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These Los Angelenos approach their hometown's timeless decadence with a bummed-out but exhilarating rigor: Digitized romantic obsession ("I Want You"), swaggering degradation ("Innocent Eyes"), country-rock erotica ("Falling to Pieces"), and suburban Anglophilia ("Off to Bed", which drives the Cure's pop-craft down My Bloody Valentine's distortion freeway

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With her classical training and background performing with the Boston University Symphony Orchestra, violinist Joan Wasser has a tight grip on the harmonies, rhythms, and ecstatic repetitions that conservatory types love. On her group's debut album (featuring guests Joseph Arthur and Antony Hegarty), the singer/songwriter composes chamber-pop tunes that burrow, sweep, and swing.

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Since 1999, this Brooklyn-via-Cincinnati quintet has been trying to fuse poetic lyrics, cinematic pull, and nervy, restless rock in a singular way. And on their fourth album, they finally ful-fill those ambitions, adding brass, piano, and backup singers to unveil high drama of the blunt, unclichéd sort unheard since the Afghan Whigs' '90s heyday.

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Contemporary tinkerers such as the Flaming Lips, Peaches, and Cat Power overhaul original Yoko Ono tracks on this hybrid tribute album; and while the results are mixed, they all retain the flowing quiver of Ono's inimitable vocals.

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Simon is a Parisian songwriter with a demure, crackly voice whose music is rooted in Björk-esque notions of how technology and nature stream together. And this record, a compilation of tracks from her first two albums and her soundtrack for the French release of March of the Penguins (La Marche de L'Empereur), has a vivid charm.

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Introspection and noise are infrequent bedfellows, but they get fully tangled up in the work of singer/songwriter Damien Rice.