Pick of the Week:

Sunset Rubdown: Dragonslayer

Spencer Krug’s skill as a pop songwriter includes the ability to filter by project: his work in Sunset Rubdown doesn’t sound like the songs he brings to Wolf Parade, and neither sounds exactly like his contributions to Swan Lake, his collaboration with Dan Bejar (of Destroyer) and Carey Mercer. Sunset Rubdown’s music has also evolved since...read more

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  Dinosaur Jr.: Farm

  It is very rare that a band returns from a 16-year hiatus and makes as much of an impact as Dinosaur Jr. have since reforming. Granted, J Mascis never went anywhere in the interim, b...read more

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  God Help the Girl: s/t

  Let’s just assume that you haven’t been reading about and living in anticipation of this record for months. So! The new Belle and Sebastian album is in fact this Stuart M...read more

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  Wilco: Wilco (the Album)

  Wilco (the Album) finds this great American band getting deeper into…Wilco! Okay, I joke, but they do open with “Wilco (the Song),” on which Jeff Tweedy & Co. s...read more

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  Tortoise: Beacons of Ancestorship

  Association with such a debated term as “post-rock” has made it difficult to hear *Tortoise*’s music for being just music, you know? The modern Chicago legends̵...read more

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  A Hawk and a Hacksaw: Delivrance

  The Balkan sound that began invading indie-rock a few years ago finds its fullest, most sincere expression on Delivrance, the newest work by A Hawk and a Hacksaw. In fact…this ...read more

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  Es: Kesamaan Lapset

  All properly calibrated heads are pointing their magnetic true-norths toward Kesamaan Lapset, both the album and its title track. Head of the surpassingly cool and adventurous Finnis...read more

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  Loop: The World in Your Eyes

  The final blow in the Loop reissue program is the heaviest and, by its nature, the most necessary: The World in Your Eyes collects all the old London psych-rawk band’s 12-inch ...read more

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  Regina Spektor: Far

  The follow-up to Regina Spektor‘s 2006 breakthrough, Begin to Hope, is every bit as gorgeous and whimsical as you’d expect. It’s no secret that she can work magic w...read more

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  Kiila: Tuota Tuota

  Another winner from Finland’s Fonal imprint. Kiila is a six-member outfit, except for when it numbers eight, or more, which is sometimes, when the Earth tilts into a cosmic sto...read more

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  v/a: Legends of Benin

  This compilation covers just one small country—but a lot of territory in terms of time (1969-81) and style (Afro-funk, Cavacha, Agbadja, Afrobeat). Aside from Antoine Dougbe &a...read more

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  City Center: s/t

  City Center is the new moniker for the gifted Fred Thomas, leader of the now-defunkt indie pop outfit Saturday Looks Good to Me. Anybody expecting the sunshine melodies of that group...read more

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  Future of the Left: Travels with Myself and Another

  It’s no slight against Welsh band Future of the Left if I choose to mention their album-cover first—I just like the idea of portraying humans and individual personalities...read more

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  Bibio: Ambivalence Avenue

  Returning quickly after his Vignetting the Compost album, the UK artist known as Bibio—a.k.a. Stephen James Wilkinson—jumps from Mush to Warp (that was fun to write) and ...read more

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  Deer Tick: Born on Flag Day

  When a band’s records come out on in the context of an indie label, something in your head automatically orients them as being “underground” or an alternative to so...read more

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  Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

  Only French people could do something so clearly unoriginal and yet make it seem perfectly right and natural and cool. Of course, as we’ve learned, Phoenix music sounds best du...read more

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  Neko Case: Middle Cyclone

  NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL IN A BEAUTIFUL GATEFOLD JACKET! Artists who’ve been around as long as Neko Case, and who’ve been roundly celebrated by critics and cash registers a...read more

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  Sonic Youth: The Eternal

  The fact that there are practically no surprises here is irrelevant. Sonic Youth’s return to the indie ranks results in no major changes from their previous song album, 2006’...read more

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  Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca

  On Bitte Orca, the Dirty Projectors’ Domino debut, Dave Longstreth & Co. continue their arc towards accessibility. They’ve always mashed together pop, R&B and th...read more

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  Liechtenstein: Survival Strategies in a Modern World

  Ah, another cool breeze from Sweden—never mind that they’ve named themselves after Liechtenstein (the smallest German-speaking nation in the world. Word to the trivia buf...read more

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  Stardeath and White Dwarfs: The Birth

  Glance at this album’s artwork and your brainy-matter might flash on any number of Flaming Lips record covers. For good reason: This Oklahoma quartet is led by Dennis Coyne, ne...read more

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  Deerhunter: Rainwater Cassette Exchange

  Deerhunter are a group that understands the parameters of the formats in which they’ve chosen to work. Cryptograms used the dimensions of an album in order to unfold over time, mov...read more

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  Pisces: A Lovely Sight

  One line-drive into the gap after another for the champs over at the Numero Group. Amid their unending soul, gospel and R&B excavations they uncover a true left-field odyssey-odd...read more

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  Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest

  Stereogum has called Veckatimest a “game-changer.” I would like to punch Stereogum in the head. Because in super-saturated 2009, a legitimate “game-changer” w...read more

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  Julianna Barwick: Florine

  Brooklyn’s own Julianna Barwick is someone you’ll want to get to know if you favor dreamy ambience of Brian Eno and even Cocteau Twins derivation. The talented Barwick ha...read more

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  Headdress: Lunes

  Texas always has kicked out this country’s best psychedelic stuff. The duo Headdress (who might live here in NYC now, hard to say with dudes like this) adds a hazy, shimmering ...read more

