The Flaming Lips have never shied away from life’s unavoidable existential dramas — Death, Love, Depression, The Afterlife (or lack thereof). But The Lips have never made “depressing” music: Steven Drozd, the band’s multi-instrumentalist and chief sonic architect, has a flair for melodic, rainbow-hued arrangements, and Wayne Coyne, their outsized frontman, plays the role of psychedelic jester, particularly on stage, where he crowd-surfs on inflatable bubbles, pours fake blood on his face, and preaches his deep ruminations to a cult-like fan-base in his cracked warble.

The Terror, the band’s 13th studio album, is a bleak — often morbid — change of pace, filled with repetitive synthesizer textures, ghostly choral voices, and dark lyrical mantras. Inspired by a dread of mortality and deep personal turmoil (Coyne’s recent divorce, Drozd’s brief heroin relapse), the duo recorded the album mostly alone, working quickly and spontaneously instead of layering the songs with overdubs. eMusic’s Ryan Reed spoke with Wayne Coyne about the album’s intimate recording process and complicated themes.

In an interview with Pitchfork, Steven Drozd said: “The Terror is this internal feeling you get that you and everyone you love is going to die. Everything in your life might be good, but there’s still this notion…that there’s more pain and suffering to come down the road.” It’s interesting to compare that quote to “Do You Realize,” which basically says the same thing but puts it in a beautiful, uplifting sense.

I think that’s what optimism is, in the end. You go, “We can’t bear this,” or you go, “We’ll find a way.” Sometimes music tells us so much about how we feel, and I think that’s why we like music so much — because it fills in. We utterly know what it means while it’s playing, but the minute it stops, it’s like, “I don’t know anymore.” I don’t think one way of thinking has to negate another way of thinking. I’m certainly not “Do You Realize.”

It’s a dramatic song, and I think it’s most powerful when it’s used at these dramatic moments. Most people I’ve talked to that have used it have done so at weddings and funerals, even the birth of their children. They see it as the sound of this big moment, where this other sound — this sound that we’re doing on The Terror — it’s this moment that’s with you all the time. It feels depressing and triumphant at the same time. A triumph isn’t “Hey, this is the greatest thing! We’re gonna live!” A triumph is saying, “We’ll just get through this.” We don’t have to make it any more sparkly than that.

When I read about the album’s dark themes, I expected the music to be depressing. And it is in a way, but there’s also a comfort in the sadness. There’s a bleakness to it, but it’s also really beautiful at the same time.

When we were making it, a lot of it reminded us of church music. We don’t go to church now, but when you were young, you’d sit there and try your best, not knowing what the fucking words were, to sing along with these simple mantras that people would sing in church. And it wouldn’t be about a singular singer. I think that’s what a lot of this music feels like as well. It’s not coming from a point of “I’m the singer.” I call it “the voices from beyond.” There are only a couple of songs in which you can hear me trying to sound like to sound like me. It’s just melody and words that are in the cloud of the sound of the song anyway. For me, it’s not meant to be this big statement by this big character.

So from what I’ve read in other interviews, Steven’s dark period was what really set the tone for the album. But I also know you were going through some heavy shit during that time. What was it for you that sparked this mood and the idea of The Terror?

We’ve always hinted at this type of music. But the main difference is: Even five or six years ago, if we were having a semi-big production going on, like some of these songs are, with drums and overdubs and a lot of voices being recorded — in the early stages of a lot of our records, we start early on with really primitive demos. But now we don’t do that anymore. A lot of times we’re just recording, and we’re not really doing a demo of a song. We’re just creating it right there. There isn’t gonna be a second version or a third version — it just is what we create.

And now we can do that without anybody being there. So you really are, in a sense, kind of a painter in a dark corner, painting whatever you want and not always thinking anybody has to see it. It used to be, no matter what we would do, we were surrounded by people who were helping us record — engineers, technicians and producers, and everybody is in there listening to everything you do, and sometimes openly judging us, sometimes not. But you’re not doing it in isolation of your own creation, and I think that’s the main difference.

