I found "A New Tide" to be a pleasant listen. Who's to say they should be writing songs according to industry expectations?

Eleni Mandell's breathtakingly honest and sweeping compositions have gained her acclaim far and near from her native Los Angeles. He swaggering pop-noir style has take full flight in her newest CD, "Artificial Fire."

Through mashing musical contradictions, the Handsome Furs have quickly stormed the music world since debuting in 2007. The husband-wife team of Dan Boeckner (also in Wolf Parade) and Alexei Perry tie together electronic sensibilities with jangly pop while telling stories that span the emotional grid.

A.C. Newman isn't just on the indie-pop music radar - he is the radar, and continues to captivate listeners with his newest record, "Get Guilty."

"I Can't Go On, I'll Go On," the 2008 CD release from The Broken West, is power pop at some of its strongest, straight from the powerfully poppy world of Southern California.

"The Hazards of Love" is a strange concoction brewed from Colin Meloy's obsession with the British folk revival of the 1960s. It's as if the archetypes and themes of those folk songs were sucked up by an F5 twister (Meloy) and dropped into a foreign landscape: the rock opera.