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“Choir” implies lots of singers, but this Choir focuses on one melancholy Dane named Jannis Noya Makrigiannis, whose keen rests high above the engaging panoply of sounds on his group’s debut. When he injects melodic sunshine, as on the loping “Action/Reaction,” For the White in Your Eyes nestles nicely between the Beach Boys and Fleet Foxes.

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Interpol painted themselves into a sonic corner by album three, and though frontman Paul Banks doesn’t offer a clean break on his pseudonymous solo debut, he does brush in some new colors.

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Icelandic orchestral rockers Sigur Rós already tried a more quiet and subdued approach on 2007's acoustic Heim, but here, frontman Jónsi Birgisson (along with his boyfriend, Alex Somers) aims for damn-near invisible.

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God Help the Girl feels like one of those projects Prince masterminded in the '80s, except here the diminutive wizard behind the female­fronted concept album is Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch. Unsurprisingly, Girl sounds like B&S sung by ladies (the heretofore unknown Catherine Ireton, plus a couple of singers auditioned via the Web).

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These Brits -- featuring two members of Mclusky, a great band that died in 2005—spit fiery, trebly guitar­rock venom with such lusty glee that following them to hell actually sounds inviting. Witness "Hope That House Built," whose menacing chug and cheeky lyrics ("Reimagine God as just a mental illness") simultaneously tickle and pierce.

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Wolf Parade's songwriters keep busy in the off-season -- Dan Boeckner sexes it up with wife Alexei Perry in Handsome Furs, and Spencer Krug helms Sunset Rubdown, whose third full-length is slightly looser and more pleasantly rickety than Wolf Parade, but definitely close to the den. That means more grandiose wordplay and bent indie rock from one of the genre's finest voices.