The Breeders - Mountain Battles
Mountain Battles is the Breeders’ first album in six years, but the band haven’t lost any of their creativity or unpredictability. Kim Deal and company offer up a few instantly catchy songs that could have appeared on Last Splash, but they spend most of Mountain Battles exploring the moody vignettes and experimental tangents that have always lurked around the edges of Breeders albums. Despite, or perhaps because of, its lack of standout singles, Mountain Battles is a remarkably satisfying album.

The Duke Spirit - Neptune
On Cuts Across the Land, the Duke Spirit seemed to be yet another bluesy British garage rock revival band — albeit one with a more captivating frontwoman than most in singer Liela Moss. Their second album Neptune, however, shows just how much wider and deeper the Duke Spirit’s sound goes. The band opts for a more polished sound and embraces everything from Motown to sea shanties, but make it all sound completely natural and captivating.

Foals - Antidotes
Foals might have two types of songs on Antidotes, fast and punchy and slow and spacey, but as the band keep melody at the forefront, the fact that their work sounds similar just brings a cohesiveness to the record. Guitars pick out cascading notes — never chords — against one another, the bass borrows from Interpol and Gang of Four, a horn bursts in and lead singer Yannis Philippakis’ voice cries out in repetition wonderfully; all of which makes Antidotes not merely a lesson in post-new wave noodling, but evidence of the power and excitement of the genre and music itself.

Tapes ‘n Tapes - Walk It Off
Tapes ‘n Tapes earned big blog buzz thanks to their debut album The Loon, which served up familiarly crunchy indie-rock with the urgency and simplicity of a really great demo tape. For Walk it Off, they team up with producer extraordinaire Dave Fridmann, but the results don’t play to either the band’s, or Fridmann’s, strengths: The album’s polish ends up dulling Tapes ‘n Tapes immediacy rather than making their music more accessible.

Ashes Divide - Keep Telling Myself It’s Alright
Asia - Acoustic and Electric
Eric Avery - Help Wanted
David Axelrod - Seriously Deep
Marcia Ball - Peace, Love & BBQ
Michael Burks - Iron Man
Hayes Carll - Trouble in Mind
Karan Casey - Ships in the Forest
Clinic - Do It!
Dark Meat - Universal Indians (Bonus Tracks)
Dead Child - Attack
Marié Digby - Unfold
Elephant Man - Let’s Get Physical
Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant EP
For Against - Shade Side Sunny Side
The Gibson Brothers - Iron and Diamonds
Gran Ronde - Secret Rooms
Robert Kelly - Just the Tip
Man Man - Rabbit Habits
Ellis Marsalis - An Open Letter to Thelonious
Colin Meloy - Colin Meloy Sings Live!
The Microphones - Glow, Pt. 2 (Bonus Disc)
Thurston Moore - Sensitive/Lethal
Peter Morén - The Last Tycoon
Neva Dinova - You May Already Be Dreaming
The New Bloods - The Secret Life
Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
Jim Noir - Jim Noir
Old Haunts - Poisonous Times
James Otto - Sunset Man
P.O.D. - When Angels and Serpents Dance
Ray J - All I Feel
The Rubber Soul Project - The Rubber Soul Project
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Pershing
Richard Swift - Richard Swift as Onasis
Was (Not Was) - Boo!
Wye Oak - If Children