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Black Keys singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach opens his first solo outing with an acoustic country blues (“Trouble Weighs a Ton”) that sounds utterly authentic but signifies mainly as a museum-quality reproduction.

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Connecting the dots between old-wave spaz cadets (think Romeo Void) and Sweden's new wave of sugar-rush power pop (think Shout Out Louds), Love Is All's second album jolts otherwise winsome tunes with honking saxophone ("New Beginning"), acerbic lyrics ("Forget I ever mentioned my heart" goes the refrain of best bet "Give It Back"), and feedback-encrusted melodies ("Giants Fall" shares DNA wit

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Jam-band virtuosos with an unlikely knack for concise songs, Austin, Texas' White Denim make post-rock that actually rocks. Favoring a bright, treble-heavy guitar attack, the group skew their arrangements in ways that feel more canny than contrived.

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Reliably excellent but emotionally detached, the Sea and Cake's eighth album is of a piece with their first seven: They leave nothing to chance. Pristine set-opener "Aerial" and the elegantly gliding "On a Letter" jangle and chime with mathematical precision, while the fizzy, synth-powered "CMS Sequence" serves up a bluffer's guide to Kraftwerk.

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Former Archers of Loaf frontman Eric Bachmann has led the folksier Crooked Fingers for nearly a decade, but he still operates in the shadow of his semi-seminal indie-rock outfit, due to an inconsistency that also plagues Forfeit/Fortune.

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Leaving Reprise after two commercially inert, if artistically compelling, albums and losing guitarist Ben Curtis (who founded the group with brother Brandon), this Brooklyn-based trio return like Gary Numan on a hard-rock bender.