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Techno's earthy cousin microhouse is generally as unassuming as its name, but Michigan-based producer Matthew Dear infuses the snapping, beeping compositions of his second album with a sincere yearn, broadening the genre in the process. Dear's breathy, throaty voice has a stirring tunefulness that recalls TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe.

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On 2005's surprisingly still top-notch Push the Button, Chemical Brothers demonstrated that their ability to rock a block didn't die with electronica's 20th-century mainstream aspirations. Here, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons continue to smear psychedelic synth cheese and stereophonic airplane noises over chewy grooves that veer closer and closer to straight disco.

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After a decade of seminal albums, mythic shows, and erratic behavior (the '80s) and a decade of dud albums, spotty shows, and erratic behavior (the '90s), Bad Brains were unlikely reunion candidates. Yet Build a Nation roars and throbs with vintage fire. H.R.'s vocals, dub-echoed and buried, sound like they're transmitted from Olympus.

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On their second full-length, Seattle's Blue Scholars try to promote hip-hop's potential for personal transformation and political change, dedicating songs to soldiers in Iraq ("Back Home") and protesters at the 1999 WTO demonstrations ("50 Thousand Deep").

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Art Brut's second album is a bit misleading: In keeping with the band's knack for clever thievery from artists past, it might be better titled More Songs About Girls and Songs. Those are the only two things on singer/shouter Eddie Argos' mind, and he's banking -- smartly, as it turns out -- on their inexhaustibility as lyrical subjects.

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While Beta Band's electronica-tinged, late-'90s psychedelic pop was influencing Oasis and Radiohead alike, founding member Gordon Anderson underwent shock therapy. Now he's fronting a trio completed by Beta alumni that's even trippier, poppier, heavier, and more experimental.