I think we’ve always been able to do expressionistic, internal music, but it’s very hard to do that sometimes. In the past, we’ve never been alone making it. When you get musicians together, they want to do music. They want to say, “You play that, and I’ll play this.” This wasn’t music like that. It’s simple, repetitive…a lot of it’s even out of tune and out of rhythm with itself — it just happens to be something we liked. If Steven liked it, and I liked it, that’s all that mattered. We don’t care if it’s good or bad. If we’re happy with it, let’s go. So I think that’s really powerful and great luck — this kind of music that we’re drawn to is this cold, distant, unsettled thing.

I’m really curious how you guys were able to sustain this mood throughout the album. Is it a situation where you guys started to capture this mood so you noticed that pattern and said, “Let’s shape the record in this way”? Or did a lot of it just happen subconsciously?

That’s a narrow path to walk. Part of it is you want to stay in this color palette. Not to simplify it, but you have Picasso’s Blue Period, or whatever, they’re all reaching for the same thing. But that can also be limiting because you can start cutting off possibilities, and we don’t like to do that either because sometimes you think, “Oh, it couldn’t possibly be this,” but then you hear it and you say, “Well, it’s absolutely that.”

We really struggled with the song, “Butterfly…How Long it Takes to Die.” We struggled with that one in the beginning, because it felt too snappy. It’s well played, but I think it’s the only song on the record that has this little moment of funk in it. With Embryonic, we were doing that all over the place — being very clumsy and funky and primitive. And this wasn’t doing that. For whatever reason, we were on another trip. And when we were confronted with that song, we thought, “What do we do?” And we just rejected it for the longest time. And I didn’t think about [the lyrics] very much, I just said cosmic shit that you think of with the music. Then we re-looked at it, and we thought, “Why don’t we make it more like what the lyrics are talking about and see if we can make another version of this bleak, un-chromatic landscape.” I think it works — over the last three or four songs, you really feel like you’re no longer looking for the answer. To me, it sort of feels like you’ve found the answer. And sometimes with really distinct rhythms, that’s kind of what it’s saying. You know which path you’re on. Earlier in the record, we begin with a rhythm that isn’t very solid, but kind of dissolves into almost-rhythmless rhythms. They’re rhythms, but they don’t really push forward with a lot of confidence, and none of it rushes ahead. And by the end of the album, we kind of get something back. We know something different. That’s how it feels to me — I don’t know if it really is true, but that’s how it feels to me as a piece of music.

“Try to Explain” is absolutely beautiful, and it epitomizes everything I love about the album. That could be one of my favorite Lips melodies.

It does that thing we talked about, almost being a “voice from beyond.” It never seemed as though it was a singular person singing it. Even though I’m singing it, it’s almost like music that’s always existed, and someone sang it somewhere in time. And I think when we do music like that, where there is no character involved, it allows you to be vulnerable and say things that you probably wouldn’t say if you were being you. You wouldn’t say something so crushing. When that big crescendo of all those harmony voices break into that line, “Try to explain why you’ve changed,” it’s unbearable. It’s as though nature has been split open or something — that’s why I sang that line. It just sounded like that to me. That crescendo really was an accident; we stumbled upon these harmonies just willy-nilly. Steven did one or two, and I did a third one or something, and it really became emotional. We added the lyrics — the music always carried the message, but we just added the lyrics like, “Of course, this is what the music was saying.”

The song is just enough sad, and it’s just enough powerful, but it doesn’t last very long. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do in music because you want to do it again and again and make it bigger — but if you leave just below the hottest temperature, it’s almost like you can have it forever, because you can handle it. The temptation with dumb artists and musicians like us is that you want to go all the way. If it’s big, make it bigger; if it’s loud, make it louder. But if you’re lucky, you don’t do that. When that happens, it can be pretty powerful.

