If Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens and Wilco had a sordid love-child, you’d have Seabear’s sophomore album, We Built a Fire. The melodic virtuosity is definitely a welcome change to the drab tunes haunting the indie scene today. Although the lyrics are slightly repetitive, the hypnotic rhythms more than make up for it, transporting the listener to a world void of the 9-to-5 mundane.

James Pants can conjure space music with the best of them, and his new album, Seven Seals, is a squirming bag of Barrett-era smiles, to be sure. It’s excellent mood music for an Ethiopian restaurant in low Jupiter orbit, or maybe a funky nightmare musical that you wish you could remember in the morning. Whatever it is, tape your rusting Virtual Boy to your head, engage the child locks and crank it. 

The Living Sisters (The Bird & The Bee’s Inara George, Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark and singer Eleni Mandell)take the doo-wop gospel harmonies of The Andrew Sisters in the ’40s and add a spoonful of folk, a pitch of country and a whole lotta sugar. Although the super group’s vocals blend well across genres, too much sweetness, as in opener “How are you Doing,” seems saccharine. But not all is lost in Love to Live. “You Make Me Blue” has just the right amount of sugar, and the melancholic “Cradle” is a good vehicle for female harmonics.

The first of two full-lengths to be released this year by South Carolina’s laptop symphonist Toro Y Moi, Causers of This is a remarkably confident suite of pop gems. Over gelatinous rhythms, washed-out synths and pointillist guitars, Chaz Bundick’s dream-time vocals suggest Panda Bear gone R&B. Closing with a bit of gaudy, high ’80s bubblegum, Causers of This is a bold introduction to a promising newcomer. 

Johnny Cash’s final album opens on a portentous but hopeful note: “There ain’t no grave/can hold my body down.” Comprised of tracks recorded with Rick Rubin right up until Cash’s death in late 2003, American VI is a fitting send-off for the Man in Black. The covers are impeccably chosen and range from Queen Lili’uokalani’s traditional Hawaiian farewell “Aloha Oe” to Tom Paxton’s questing “Can’t Help but Wonder Where I’m Bound.” However, it’s Cash’s lone original, the sparsely sketched “1 Corinthians: 15:55,” that shines the brightest.

For those of us who grew up in households filled with the sounds of Motown, Atlantic and Stax, there is something supremely comforting about Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings’ old-fashioned, soul-funk charm. I Learned the Hard Way is another memorable trip in their way-back machine brimming with neo-classics, like the slinking groover “Money” and the stately torch ballad “If You Call.” Listening to it is like experiencing a piece of living history—a warm reminder of the heydays of Aretha, Gladys and The Staple Singers.

Weeds, what has happened to ye? What started out as a cash crop of smart, sticky green has grown browner and duller with age. And with Season Five, we’re entering into schwag territory. The Botwins are as dysfunctional as ever—and that’s the problem. Any semblance of a family clinging to its quest for function has vanished, but instead of embracing their free spirits and fully enveloping these far-out caricatures, the cast is still playing to the same old “woe is me, how did I get into another one of these nutty predicaments?” routines. Take two hits—nah, just pass.

As Mick Jones’ escape hatch from The Clash, Big Audio Dynamite’s ingenious debut marked the final break from punk’s seething ethos towards a more philosophic approach to Thatcherite miseries. An even now almost unimaginable collision of punk, funk, hip-hop and film sound bites, tracks like “Medicine Show” and “E = MC2” still stand up as powerful meditations on social injustice. And, the explosive “Bottom Line” once again reminds us that you can dance your fucking ass off while vigorously shouting down the man. This is your call to arms.

Ben Sollee (one-time Béla Fleck comrade) and Daniel M. Moore might’ve well had me at “Dear Companion”—the album’s wild blaze of an introductory track that provides ignition for the inspired, stormy folk ahead. The remainder of the debut effort from the pair of Kentuckians burns slowly and evenly, boldly refusing to wane in the dawn of one of the longest and coldest stretches of days ahead. This is one painfully beautiful record.

With a strange, uncharacteristic voice that may attract many for the same reasons it repulses some (and it’s those in the latter set that truly miss out), The Tallest Man on Earth serves lesson number one in field recordings and folk: that the surface should never be the sole selling point. While his latest may not be as triumphant as his debut LP, Shallow Grave, The Wild Hunt is a worthy effort indeed. Underneath his boots of Spanish leather, Swede Kristian Matsson’s tightly wound creek-bed tales declare Americana a universal language.