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After two promising but uneven ultra lo-fi albums followed by a disastrous 2009 tour involving an on-stage meltdown, a fistfight and cancelled shows, Wavves’ Nathan Williams is back with this surprisingly strong new full-length. With notable producer Dennis Herring behind the boards, and also featuring bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes (both formerly with Jay Reatard's band), King of the Beach has a considerably cleaned-up, ‘90s pop-punk sound flavored with some prominent surf, ‘60s girl-group and psych-rock influences along with some of Williams’ strongest songs to date, contrasting bright, catchy hooks and sunny melodies with self-deprecating, even outright self-loathing lyrics. 7/13/2010 -Don Yates

As one-half of the Atlanta duo Outkast, Big Boi has made some of hip hop’s most celebrated records. He steps out on his own here for an album that deserves to be mentioned with Stankonia, Aquemini and ATLiens as a hip hop classic, balancing a wide-ranging musical adventurousness with his earthy street attitude while coloring the whole proceedings with Outkast’s playful P-Funk sensibility. The production is first-rate – modern, even forward-looking, but also gutbucket funky. While plenty of special guests also contribute, Big Boi rightfully remains the focus, with his twitchy, agile rap style and complex, densely packed rhyme schemes delivered with lots of irreverent, often lascivious humor. Sir Lucious Leftfoot is an inventive, fun and stone-cold funky hip hop masterpiece. 7/8/2010 -Don Yates

While this Raleigh, NC band’s remarkable debut album was made solely by group leader Stuart McLamb in his bedroom, their 2nd full-length was recorded in an actual studio, allowing McLamb & co. to construct a bigger sound befitting his epic pop vision. The sound of the album is huge, a reverb-drenched wall of sound featuring sophisticated arrangements that echo classic ‘60s pop, swathing McLamb’s dramatic well-crafted songs of melancholy and heartache in lush orchestration and epic grandeur. 7/2/2010 -Don Yates

The second album from Noddy – the solo project of Jared Mills, best known as the frontman for Seattle's Man Plus – is another propulsive set of emotive electro-pop that features even more adventurous, catchy production alongside his slightly skewed lyrics, heart-on-sleeve delivery, and undeniable knack for infectious melodies and anthemic choruses. 7/2/2010 -Alex

Perfume Genius is the stage name of Seattle-based singer-songwriter Mike Hadreas. His debut album is an emotionally powerful set of ethereal, lo-fi indie-pop, with skeletal arrangements featuring piano, organ and/or synths combined with fragile vocals singing dark, painfully intimate lyrics of abuse and addiction, juxtaposed with pretty, haunting melodies. 7/2/2010 -Don Yates

This Brooklyn trio follows up their impressive debut album with this bolder, more direct-sounding follow-up, using crystalline production, some prominent dance beats and a bit more pop polish to bring their shoegazerish dream-pop into sharper focus, with the Deheza sisters’ gorgeous harmonies right up front. 7/2/2010 -Don Yates

The Philadelphia hip hop group’s 9th studio album (and 1st since becoming Jimmy Fallon’s late-night TV show house band) finds them expanding outward from the ominous, hard-hitting militancy of their previous two records (2006’s Game Theory and 2008’s Rising Down), incorporating lots of jazz-tinged ‘70s soul flavor and some prominent gospel themes, along with some surprising left-field indie-rock collaborations with Joanna Newsom, Monsters of Folk and members of Dirty Projectors. A remarkably mature, masterfully executed album, How I Got Over is one of the highlights of the band’s illustrious career. 6/29/2010 -Don Yates

Vermont’s Dean Wells has been making lo-fi home recordings under the name of The Capstan Shafts since 1999. This is the first album he’s recorded in a studio, and it’s a stunner, with one song after another of brilliantly crafted, hook-filled power pop combining crunchy rock guitars and bashing drums with clever, insightful lyrics and an abundance of killer melodies. 6/23/2010 -Don Yates

Scuba is the alias of Paul Rose, a UK-based DJ/producer and owner of Hotflush Recordings. His second album is a superb, seductive set of largely atmospheric dubstep akin to the murky beauty of Burial, yet Triangulation showcases impressive range with some relatively muscular dancefloor tracks. 6/23/2010 -Alex

