Despite having one of the more unfortunate band names in recent memory, the Boston trio called Pants Yell! have been responsible in the past few years for some very fine indie pop that conjures up early Go-Betweens and mid-period Lucksmiths. The group’s 2007 record Allison Statton was a slept-on gem, their new album Received Pronunciation may get some more notice since it’s being released (next Tuesday) on hot label Slumberland. The video for “Somebody Loves You” is pleasantly DIY dorky and sweet, showing the band to be just regular joes with a knack for making near-perfect guitar pop.

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Jay-Z making a series out of his best album, 2001’s The Blueprint, was a recipe for trouble from the beginning. The Blueprint of the first volume was Jay-Z as vital as he’d ever been, storming back to the hardcore after a few years of commercial success. The Blueprint of the second volume was a complete turn, a set of half-cocked crossovers, bloated to bursting with guest features that obscured his talents. The Blueprint 3 is somewhere between the two, closer to the vitality and energy of the original but not without the crossover bids and guest features of the latter (albeit much better this time).

Kanye West is in the producer’s chair for seven tracks, and it’s clear he was reaching for the same energy level as the original Blueprint (which he produced). “What We Talkin’ About” begins the album with a wave of surging, oppressive synth, while Jay-Z enumerates with an intriguing lack of detail what he’s said and what’s been said about him, ending with a nod to Barack Obama and the future. West also produced the second, “Thank You,” and while it starts with typical Jay-Hovah brio, the last verse piles on more witty criticism of unnamed rappers. There’s plenty more lyrical violence to come, but most of the targets are much safer than they were eight years earlier. (Jay doesn’t sound very convincing when he claims in “DOA (Death of Auto-Tune)” that it’s not “politically correct” to rail against one of the most reviled trends in pop music during the 2000s.)

From there, he branches out with a calculating finesse, drawing in certain demographics via a roster of guests, from Young Jeezy (hardcore) to Drake (teens) to Kid Cudi (the backpacker crowd). The king of the crossovers here is “Empire State of Mind,” a New York flag-waver with plenty of landmark name-dropping that turns into a great anthem with help on the chorus from Alicia Keys. The Blueprint 3 isn’t a one-man tour de force like the first; Jay is upstaged a time or two by his guests, and while the productions are stellar throughout — Timbaland appears three times, and NO ID gets multiple credits also — it’s clear there’s less on Jay’s mind this time. Not tuned out like on Kingdom Come, but more content with his dominance as a rap godfather in 2009.

It’s been way too long since the release of any new music by the Pastels. I’m sure they’ve been busy with trivial stuff like real life but that’s cold comfort for fans like me who have been feeling like there’s a giant hole in their lives that only a new Pastels record can fill. Thankfully the group has two (!) new projects ready for release. The first is an album made with Japanese twee-folk duo Tenniscoats called Two Sunsets; “Vivid Youth” is taken from the album and if it’s any indication of the quality of the rest of the record, it’s going to be really, really good.

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Canadian new wave revivalists Metric like to make videos. A casual glance at YouTube reveals a whole bunch of glammed out, tricky videos from the band’s two previous albums (two really good records made up of ultra-slick synth rock with a real kick). It also serves as a testament to singer Emily Haines’ nearly excessive level of photogenetics. This video for one of the catchiest songs from their new album, Fantasies, is cute - having band members switch instruments is one of the tried and true methods of proving you don’t take yourself too seriously. Haines’ hott robot dance moves make it worth watching, too.

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Sweden’s West End Girls have a pretty unassailable gimmick. The duo of Isabelle Erkendal And Emmeli Erkendal cover the songs of the Pet Shop Boys, giving them a glitchy, glitzy ’00s pop overhaul. It sounds like some kind of novelty nightmare, but it’s not. It’s brilliantly silly and sweet pop instead. For their newest single, Neil and Chris gifted the Girls an unrecorded song, “Little Black Dress”, that was written for their 2001 musical Closer To Heaven. If the Boys had released this in their prime…hit single!

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For their upcoming album My Maudlin Career, Camera Obscura made the jump from Merge to 4AD and judging by the two songs they’ve released so far, not much has changed with the band’s lovely, moody sound. They have the same attention to detail, the same warm blanket of reverb, the same tender hooks and best of all, Tracyanne Campbell’s voice. The real change seems to be in the video budget. Most of their previous work has been sweet, simple and decidedly made on the cheap but now they have dough for stylists, make-up artists, hot young model types and plenty of fancy locales. Of course while, the YMT’s are traipsing around Europe, the band is stuck in a hotel room miming along so we shouldn’t be too jealous of them.

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So, you know those YouTube “unboxing” videos where people film themselves opening up new electronic devices while giving an impromptu review of the item? We’re gonna do that, but with albums in our new feature “Unlistening”.

Chris Isaak’s first studio album in seven years, Mr. Lucky is due to be released on February 24th in conjunction with his new A&E talk show The Chris Isaak Hour, which is also premiering this month. AllMusic editors Stephen Thomas Erlewine and Matt Collar sat down together to give you their thoughts on first listen.

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New music from the Beach Boys’ vaults? What could it be?: a perfectly put-together SMiLE from spring 1967? Bedroom recordings of Brian sleeping? Well, not quite…

Still, by the end of the month, the archival specialists at Light in the Attic will release a full album recorded by Brian Wilson (in the production chair) with the first artist signed to Brother Records, a gas-station attendant and poet named Stephen John Kalinich. Kalinich had been part of Zarathurstra and Thelibus, who recorded at least one track in 1968 with Carl Wilson’s help. Then, roughly a year later, Kalinich took some songs and poems to Brian, and they recorded A World of Peace Must Come during August and September of 1969.

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