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Fusing tricky bass solos with brutal breakbeats, Tom Jenkinson's Squarepusher albums have often come off as man-machine freak shows. His 12th album, though, is like a digital fantasy yanked into physical reality. Computerized voices marvel at the very existence of "real" women, while Jenkinson's trademark spazz-jazz clamor is largely rendered via garage-rock guitar squall.

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Reliably excellent but emotionally detached, the Sea and Cake's eighth album is of a piece with their first seven: They leave nothing to chance. Pristine set-opener "Aerial" and the elegantly gliding "On a Letter" jangle and chime with mathematical precision, while the fizzy, synth-powered "CMS Sequence" serves up a bluffer's guide to Kraftwerk.

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While Russell's left-field disco singles -- Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face?" and Dinosaur L's "Go Bang" -- remain his career's standard, new facets of the singer-songwriter/cellist's talent have emerged since his death from AIDS in 1992, including electro pop, minimal classical composition, and now, jangly folk rock.

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After 20 years of alternating between thrilling electronic experimentation and random Rolling Stones pastiches, Primal Scream take a pleasingly lightweight turn on their ninth album, embracing a breezy, effervescent '80s pop aesthetic (with production help from Bloc Party soundscaper Paul Epworth and Björn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John).

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This Portland, Oregon duo play the kind of hazy, beguiling alt folk that feels uniquely suited to floating downriver on an inner tube or reclining in a hammock, counting clouds.

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Their name might conjure skull rings and stringy hair (it was actually plucked from a traditional Carolina folk song popularized by bluegrass kingpin Ralph Stanley), but O'Death's pitchforks-at-the-campfire frenzy may be even more sinister than their moniker implies.