This Seattle band debuts with a well-crafted set of acoustic-oriented indie-pop reminiscent of latter-day Avett Brothers, featuring imaginative, often piano-based arrangements highlighted by tight, soulful harmonies and catchy sing-a-long choruses. 6/22/2010 -Don Yates

The son of the legendary late Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure comes fully into his own with this scintillating live album, combining bluesy West African styles with a high-energy rock attack centered around Toure’s jaw-dropping electric guitar work. Toure lights up one song after another with dizzying complex, rapid-fire guitar lines executed with uncommon fluidity and grace, and this live album is the finest showcase to date for his fiery guitar shredding. 6/22/2010 -Don Yates

This British electronic duo follows up their worst album (2007’s We Are the Night) with a strong return to form, ditching the previous record’s mishmash of questionable guest vocalists and weak novelty songs for blissed-out dance-floor tracks that ebb and flow with techno, house and motorik rhythms while synths bring some heavy rock crunch, or more often, trip out with a variety of trance-inducing tones evoking classic psychedelia, My Bloody Valentine and deep outer space. 6/18/2010 -Don Yates

The debut full-length from this Perth, Australia band is a stunning set of throwback psychedelic rock that boasts stoned riffage, lush melodies, and a cosmic adventurism – comparable to fellow blissed-out rockers Dungen – that consistently amazes. 6/18/2010 -Alex

The latest album from this 9-piece LA band is their strongest, most confident set yet, with wall-to-wall hard-hitting funk tracks featuring fiercely tight grooves with chicken-scratch guitar, floating keyboard lines, sharp horn riffs, popping bass, raw percussion and some supremely soulful vocalizing from lead singer Fanny Franklin. 6/15/2010 -Don Yates

The Montreal band’s 3rd album is their most energetic and loudest-sounding record, with a huge, dense sound that they captured mostly live in the studio with multiple ringing guitars, sci-fi keyboards, propulsive rhythms and shout-along choruses. It’s also the band at their most cohesive, with the songs of co-leaders Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug blending together better than ever before. 6/11/2010 -Don Yates

This Brooklyn-via-Florida band follows up last year’s promising Summertime EP with an even-better debut album that’s strongly rooted in the more pop-oriented ‘80s post-punk bands (the Smiths, New Order, the Cure) along with the lo-fi jangle of Field Mice and Orange Juice, and more faintly, the ‘60s pop sounds of the Beach Boys and Phil Spector. The band’s songs are simply constructed but almost always achieve a kind of pure pop perfection using surf-influenced guitar lines, celestial keyboards, simple, propulsive rhythms, soaring harmonies, and occasional handclaps and tambourines, while also balancing the album’s sunny melodies and exhilarating, ultra-catchy choruses with mostly downcast, heartbroken lyrics. 6/9/2010 -Don Yates

The latest from this Alabama-born, Seattle-based singer-songwriter is a gorgeous-sounding, emotionally moving album pairing her gripping, literate narratives and tremulous vocals with haunting folk-rock accompaniment from a stellar lineup of Seattle musicians. 6/8/2010 -Don Yates

Boasting an excellent, spotlight-stealing roster of guest contributors, the debut album from this trio of Seattle area MCs – Parker, Hyphen8d, and TH – is a celebration of local hip-hop that features a 206 collaboration on all fifteen tracks! SOTA's own Parker provides the beat on the Helladope-assisted single "Xtrahelladope," otherwise the record features outside help on production and verses from the likes of P Smoov/Fresh Espresso, THEESatisfaction, Grynch, The Physics' Thig Nat, J.Pinder, OC Notes, and GMK. 6/4/2010 -Alex

This Brooklyn band follows up their promising 2009 EP with this excellent debut album of expansive indie-pop incorporating a variety of styles including Bowiesque glam, '80s synth-pop, '90s slacker indie and Prince-inspired R&B into anthemic songs spiced with Afropop guitar lines, soaring keyboards, tribal rhythms and ragged three-part harmonies. 6/4/2010 -Don Yates

This Seattle trio’s 2nd full-length is another first-rate set of acoustic-oriented jangle-pop reminiscent of Belle & Sebastian, featuring economical arrangements mostly devoid of excessive ornamentation, but packing an abundance of catchy melodic hooks. 6/4/2010 -Don Yates