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The Dresden Dolls' drama-club chic is undeniably cute (see YouTube for details), but as 2006's Yes, Virginia attests, the duo are hardly Rocky Horror retreads: Brainiac witty and musically astute, frontwoman Amanda Palmer skates lightly across antecedents as far-flung as Bertolt Brecht, Queen, and The Exorcist soundtrack.

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Glasgow has a well-earned rep for churning out bands led by weepy would-be lotharios, so it's past due for a new angle on the oversold market. Enter Frightened Rabbit singer/guitarist Scott Hutchison, who favors caustic over cloying ("Let's get paralyzed down both sides," he offers on "Fast Blood," a bashed-out anti-anthem) and specializes in bitter detail, not fey bemusement.

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Concept albums are synonymous with excess: For every masterwork like Tommy or Styx's Kilroy Was Here (no, really), three bombastic epics bludgeon you into a stupor. Cases in point: The Smashing Pumpkins' Machina/The Machines of God, the fourth side of The Wall, and the entire Jethro Tull catalog.

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Blippy but biofueled, this Berlin DJ/producer's latest opens amid voices of field-recorded commuters and staccato keyboard ("Einsteigen") before segueing into the ingenious "Caress," which, among myriad stomping beats, features 3-D Ping-Pong-ball percussion.

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Francophile electro-pop completists (both of 'em) might roll their eyes with been-there-done- that ennui, but no matter: The rest of us can still thrill to the handclaps-and-Casio panache of Pop-Up, which, in its digital-only version, has been passed around for months like an intercepted mash note. The CD release adds a remix of dance-floor manifesto "A Cause Des Garcons" (a.k.a.

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Hyperliterate folkies like Colin Meloy run a considerable buzzkill risk, particularly when they go solo and strum away behind a stream of words that, however clever, would probably sound better juiced up by a band. Meloy's ingenious solution?