country constructs are fueled by outsized charisma that keep them consistently above the pack.

Thunderheist prove more winning than most, due to Isis' knack for calm, rhythmic flow, all one- or two-syllable rhymes and the schoolyard-inspired spelling out of words.

Black Cascade is impressive enough to vault Wolves into the top ranks of the highly idiosyncratic U.S. black-metal scene, allowing them rub shoulders with such standard-bearer bands as Nachtmystium and Absu.

The set's signature disc Lotusflow3r, is its most consistently enjoyable, a far-flung cornucopia of electric guitar licks from one of the instrument's sharpest practitioners.

The drum machine hallmark of his 1980s heyday is a staple of MPLSound, a disc that hauls that sound into the present with mixed results.

The third disc, Bria Valente's Elixer, is a tepid afterthought.

Fluency aside, with the first in what is hopefully a long line of releases, Fever Ray knocks down more walls than it puts up.

He doesn't quite succeed, though in the process of failing, he turns in his most restrained and focused recordings to date.

Deacon is hampered by his boundless creativity. In his mad dash to leave no pathway unexplored, he neglects to chart a course toward anyplace in particular.

It's a far-reaching and ambitious album, stronger than its predecessor and full of gallant wordplay and vivid imagery.

'I Don't Even Know What Time It Is' sums up the whole record, stranded between sublime '80s guitar-pop and the more recent smarminess of Arctic Monkeys and Art Brut.

The 42-year-old Kansas native continues to mine that vein on her 10th studio album, "Shine," but although her singing is still strong, polish and predictability are its defining traits.

While that darkness gives the album its semblance of originality, it may prove incompatible with the group's mass-market ambitions.

The enigmatic nature of his music aside, Oldham invariably sounds like he's having fun making it, which makes Beware a warning only to those who place too high a value on simplistic clarity.

Despite any pretensions otherwise, their second album sounds a lot like the Day-Glo disco and retro house being pushed by every other hip indie-dance act right now.

An album as engrossing as it is sometimes unsettling.

The good songs are great, but the empty bluster on some of the others overshadows the spunky personality that made Clarkson a draw in the first place.

It's a smarmy affair, and there's a compelling interplay between his wild-eyed desperation and her cool, clean sheen of thumps and melodies.

On her fifth CD, Bare Bones, the Georgia native puts her stamp on all-new material, and weaves an alluring tapestry of sonic elegance, vocal character and lyrical bite.

Comprising organ, piano, upright bass and acoustic guitars, as well as the occasional fiddle or burst of New Orleans brass, the music wheezes and strolls with old-timey authenticity.

Singers with powerful voices often gravitate toward material that lets them prove it, but Neko Case demonstrates the power of subtlety on her latest.