Misery Index's latest album wraps the band's precise, melodic blend of death metal and grindcore around a progressive political message.

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Collecting an out-of-print LP with live tracks and compilation appearances, How Little Will It Take makes a convincing case that Providence's Landed were the proper heirs to the Jesus Lizard's noise-rock throne.

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As Blackout Beach, Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes, Swan Lake) retains his careful attention to scope and language but here stays on task and creates something gloriously claustrophobic and engaging from start to finish.

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A "singles, B-sides, and rarities" disc, the latest from Italians Do It Better linchpin Glass Candy suggests that not every band needs an odds'n'sods collection-- at least not this early into its career.

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Hot Chip draft avant-music elder statesman Robert Wyatt-- and Geese; don't forget Geese-- to re-imagine a quartet of their own songs, giving the band cultural capital by working with a legend, while Wyatt himself gains a dose of youthful energy.

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On The Crying Light, Antony Hegarty remains fascinated with the transitions and overlaps between birth and life, life and death, this world and the next, but he expresses them in more universal, more direct, but no less rapturous terms than he did on his New York-tinted breakthrough I Am a Bird Now. [Best New Music]

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On Merriweather Post Pavilion everything that's defined Animal Collective to this point is refined and amplified, resulting in an album (released tomorrow on vinyl and digitally, and in the next week or two on CD, depending on your location) that puts the group's quirky and forwardly expressive style in its most accessible light. [Best New Music]

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Malawian-born, London-based singer Esau Mwamwaya teams with the European production team Radioclit for a hugely eclectic mixtape. While strong collaborations with M.I.A., Santogold, and Vampire Weekend include some surprising left turns, tracks that lean away from the familiar work even better. [Best New Music]

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Deerhunter's double-disc follow-up to last year's Cryptograms finds the Atlanta five-piece emerging from that album's ambient haze to construct delicate, imaginative pop songs that reorganize 4AD haze, off-kilter indie pop and crashing garage-punk into a singular call-to-arms. [Best New Music]

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Jace Clayton, aka DJ/rupture, returns with another outstanding mix. While Uproot feels every bit as purposeful as minor classics Gold Teeth Thief and Minesweeper Suite, it's far more subdued and spacious. Combining dubstep, pulsing ambience, and orchestral flourishes on tracks from Ghislain Poirier, Shackleton, and Ekkehard Ehlers, Rupture doesn't just wade through music, he constructs an alternate history. [Best New Music]

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Everything's coming up Jersey. Real Estate have roots in the Garden State and they're led by singer/guitarist Martin Courtney and feature guitarist Matthew Mondanile (the latter known to some for his work in Ducktails). They've played shows with both Vivian Girls and Titus Andronicus, but "Black Lake", from their debut 7", doesn't sound much like either of those bands (who also don't much sound like each other). Instead, it's a fuzzy, sweetly simple sea chantey (or in this case, I guess a "lake chantey") that reminds you of how awesome that last bonfire of the summer was, until the cops showed up and you had to run for your life. The song wafts in on a slinky bassline playing all by its lonesome, and then a sleepwalking slide guitar (ready for a couples-only dance on prom night), tapping cymbals, and Courtney's reverbed voice complete the picture, leaving plenty of open space to stick your head inside of. "Black Lake" is a jangly, hazy slice of nostalgia for those of us who still have love for America's forgotten playground.

MP3:> Real Estate: "Black Lake"
[from the Real Estate 7"; out now on Underwater Peoples]

The entire blogosphere chewed this one up and spit it out yesterday, but we had some techincal problems so we missed it. It's Scarlett Johansson, she of the Tom Waits covers, taking on another alt-rock sacred cow, this time for the soundtrack to the film He's Just Not That Into You. I wouldn't dare do anything to offend Jeff Buckley fanatics-- they're a scary lot-- but I've never been able to understand exactly what made him so special. Amazing voice, sure, but I've never found much in his songs to connect with, and when he rocks out his music tends to dissapear into the post-grunge ether. But that's me. In any event, "Last Goodbye" is one of his best-known songs, and ScarJo strips it down and turns it into a lite radio piano ballad. And you know what, it sounds pretty terrible. Her uncertain sense of pitch and general lack of vocal charisma weren't a liabilities on the best songs on Anywhere I Lay My Head, and in fact her zombie-fied persona added a sort of dark undercurrent. But here, with just this piano and her voice and a song that (let's face it) needs someone with a lot more talent to bring it over, well, we're getting into the territory of Don Johnson's music career here. (via Stereogum)

Stream:> Scarlett Johansson: "Last Goodbye"
[from the He's Just Not That Into You OST; due 02/03/09 on New Line)

The run of new music from the Dark Was the Night comp (which benefits the the Red Hot Organization) continues with one of the best songs on the record. "Service Bell" is a collaboration between Grizzly Bear and Feist (they showed up on some stages together a while back, maybe this is how the hook-up began) but it's a GB tune all the way-- in fact it's a re-work from the early 4-rack record Horn of Plenty. It's all baroque and spooky and atmospheric and Feist inhabits this world completely, going into trilling faerie mode while Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen harmonize behind her.

Stream:> Grizzly Bear and Feist: "Service Bell"
[from Dark Was the Night; due 02/17/09 via Red Hot]

It's been a big winter for Bruce Springsteen, what with the new album, word of a reissued classic, a new Greatest Hits set, that Super Bowl gig this coming weekend, and then a tour with the E Street Band. It's become clear in the second half of this decade that Springsteen's influence has extended beyond the stadium rock mainstream, and that songwriters of all kinds have drawn inspiration from his music. Springsteen's label provided us with a few interesting videos that feature artists from a different generation talking about what his music means to them and then covering one of his songs. First up is Ted Leo, who has been playing "Dancing in the Dark" in his live set for several years. And then we have Brian Fallon from the Gaslight Anthem, whose 2008 album The '59 Sound fuses Springsteen-style rock'n'roll romanticism with terse punk rock. He talks about the role of the Boss' music in his life (not surprisingly, it's huge-- dude was born and raised in New Brunswick, N.J.) and then does a solo version of Born to Run's "Backstreets".

Ted Leo: Interview

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Ted Leo: "Dancing in the Dark"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Brian Fallon: Interview

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Brian Fallon: "Backstreets"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

The Katherine Nolfi-directed video for "So Fine", another track from Telepathe's upcoming Dave Sitek-produced album Dance Mother, is, appropriately enough, all about the dancing. There's a little mini-shimmy happening in the frozen food aisle of a grocery store, a (kinda, sorta) "Thriller"-style throwdown in an alley, and then everyone winds up at a rocking party, shaking it to -- what else?-- "So Fine".

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

from Dance Mother; out now on iTunes; physical copies due 03/10/09 in the U.S. on IAMSOUND and 01/26/09 in the UK on V2/Cooperative]