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French composer/multi-instrumentalist Tiersen is a classically trained musician who came of age in the post-punk era, and both of those musical worlds inform his work. Despite many years of high-profile solo albums, soundtracks, and collaborations with everyone from Jane Birkin to the Divine Comedy, Dust Lane is his first album for a U.S. label. It's a rich, moody, multi-layered work that finds Tiersen showing off his instrumental prowess and playing a wide array of instruments from strings to synthesizers on his haunting classical/rock compositions.

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Books is the third single from Belle & Sebastian's 2003 album Dear Catastrophe Waitress. "Wrapped Up in Books" comes from the album. The other three songs are exclusive to the EP. While the charming, low-key "Books" is a fine song, it is firmly in the B&S tradition. "Your Secrets" is also pretty typical fare, but very strong and catchy with the added perk of some lovely weeping pedal steel guitar. The real interesting track here is the mini-epic "Your Cover's Blown." It starts off as a slinky disco number with some wonderfully sexy vocals from Stuart Murdoch, has a lovely sunny chorus, and a spooky spy music bridge.

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Beloved Philadelphia band Dr. Dog release a staggering burst of vital rock n roll with their 2012 record, Be The Void. The album is the raucous follow up to the group s critically lauded Shame, Shame. Having evolved from a band whose primary creative outlet was the album making process into one that favored the energy of their live performances, Dr. Dog knew they wanted to document the new dynamic they had developed on the road.

Sometimes the worst tragedies can give rise to great things. Evil Stig is a side project formed after the murder of The Gits singer Mia Zapata by the surviving band members and Joan Jett to raise money for a Seattle self-defense and support group for women called Home Alive. What began as a one-off gig as part of a series of Home Alive benefits held in Portland, Oregon, turned into a string of shows, songwriting collaborations and eventually this album...

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An old critical cliché is that eponymous albums are statements of purpose, so what to make of Weezer and their third color-coded self-titled album? Well, the band proves that axiom true, as every one of these eponymous efforts functions as an act of introduction, from their 1994 Blue debut to their 2001 Green comeback to 2008's Red Album, where Rivers Cuomo turns many of the group's long-standing rules upside down...

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Seventeen Seconds is the second studio album by The Cure, released in April 1980 by Fiction Records. It is the only Cure album to feature keyboardist Matthieu Hartley, and was featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The album reached number 20 on the British album charts.

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If, as Howard Hawks said, a good movie consists of three great scenes and no bad ones, it could be extrapolated that a good record contains three great songs and no bad ones -- in that case, Weezer is a record with at least six or seven great songs and no bad ones. That makes for a great record, but more than that, it's a great record emblematic of its time, standing as one of the defining albums of the '90s.

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Some people think guitar shredding is a thing of the past like a distant memory of the 1990s. That’s because they haven’t heard Kermheat. Kermheat’s music refuses to be pigeon-holed. It associates techniques from the past with contemporary electronic sounds in order to create a futuristic atmosphere. Kermheat’s music explores a whole slew of styles, which allow him to reach music lovers in general as well as the fans of these various musical genres. Kermheat’s approach suggests a new concept, where hard work contrasts with self deprecating irony and an off-beat sense of humour. Although Kermheat’s music is complex, it is aimed at all listeners in search of a new experience in sound, vibration and humour.

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Pulp had been kicking around since 1981, but for all intents and purposes, their 1994 major-label debut, His 'n' Hers is their de facto debut: the album that established their musical and lyrical obsessions and, in turn, the album where the world at large became acquainted with their glassy, tightly wound synth pop and lead singer Jarvis Cocker's impeccably barbed wit. Those years of struggle pay off in Cocker's carefully rendered observations of life on the fringes of Sheffield, where desperation, sex, and crime are always just a kiss away, and Pulp vividly evokes this world with a startling lack of romanticism but an appropriate amount of drama and a surplus of flair. It's that sense of style coupled with their gut-level immediacy that gives His 'n' Hers its lasting power: this was Pulp's shot at the big time and they followed through with a record that so perfectly captured what they were and what they wanted to be, it retains its immediacy years later.

Sometimes stars emerge. Sometimes stars are thrust upon us. And sometimes stars simply slip into the atmosphere as if propelled by something otherworldly. It is into this last category that the astonishing presence, voice, look and feel of Lana Del Rey falls. Musical stardom is not an option with Ms Del Rey. It is her vocation. She calls herself the `gangsta Nancy Sinatra' and defines her genre as `Hollywood pop/ sadcore', a dramatic new loop for pop music.

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Cease to Begin is the second album by Band of Horses, released on October 9, 2007. The album debuted at number 35 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and was #47 on Rolling Stone's list of the Top 50 Albums of 2007.

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Everything All the Time is the debut album of indie rock band Band of Horses and was released on March 21, 2006 on Sub Pop Records. It features new versions of five of the six songs from the band's Tour EP, some with different titles.

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2012 release, the fifth album from the singer/songwriter, the follow-up to 2009's Everybody. Produced by David Kahne, the tracks on Human Again are darker, impassioned songs that throw a wrench in Michaelson's reputation as the crafter of dainty love songs. The first single, 'Ghosts', finds Michaelson exploring a more mature sound. "The album is called Human Again because it's taken me a very long time to be happy," explains Michaelson. "The music on this album might surprise some people. I was really singing out, physically; I was writing about a really dark time in my life."