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In this Indiana quartet's young, grizzled hearts, it's always "Spring Break 1899." They brawl like Johnny Cash's cellmates or dreamily swoon like Nick Drake, stomping saloon floorboards in 4/4 time as grand strings fade into high noon. But literate, wantonly nostalgic country rock is a tough sell these days.

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R.E.M.'s last album, Around the Sun, stays on my shelf only for the sake of catalog completeness; it's been freed once or twice since 2004 to be dusted off and quickly reassessed: Did a band this important really release something so incomprehensibly dull and unrelentingly bored with itself?

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With all the mythology built up over three gorgeous sequels, the Devil May Cry series would make a great anime show, as it has enough monster-killing, over-the-top soap opera dialogue, and nonstop flashing lights to sate your inner Japanese kid. DMC 4 realizes the potential of the latest systems, especially the überpowerful PS3.

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NASCAR fans will tell you they watch races for the strategy and rivalries, but they’re liars—what they’re really out for is the wrecks. Burnout Paradise not only focuses almost exclusively on crashes, it doesn’t even make you race. Like a Grand Theft Auto in which you never have to walk around, Paradise gives the term “killer cars” a whole new meaning.

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Though it may seem inappropriate for the family-friendly Wii to feature intense violence, Nintendo knows how to deliver pugilism with its own twist. Super Smash Bros. Brawl pits a bunch of classic characters (including Mario, Link, and Pikachu) against each other for blood-free but beautiful hand-and-foot-throwing cartoon combat.

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Complaining that Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand lack songwriting chops misses the point: Beach House, the duo's musical moniker, is a sonic connoisseur's workshop, and the pair have impeccable taste. On Devotion, slow-motion organ washes over precisely twanged guitar while Legrand slides sensuously accented phonemes through