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Little Joy, a band as twee as their name, sound a lot like the Strokes -- which is rather unsurprising, since the Strokes' Fabrizio Moretti is their drummer. Still, it's almost unnerving how much frontman Rodrigo Amarante's vocals resemble Julian Casablancas' mumble-croon.

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It's no surprise that the recent divorce of America's most soul-baring mainstream singer would yield an emotionally in-your-face radio single. She loudly shrugs "So What" in the swaggering first smash, but elsewhere reveals a conflicted sincerity that both complicates and sharpens her lyrics, while bringing out genuine rock rawness in her typically slick collaborators.

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Bookending his second solo album with ruminations about hope, the Tribe Called Quest leader lays his eloquent flow over liquid arrangements shimmering with rhythmic finesse.

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Anyone who's followed Ryan Adams' career during the decade since he left Whiskeytown might've wondered if last year's Easy Tiger was a fluke -- an all- too-rare instance of Adams wrangling his creative wanderlust long enough to craft a consistently compelling full-length.

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Strutting from preening castrato to bestial growl, singer Hayden Thorpe sets out to explain the modern masculine dilemma on this British quartet's debut. "Men, to be men, must love and pity so deeply and secretly," he yodels over a backdrop that could fairly be described as island baroque. Later, he swears on his own "cock and balls" and then chastises Aristotle.

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With Gwen Stefani sidelined by motherhood, Canada's Dragonette fills the No Doubt void by walking a similar line between girly electro pop and boyish new wave. Singer Martina Sorbara lacks Stefani's distinctive squeak, so when hooks diminish, there's little to distinguish her from crasser clones like Katy Perry.