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  William Basinski: 92982

  Named for the long-ago night on which three of its four tracks of sparsely populated ambience were made, 92982 is another archival recording from composer William Basinski‘s va...read more

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  Ada: Adaptations (Mixtape #1)

  The Cologne producer Ada (a.k.a. Michaela Dippel) has studiously kept her nose to the electronic-grindstone since emerging early this decade, to the point where she has enough wide-r...read more

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  Intelligence: Fake Surfers

  At a time when kids at the Fader dot etc are losing their mud over ahistorical average stuff, Fake Surfers by Intelligence has to come under immediate consideration as record of the ...read more

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  The Phenomenal Handclap Band: s/t

  It’s not hard to see why these funky, versatile pop stylists have been flavor-of-the-week for more than a month now: For each track of this self-titled debut, the Phenomenal Ha...read more

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  Au Revoir Simone: Still Night, Still Light

  On their third full-length effort, Brooklyn trio Au Revoir Simone simply and smartly plays to their strengths: pillows of layered vocal harmonies and gauzy, melodic blankets of keybo...read more

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  James Blackshaw: The Glass Bead Game

  After garnering a reputation for combining the best elements of John Fahey and Sandy Bull in his beautiful, intricate 12-string-guitar playing, English virtuoso James Blackshaw start...read more

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  Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens: What Have You Done, My Brother?

  Besides being good music, this is a heartening story of perseverance finally rewarded. Naomi Shelton has been singing gospel and soul for over four and a half decades, but this is he...read more

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  Deradoorian: Mind Raft EP

  Dirty Projectors bassist Angel Deradoorian isn’t just skitching along behind her main band’s stationwagon as it road-trips to indie stardom. She’s got her own sidec...read more

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  Sir Richard Bishop: The Freak of Araby

  Sun City Girls, yada yada, whatever. I enjoy every one of Richard Bishop’s solo albums a lot more than anything he did with SCG. Though still quite eclectic, his discs are more foc...read more

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  Black Moth Super Rainbow: Eating Us

  “Ha-ha!” on the title, dudes! But more important: Thank you, Black Moth Super Rainbow, for recording this album. By which I mean, Eating Us is produced, and well, by the ...read more

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  Blank Dogs: Under and Under

  The complaints about the solo artist known as Blank Dogs have been, honestly, on target: too many records, not enough consistent quality. Someone was always talking about a great new...read more

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  Bachelorette: My Electric Family

  Sorry Mint Chicks (and others), but this one-lady operation is the coolest new thing to come out of New Zealand this decade. Annabel Alpers is Bachelorette, who we suspect will be ta...read more

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  Bike for Three!: More Heart than Brains

  Canadian wordsmith Buck 65 has really never had much relationship to “rap music” and its tropes as we generally know them. What he does is better described as spoken art....read more

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  Iron and Wine: Around the Well

  Iron and Wine’s new two-CD/three-LP set compiles B-sides, rarities, and outtakes from one of the best songwriters and most charismatically intimate performers of the decade. Sa...read more

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  Crosby, Stills & Nash: Demos

  Considering the staggering power that so much of these dudes’ late-60s/early-70s music takes on when in stripped-down form, I’m afraid we have yet another necessary piece...read more

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  Clues: s/t

  Imagine your semi-stereotypical Constellation band sound—the epic scale of Godspeed and Silver Mt. Zion, the dark yet redemptive emotionalism of Evangelista—and now exper...read more

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  White Rabbits: It's Frightening

  Oh man—big record here. The six Brooklynites (by way of old Mizzou) in White Rabbits follow their 2007 indie-smash debut, Fort Nightly, with the sharply kinetic It’s Frig...read more

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  Sunn O))): Monoliths & Dimensions

  I saw one lousy Sunn O))) gig several years back and decided I would not need to spend time with any of their records. I have missed out: Monoliths & Dimensions is that very huge...read more

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  Passion Pit: Manners

  Str8 outta the indie hotbed of…Cambridge, Mass? Whatever—plenty o’ kids have been jonesing for Passion Pit’s debut full-length after the quintet’s EP, C...read more

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  John Vanderslice: Romanian Names

  When someone is as to the pop manor born as John Vanderslice, the pure skill in the songcraft can sometimes obscure the lovely little details that really make each tune special. Roma...read more

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  Jason Lytle: Yours Truly, the Commuter

  The first solo album from Jason Lytle of famed indie darlings Grandaddy sounds a lot like, well, a Grandaddy album. Of course, that’s a good thing, unless you don’t like ...read more

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  Magik Markers: Balf Quarry

  You shouldn’t have been expecting Boss Vol. II anyway, if you know Magik Markers. These two have tapped a different vein altogether—supracutaneous, primal and abstract, b...read more

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  The Warlocks: The Mirror Explodes

  The Warlocks’ ten-year space-rock odyssey continues. Though I’m often a sucker for a band riffing on the Velvets’ blueprint, this group’s L.A. style didn̵...read more

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  Dengue Fever: Sleepwalking Through the Mekong

  This is quite a set. The first disc is a DVD containing a fascinating and emotionally moving 2007 documentary of Dengue Fever’s tour of singer Chhom Nimol’s native Cambodia, wher...read more

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  St. Vincent: Actor

  The self-contained indie-pop band known as St. Vincent (Annie to her family, the Clarks) returns. On Actor, Clark leads with her cute, pointy chin, updating the ambitiously composed ...read more