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"Just me and my dead-end friends again," sings Josh Homme on the debut album by Them Crooked Vultures. Homme's pals here aren't exactly of the dead-end variety: In addition to the Queens of the Stone Age frontman, Vultures comprises Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters on drums and Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones on bass and keyboards.

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There's been hope for some time that Melisa "Kid Sister" Young could resurrect that ever-struggling subset known as the female rapper. Her relentless bark -- like a crocodile clomping its jaw shut, swallowing tracks whole -- instantly made her a commanding and charming spitfire back in 2006.

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Attention: Deficit is Wale's first official album after numerous online releases, including last year's Seinfeld homage The Mixtape About Nothing. But the Washington, D.C. rapper already feels beset by celebrity.

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At this point, a new Omar Rodríguez-López album sounds about as thrilling as a Law & Order rerun: Excluding Mars Volta recordings, Xenophanes is his 11th release since 2007. But there's reason to take notice this time, as the album relegates the guitarist's often-tedious sonic experiments to mere interludes.

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All Chris Carrabba’s albums as heartthrob-in-chief of Dashboard Confessional have been about tension, primarily romantic: He can't help comparing his current love to the idealized version in his pretty little head. But an aesthetic battle also rages within Carrabba, one pitting Dashboard's solo-acoustic roots against the frontman's desire to move arenas with the intensity of his emotion.