It takes a certain talent not to come off as being to precious or twee when tackling the orch-pop genre, and too many bands rely on the reflexive actions of the listeners responding to familiar cliches to carry them through. Or they just construct epic songs with barely picked guitars and odd instrumentation randomly dropped in. Well, Noah and the Whale do commit one of the above crimes -- their name is based on the......

We're beginning to wonder what they feed babies in Sweden since they all seem to grow up into pop producing monster machines. From ABBA to The Hives to Peter Bjorn and John and now to Lykke Li. Li is a 22-year-old overachiever eager to gain popularity and capable of crafting the sort of vehicle primed to vault her into the spotlight. Her debut Youth Novels, largely produced by Björn Yttling of the aforementioned Peter Bjorn......

Between "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above" and the iPod commercial soundtrack "Music Is My Hot Sex" we think it's safe to assume every human being has heard the music of Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS). On their sophomore effort Donkey, due next week from Sub Pop, the band continues to deliver danceable rock songs guaranteed to keep their fans happy. We've heard some criticism directed CSS's way for not being experimental......

If you pay attention to this sort of thing, you've probably heard that the new Hold Steady record, Stay Positive, sucks. I may have even been the one to tell you that, after one or two spins, but after spending some quality time with it I've changed my tune like Kid Rock with a ProTools rig. The Hold Steady may be "America's best bar band," and leader Craig Finn is the guy you want to......

The M's latest, Real Close Ones, opens with a squall of guitars and a piano fighting its way out of the mounds of fuzz its buried under before it's pushed back down in the mix by a swelling line of horns. The band's modus operandi of mixing noise with undeniable melody seems to be back in full effect. Or is it? After the brawling opener the band suddenly pulls back with more intimate arrangements, dialing......

Japan's Love Psychedelico is fronted by singer Kumi and guitarist Naoki Sato. Their latest self-titled disc is their American debut, but they already have a whole passel of albums that have sold millions overseas. We admit when we first put this one under the stylus we were expecting yet another faceless J-Pop band, but man-oh-man were we wrong. The group sings sunny, late-'60s inspired guitar pop, and its so finely constructed that when Kumi mixes......

Erykah Badu's New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) is just completely and utterly fantastic, and believe us when we say that judgment is based on an objective level. Badu has long been a cypher of sorts -- is she an Earth mother? a revolutionary? an unbalanced eccentric? -- but New Amerykah draws together all the disparate threads of her personality and weaves them into a piece of work that stands as her strongest statement......

Brooklyn-by-way-of-Chicago native David Vandervelde may not be "rockin'" our turntable so much this afternoon as making it dream of breaking free from the confines of the office and dozing off on a bed of poppies and clover. Both are equally appealing on a lovely summer day, so crank up the computer speakers and join us. Vandervelde's swaggering, glammy, oddly lush little rock EP The Moonstation House Band (Secretly Canadian) was as auspicious an introduction......

After a waaaay too long delay, the Switches debut album Lay Down The Law is finally available in the U.S. Their song "Drama Queen" ensnared us last year with it's stomping glam beat, sneering Dandy Warhols-esque verses, and it's over the top Queen-sized chorus. The rest of the album took the promise of that original salvo and decimated our expectations in the best possible way. The title track mines the last bit of gold out......