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Matt and Kim (their real names) come on like a punked-up Mates of State -- a couple so cute that you'd walk away from their frantic live shows feeling mushy, if someone hadn't just mushed you. But the love songs on their second album are for their home borough of Brooklyn as much as for each other.

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Sexual confusion, sibling rivalry, fear of death: On 2005's gut-twisting I Am a

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This is why people make fun of snowboarders. Over bro'd-out synth-rock jams, pro shredder turned singer Trevor Andrew tries extremely hard to be contemplative for a guy wearing a sideways baseball cap, gold chains, and an ironic mullet. Dishing out aphorisms such as "Does your money love you?

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Franz Nicolay has the best mustache in the Hold Steady, but his songwriting is in desperate need of similar creative twists. Stepping out solo, the energetic multi-instrumentalist -- assisted by guests including Dresden Dolls' Brian Viglione -- does fine when he keeps things forceful: "Jeff Penalty" is a funny, specific rocker about watching the Dead Kennedys with other aging punks.

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With the Obsessed and Saint Vitus in the '80s, Scott "Wino" Weinrich all but invented doom metal (well, the parts that Sabbath didn't create), and in the 2000s, his power trios Spirit Caravan and the Hidden Hand didn't bogart the deep-focus high.

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Having recorded more than 9,000 albums since the start of the decade -- okay, that's a slight exaggeration -- Vermont residents Matt Valentine and Erika Elder exhibit signs of creeping dementia on Drone Trailer. With his piercing whine and wheezy harmonica, Valentine suggests a damaged, decomposing clone of acoustic Neil Young.