I think the biggest anguish and pain people have is when they can’t find the answer. Your mind can’t stop searching, and it keeps you looking and keeps you wondering. And that’s really where your psychic pain is: Knowing the answer may be painful, but I think your imagination is something your worst enemy. Your mind sometimes goes to the worst possible place, and before you know it, you’re living in some unlivable hell. Most people I’ve talked to, without knowing it, have all pointed to that song and said, “I know what you’re talking about there. I can relate to that. There’s something about that piercing thing.” It’ s not demanding an answer — it’s longing for one. It’s crying out for something, saying, “I just wanna know!” It’s powerful, but I don’t know if I have any answers. Sometimes I know I’m singing something that’s trying to channel your subconscious. That’s a hokey thing to say, but for me, it’s not always, “There’s this thing happening in your life, so you sing about it.” Sometimes it’s just there.

Their most clear-headed and well-rounded album to date

The make-or-break moment on Kings of Leon’s sixth LP is “Comeback Story,” a grandiose, slow-burning arena-rock anthem built on lonely guitar twang, a ghostly choir, and (what?) pizzicato strings. Depending on what kind of fan you are, it’s either the band’s syrupy tipping point — or their maximalist masterpiece.

Really, it’s both. The Followill boys aren’t the same scrappy backwoods teens who once earned the title “Southern Strokes,” haphazardly garnishing their power chords with hormonal rebellion. Their evolution has been subtle, but substantive: They’ve embellished their sound with bits of fractured art-rock (2007′s Because of the Times), glossy pop-rock (2008′s Only By the Night), and honest-to-gosh country (the mellower bits of 2010′s Come Around Sundown). But with Mechanical Bull, they’ve managed to synthesize all these elements (and some unexpected new flourishes) in ways that feel fresh and vibrant.

The main catalyst is a practical one: Bull arrives after a three-year interim, their longest to date. Following his now-infamous drunken stage tantrum in 2011, frontman Caleb sobered up and started a family. It can’t be a simple coincidence — Mechanical Bull is their most clear-headed and well-rounded album to date. First off, it’s richer sonically. Where Come Around Sundown sounded stifled and squashed, Bull is a full-blooded beast. There’s added muscle to Jared’s bass and brother Nathan’s reliably dextrous drums; Matthew’s psychedelic guitar spasms now reach an Edge-like grandeur only hinted at previously.

More impressive is the album’s sprawling breadth. For the first time in years, they sound liberated from the expectations of what a “Kings of Leon album” should sound like. Instead, they seem to simply be enjoying the process of crafting their songs: From the blistering power-punk riffs on “Don’t Matter” to the atmospheric power-ballad “Beautiful War” to the funky, swampy blues strut of “Family Tree,” they’ve hit a bull’s-eye on every target.

A heavy load held aloft with grace

On their first four albums, the Dodos worked a singular sleight-of-hand: making the simple sound complex. Meric Long (vocals/guitar) and Logan Kroeber (drums) were more indie-rock punks than virtuosos, but their songs were arranged and performed with a breathless restlessness that nearly resembled prog-rock.

But Carrier, the duo’s fifth LP, is more obvious in its grandeur. Long layers his guitars in lush harmonies and counter-lines, moving through precise time-signature shifts with Kroeber’s intricate percussion and the subtle moans of the Magik Magik Orchestra. But instead of sounding celebratory, the album’s sprawl is tinted by a melancholy glow: Carrier was recorded following the 2012 death of touring guitarist Chris Reimer, and that mournful spirit looms large. “Words we never said — did we really need ‘em?” Long sings on the gorgeous “Substance,” his impassioned cries swallowed by brass and cymbals. “Someone give them to me now.” Elsewhere, over frosty reverb chill of “Death,” he seems to speak directly to his former bandmate: “If I took your place, would it hurt?” Carrier is clearly a heavy load, but the Dodos hold it aloft with grace.

Wiser, tougher and weirder

John Mayer may have titled his sixth album Paradise Valley, but the singer’s past few years have been anything but paradise: He’s suffered through tabloid-bait break-ups (with pop princesses Katy Perry and Taylor Swift), weathered accusations of racism for his now-infamous Playboy interview, and he also grappled with debilitating throat granulomas that nearly ruined his voice forever.

