They Might Be Giants - "Join Us": They Might Be Giants has finally taken a break from writing kids' songs and in the form of "Join Us" have created an album for the parents - their first "adult" record since 2007's "The Else." With "Join Us," you get 19 songs that veer wildly all over the map, but still carry They Might Be Giants' stylistic hiccups and oddball lyrics. - Zachary Houle
Imelda May - "Mayhem": Imelda May's third record was originally released in the U.K. last year, spawning an impressive four singles. U.S. listeners can expect to enjoy May's trend of increasing confidence and verve in the context of a broadened sonic palette, expanding to include country rockers and an off-kilter folksy blues number. - Andy Johnson
Serengeti - "Family & Friends": Looking for listening pleasure in all the wrong downloads? Try Serengeti's witty and detailed narration. This is matchmaking, hip-hop style. Serengeti's style is fresh and unexpected, not solely because of his range of subject matter but also regarding the variety in his vocal delivery. Musically, he travels an expansive field, including folk, boom bap, dance, disco, rock and indie pop. - Quentin B. Huff
Ricky Skaggs - "Country Hits: Bluegrass Style": After a stellar country career in the '80s that saw Skaggs rocket to the top of the country charts with hit after hit while acting as one of the prime figures in the New Traditionalist movement, he returned to his bluegrass roots in the 1990s with Kentucky Thunder and his own label, Skaggs Family Records. Now he brings that bluegrass instrumentation to some of his biggest '80s country hits in a set of crackling reinterpretations of old favorites. - Sarah Zupko
Big Talk - "Big Talk": Killers drummer Ronnie Vannucci sets down the sticks to take center stage on his rocking solo debut. Vannucci proves his vocal chops and multi-instrumental abilities on this outing. - Sarah Zupko
Other notable releases this week:
Terri Lyne Carrington, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Sheila E., Esperanza Spalding and Gretchen Parlato - "The Mosaic Project"
Portugal. The Man - "In the Mountain in the Cloud"
"Jimmy Kimmel Live" (ABC): Theophilus London (T), Owl City (W), Bush (Th).
"Late Show with David Letterman" (CBS): Del McCoury Band and the Preservation Hall Band (T), Cee Lo Green (W), Porcelain Black (Th).
"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (NBC): 3 Doors Down (T), Gavin DeGraw (W), Emma Stone, Adam Carolla, Ricky Minor, Grace Potter, Charles Bradley, Sharon Jones (Th), Dolly Parton (F).
"Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" (NBC): Emmylou Harris (T), Joseph Arthur (W), Ziggy Marley (Th).
"Last Call with Carson Daly" (NBC): Nicole Atkins and the Black Sea (T), Janelle Monae (W), Freddie Gibbs (Th), The Knux (F).
"Saturday Night Live" (NBC): Katy Perry (Sa).
"Austin City Limits" (PBS): Steve Earle / Kris Kristofferson (Sa).
"Conan" (TBS): Tedeschi Trucks Band (T).
One can almost smell the sweat, taste the rest, feel the tetanus coursing through the veins in the work of Perc and proximal ilk like Ancient Methods, Adam X, Tommy Four Seven, and Reeko. The visual filters in the video for Perc's new single "My Head Is Slowly Exploding" even harken back to the late '80s/early '90s videos the original industrial pioneers, dragging mysteriously around port containers as an anonymous guy knocks against one, either trying to break in or to just make noise. As noisy as it gets though, the key word here is "slowly" not "exploding". There's a palpable tension, but not one that make your head explode in a "Scanners"-esque friction of resistance. - Timothy Gabriele
If you're on the fence about this band, one of the members is the composer for the ABC sitcom "Modern Family," a show that gets about 10 million viewers a week. Is it safe to assume with those numbers that at least 1,000 more people just decided the Rescues are indeed fun? "Can't Stand the Rain" has the art house vibe of 1920s flapper music combined with the jazziness of a stripped-down Ben Folds song, and Gabriel Mann's vocals aid the accessibility of the quartet within the pop-rock scene. (He's the spitting resemblance of Panic at the Disco's Brendon Urie.) All four members (Mann, Kyler England, Rob Giles, and Adrianne Gonzalez) are multi-instrumentalists that hail from LA. They have been paving their way through the indie circuit with residencies at two major venues in the city of angels, as well as gaining exposure with slots on "Grey's Anatomy" and "One Tree Hill." - Matt Edsall
-Nirvana's 'Nevermind' gets deluxe reissue treatment
Nirvana's "Nevermind" is set to get the deluxe reissue treatment to commemorate the record's 20th anniversary. To answer the question that countless music bloggers feel compelled to ask, yes, this release will make you feel old if you date everything in your life to the first time that you heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Otherwise, we can view this "milestone" with a certain amount of guarded ambivalence. How many times can this band's lean back catalogue be repackaged and resold? And how many people already own bootleg versions of these promised rarities? Finally, how revelatory can the demo version of "Teen Spirit" really be? - Joseph Fisher
Former music blogger Nick Gutterbreakz has not only made the amazing leap from music writing to music creation, he has become a top talent in a crowded electronic scene. Made on all analogue equipment, Ekoplekz shares a kinship with the tetanus-laced junk electronics of Cabaret Voltaire, if they had come about in the era of Downliners Sekt and Mordant Music. In "Uncanny Riddim", director Jade Boyd has come up with the perfect accompaniment to a music that is simultaneously post-dubstep, post-hauntology, and pre-digital, cameras pointed at scratchy TVs scrambled to reveal starkly naked if overall quotidian moments. The audio/visual makes one feel a voyeur in someone else's ghost box, a nonconsensual chat roulette into the past. The video was created for a performance at the Outer Church in Brighton and is otherwise unreleased, but Ekoplekz's double album "Memowrekz" is available to download from Bleep and Boomkat for a nicely affordable price. - Timothy Gabriele
How many songs can there be about green beans? Well, at least five. Kids music act Hullabaloo, along with Stefan Shepherd of the Zooglobble kids music blog, hosted a little something called the Kindie Songwriting Club (I'm guessing that stands for Kid + Indie). The idea was for multiple songwriters to write a song about the same subject. A reader pitched the idea of "Green Beans Everywhere," and that's the one they ran with. So now Hullabaloo is offering all five resulting songs for free from Bandcamp. The songs were written by Steve Denyes, Johnny Bregar, Matt Clark, the Hollow Trees, and Charity and the JAMband, respectively. Now, go and eat your greens. - John Garratt
(http://kindiesongwritingclub.bandcamp.com/album/kindie-songwriting-club-vol-1)
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