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Fans in high places -- Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs, most notably -- haven't hurt this Danish band's crossover potential, but credit is due to what made those ears prick up in the first place, namely ebullient bedroom pop like "Around the Bend." The bubbly song (you've heard it in an iPod Touch ad) inhabits a weird intersection of Portishead, the Go!

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Colin Meloy's grandiose ambitions have, along with his band's popularity, grown gradually more grandiose over the years. Smarty-pants fans swooned for his use of old-timey language on 2002's Castaways and Cutouts, embraced the nautical theme of the following year's Her Majesty, and gleefully joined (or, more likely, rejoined) the drama club on indie farewell Picaresque.

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Lily Allen was 21 when the catchy, cheeky Alright, Still was released in 2006, and notoriety has followed her ever since: In the past couple of years, she's sold millions of records, feuded with Amy Winehouse, drunkenly suggested that copresenter Elton John sod off at an awards show, and tearfully blogged on MySpace about feeling fat and ugly.

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Benjy Ferree either worships Jack White or just happens to interpret remarkably similar influences -- Queen, Zeppelin, T. Rex, Delta blues -- in remarkably similar ways. On the D.C. rocker's second album, the sonic parallels (especially in the vocals) are almost jarring.

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Hints of TV on the Radio's atmospherics sneak into Iran's first disc in five years -- no surprise, since Kyp Malone is their guitarist and Dave Sitek coproduced -- but frontman Aaron Aites counters the otherworldly ambience with straightforward strains of classic indie rock (think Sebadoh and Pavement).

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"Haar" is fog, but not just any old fog; and in the Scottish tradition of rendering plain imagery transcendent, James Yorkston transforms it into something gorgeous, heartbreaking, and poetic. On the singer-songwriter's fourth album, he has the melancholy burr nailed, and fleshes out his spare folk with strings, female voices, and lilting horns.