In spite of these setbacks, Paradise Valley finds Mayer at his most laid-back, embellishing the open-prairie folk of his previous album, Born and Raised, with breezy vocal harmonies and jazzy electric guitar nectar. Whether he’s in wistful-daydreamer mode (the shuffling country-folk of “Dear Marie”) or channeling his inner Slowhand (the impeccable, guitar-drenched kiss-off “Paper Doll”), Mayer’s hooks and grooves have an effortless glide to them — so much so that it’s easy to ignore that Paradise Valley is the most random, eclectic he’s ever made: Frank Ocean randomly croons over cricket noises and psychedelic guitars on “Wildfire,” and there’s a serviceable (if slightly forced) cover of J.J. Cale’s blues classic “Call Me the Breeze.”

Mayer’s health problems have left sonic scars: Throughout (and especially on the slow-burning “I Will Be Found Lost at Sea”), his voice is deeper and smokier, as if he’s spent the past year listening obsessively to Dire Straits and smoking a carton of cigarettes each day. But it’s nice to hear a little rough in all that smooth: With Paradise Valley, Mayer sounds wiser, tougher and a hell of a lot weirder.

Ebbing gracefully between propulsion and atmosphere

Still Life Still began their career as underdogs: with 2009′s Girls Come Too, they operated within the massive shadow of their label-mates Broken Social Scene. The comparisons were (and are) inevitable: Same label (Arts & Crafts), same home-base (Toronto), same general aesthetic (sprawling, anthemic indie-rock arrangements mixed with startlingly frank lyrics). Between violent guitar spasms, Brendon Saarinen twisted graphic pillow talk into poignant poetry. Familiar maybe, yet quite effective.

But Still Life Still’s sophomore LP, Mourning Trance, resonates on a deeper level — mostly because it doesn’t try as hard to impress. Alex Bonefant offers lush, synth-heavy production, and Saarinen has turned toward a more nuanced, imagistic lyrical style (“What does the world want?” he wonders on the slow-jam “Thinking About Our Plans,” elongating each syllable in a pained croon). As a result, they’ve carved out their own unique niche within the Social Scene — which isn’t to say they’ve escaped it entirely. Saarinen still sings like a brattier Kevin Drew, and the arrangements still capture the jigsaw puzzle grandeur of You Forgot it in People. Nonetheless, Mourning Trance ebbs gracefully between propulsion (the funk-prog assault of “Dancing Spines”) and atmosphere (the spiraling psychedelics of “Werewolves”), never once losing its grip.

As over-the-top as it is impossible to resist

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros scored a sleeper hit with “Home,” a whistling, journey-man folk charmer from their 2009 debut. They’ve gone on to tour with Mumford & Sons and ride the homespun-folk crest to widespread popularity, but the success hasn’t harshed the band’s mellow one bit: Their third album is their messiest and most sprawling effort, blending their trademark psych-rock goofiness with warped gospel balladry and vivid Age-of-Aquarius soul.

An army-sized 10-piece, The Magnetic Zeros still give off the whiff of a cult — on the over-stuffed “Better Days,” frontman Alex Ebert sounds like a hippie camp counselor preaching to his minions. “Try to remember that you can’t forget/ Down with history, up with your head,” he croons, his rasp engulfed by woodwinds, church bells, and Motown bass. He adds, “Well, that’s some cliché shit, make me wanna cry.”

“Cliché shit” this may be, but it’s often transportive, as if the pit band from Jesus Christ Superstar started up a psych-rock outfit. “Life is Hard” is the shimmering centerpiece — falling somewhere between an art-rock lounge piece and an old Hollywood film score. “Come celebrate, life is hard!” the voices cry, swirling higher in the mix, battling violins and tambourines and what sound like bouncing basketballs. Sharpe and his Zeros have a gift with this sort of gentle absurdity, as over-the-top and obvious as it is impossible to resist.

