Recorded in their home studio on Britain's Isle of Wight, the six-piece Bees' third album is the product of a joyously short attention span.

As personally conflicted and complex as her hyperexpressive voice is pure, the Irish iconoclast flees pop celebrity again with this overly generous two-CD set of originals and covers about spirituality.

Does "world music" make you drool -- and not in the good way?

Forging a streetwise musical identity out of his tony trans-atlantic lineage, this London-born, Manhattan-based DJ/producer unites two antithetical worlds -- recent and classic Britpop with vintage American R&B.

The second album from Montreal rapper/producer Josh "Socalled" Dolgin may be the most unusual hip-hop album of the year. A trippy exploration of Jewish identity, it teems with collaborators, from indie MC C-Rayz Walz to Fiddler on the Roof legend Theodore Bikel. Klezmer melodies waft over Socalled's MPC beats, evoking New York's Second Avenue district, a.k.a.

On 2003's Coverage, Mandy Moore showed she had good taste -- covering XTC, Joni Mitchell, Joe Jackson, etc. -- but artistically, she was still stuck in a candy-pop bubble. Now, on her fifth album, she finally tries to tell her own story, with co-writing help from singer/songwriters Rachael Yamagata and Lori McKenna, as well as Boston folk-pop duo the Weepies.