The dark, disjointed rap psychedelia of "Black Up" is sure to make it one of this year's most singular and potent musical statements, and Butler's lyricism has only grown sharper since his Digable Planets days.

Compared to the minimal composition on "For Emma...", the follow-up is more expansive and even experimental.

I recommend listening to this record from beginning to end, with your eyes closed and your imagination ready to run wild.

As they effortlessly fold ideas from the rock, hip-hop, global traditional musics and electronic dance music into their sound, Gang Gang Dance forge a new type of "world music" where all of the world's music is potentially collapsible into a new hallucinatory Western pop.

"Circuital" takes elements of the "classic" My Morning Jacket sound that was honed on 2003's "It Still Moves" and morphs it into something new, as James sounds wiser for his musical and life travels.

Call "Stone Rollin'" anything you want. I'll call it a "classic." Keep on learning, Mr. Saadiq!

It's almost impossible to overstate the importance and the influence of The Beastie Boys in the world of hip hop and more importantly, in popular culture over the past quarter century.

To me, Fleet Foxes are welcome visitors from a musically benevolent dimension, from a time when rock and folk and country and pot and hallucinogens and love and the wonders of the multi-track recording studio were coming together in a spirit of innocent and earnest exploration and expression.

Low's ninth album is a true return to form. With the help of guitarist Nels Cline (Wilco), and banjo player Dave Carrol (Trampled By Turtles), the band used Sacred Heart Studios (housed in a church in Duluth) to create what might be the the best album of their career.

Throughout "Tomboy," the songs exude a sense of inner journeying, bolstered by Lennox's soaring, searching voice and the wide-open psychedelic panorama of sound.