Unhinged, dorky and Holy Spirit huge

“I think I’m ’bout to break a string in here!” howls Robert Randolph on “Amped Up,” a gospel-rock belter from the steel-guitar master’s fourth studio album. It’s a quintessential Randolph moment: unhinged, dorky and Holy Spirit huge.

On 2010′s We Walk this Road, Randolph worked with T-Bone Burnett and an army of veteran studio aces, tracing the evolution of African American music — from slave chants to Hendrix to Prince, from Pentecostal gospel to hip-hop. Lickety Split is less academic and more visceral, reuniting the full Family Band (drummer Marcus Randolph, bassist Danyel Morgan, vocalist Lenesha Randolph, multi-instrumentalist Bret Haas) for 40 free-spirited minutes.

The band’s chops are dazzling, but Randolph himself steals every scene. His steel-guitar wails, it moans, it stings — on the slow-burning “Welcome Home,” it floats like a warped harp. Check the ecstatic “Born Again,” which spirals into psychedelic slide-guitar crossfire. Even the corniest stuff works: “All American” is their arena-rock moment, copping the distorted riff from Yes’s “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and the gated-drum punch of vintage Def Leppard. Randolph’s never been much of a lyricist: “Live your life, love your wife and children while you can,” he sings on the revved-up title-track, “Love’s the only thing that works; that’s always been the plan.” But where words fail, groove speaks volumes.

A gnarly, reckless and often downright ugly album that feels vital and vibrant

Destruction in Yr Soul is Jordan Geiger’s third studio album as Hospital Ships, but the first he’s realized with a legitimate band. And it shows. The music is gnarlier, often downright ugly — played with a reckless, live-in-the-room sprawl — in contrast to the gorgeous, impeccably layered psychedelics of his previous LP, 2011′s Lonely Twin. Each beat stutter-steps awkwardly; electronic loops slip and out of time with each other; fragmented guitars stumble drunkenly in and out of the mix. But that cluttered aesthetic suits the chaos in Geiger’s songwriting: “Joan of Arc,” a fuzzy psych-pop sing-along, conjures the off-kilter, borderline-disintegrating grandeur of Neutral Milk Hotel; “Servants” sounds like two unrelated songs playing simultaneously, juxtaposing blissful guitar-peggios with jagged electronic spasms.

But for all its jigsaw-puzzle symmetry, the most affecting moments on Destruction are the most simple. The centerpiece is “If It Speaks,” a dynamic indie-rock epic that smacks like a wrecking ball. An anguished Geiger projects apocalyptic imagery (“the tyranny in the voice of the crowd,” “the sweet relief of death”) in his modest yelp, as the band behind him simmers and explodes. A hypnotic drum kit pulses forward; feedback flickers in the shadows like dying light-bulbs. And then there’s the Earth-rattling, heart-tugging explosion — the kind of quiet-to-loud shift so often over-used in indie rock. It’s an inevitable climax, but Geiger and company make that inevitability feel vital and vibrant.

Escapist therapy bundled in three-minute blasts of sunshine

Surfer Blood’s sophomore album commences with “Demon Dance,” a rattling exorcism of paint-peeling classic-rock crunch, with frontman John Paul Pitts baring his blackest soul: “The hounds of hell need love and care,” he sings in his prettiest tenor, “The hounds need organs and limbs to tear.” Brooding introspection seems appropriate: In 2010, Pitts was arrested on domestic assault charges (which were eventually dropped), leading to a tabloid-style media backlash and an uncertain future for his once-buzzworthy band.

There are glimpses of that tortured backstory littered throughout Python‘s lyrics — but the music (produced by rock legend Gil Norton) is mostly slick and celebratory, adding an arena-sized scope to Surfer Blood’s surfy indie-rock palette. “Weird Shapes” is a mega-watt swirl of nerd-rock riffs, conjuring an alternate universe where current-day Weezer didn’t suck; “Squeezing Blood” is a psychedelic ode to new beginnings, Pitts advising to “Wash away the ashes of today” over creamy, harmonized guitars and Tyler Schwarz’s colossal kit.

