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This young English showman sometimes comes across like the Kanye West of avant-pop, complete with self-serious interviews, an ever-changing wardrobe, and most important, an unending stream of ideas teetering between brilliant and goofy. His fourth album is a buzzing, overblown concept piece about psychic warfare, in which sheer force of will conquers icky stuff like depression and homophobia.

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Viva Voce make dreamy music, but it'd be a shame to doze through a second of it. Those ghostly "ooohs" on "Die a Little"? Sing along blithely. That shuffling, woozy rhythm at the start of "Devotion"?

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The arrangements on this trio’s second album seem rickety -- a strummed guitar flickers like an ember, an accordion visits like an occasional breeze. But these creaky songs are about things that endure.

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There's no way to guess how a fresh Deerhunter track will sound. Will it borrow a bassline from a 1950s prom ballad or will it skim fuzz from some shoegaze staple? Will it more resemble the Stooges or Brian Eno?

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These Chicago indie vets have caught flak over the years for being too arty and inscrutable, so maybe that's the reason songwriter Tim Kinsella spends part of his tenth album justifying the impulse to even create art. "Why still must be the heaviest soft syllable," he wails at one point; in other words, Kinsella explains, this shit is hard to explain.

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Like politicians and pop punks, this Canadian duo know the key to effective communication: Invent a slickly catchy phrase and shout it often.