It isn’t exactly easy to root for Surfer Blood anymore: They’re a major-label band with a blemished track record — no longer the scrappy college kids who recorded Astro Coast, their underdog debut. But Pythons is a crucial reminder of the distance between art and artist. It’s escapist therapy bundled in three-minute blasts of sunshine, and it signals a rebirth — at least sonically — for a band that could sorely use one.

So it’s not a surprise that Phoenix took their sweet time crafting an encore. Four long years after Wolfgang, they’ve delivered, Bankrupt!, their fifth studio album that contains a slightly hazier, more impressionistic batch of songs that nonetheless maintains their genial approach and pack epic hooks.

eMusic’s Ryan Reed spoke with bassist Deck D’Arcy just before the group’s performance at Coachella, discussing their steady career trajectory and to unlock the eclectic influences behind Bankrupt!‘s standout tracks.

On the album’s slightly more experimental vibe:

[The experimentation] was not really conscious. We have a bit of a weird way to write songs — it’s a bit empirical. We basically record everything we are doing and listen to stuff afterward with fresh ears and make a very thorough selection of short bits of music that we then put together, trying to create cool stuff at random. It’s hard to consciously write a proper song from A to Z. What we find attractive at first is something quite predictable, so we kind of have to put together kind of random stuff, and sometimes it ends up being weird.

But what’s weird now is not going to be weird in two weeks or years or whatever. What’s weird is relative to the timeline — it’s not very absolute. It just depends on when you hear stuff. Most of my favorite albums, I didn’t care for on my first listen. I remember the first time I listened to [Beck's 1996 album] Odelay, I didn’t like it, and it ended up being my favorite album of all-time — or in the top three. So for us, this is how we see music anyway. We love “grower” albums.

On the pressures of following Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix:

The thing is we don’t really choose where we’re going, you know? We just make everything ready to capture our inspiration in the studio, but we don’t know where we’re going, and that’s the exciting part of it. If we knew where we were going, it wouldn’t be genuine. We don’t know what we want, but we know what is cool and not cool for us. We just generate as much music as possible and select what’s cool.

Shit, I lost my point [laughs]. The thing is, we did have quite crazy success on the last album from where we were before, but every album has been a relative success. The first album came out of nothing — we were just a Versailles band, and we released an album and ended up touring the world. The album wasn’t a worldwide success, but it was still kind of crazy. We felt like, “Wow, this is amazing!” With the second album, we had success in some other countries. We had an idea of what success is and an idea of how inconsistent it is. This time, [the success] was the U.S., so it had a bigger consequence, of course. But I really think we haven’t been influenced by the success of the previous album.

We did all of our albums in a very selfish way. The only goal is to impress the other band members, not really to impress the audience. We just decided to do it exactly the same way we did Wolfgang — not trying to impress anyone other than ourselves. When we finished Wolfgang, no one really liked it – like, [among] our friends. We had no record company then. We didn’t struggle with it, but it wasn’t easy. People were like, “Yeah, that’s cool, whatever.” It ended up being successful, but that wasn’t really obvious at the time. So we decided to apply exactly the same formula [with Bankrupt!].

“Trying to be Cool”

We found this little melody a long time ago in New York, and we left it aside for like a year. We re-listened to it a year after, and there was something too obvious in it. So we kind of left it. But I remember we started re-trying it a year after with different instruments, and it started to have a new vision. We changed the key and everything. At the time, we were listening to a lot of French artists from our childhood era — the mid ’70s to late ’70s. And we were really inspired by that. And we gave it another try, and it worked. I remember [producer] Phillipe Zdar coming to the studio, saying [uses harsh French accent] “Yeah, yeah, you have to finish that track right now! Just go for it!” It felt like an investigation creatively.

“Chloroform”

While working on “Drakkar Noir,” at some point, we started playing it at half-tempo, and it had this repetitive groove and vibe. “Chloroform” is a loop of “Drakkar Noir” but quite slower — which is a very easy trick — but the music came out of it. We liked the kind of hip-hop quality. We like to explore areas that are far-flung from what we usually do, and we thought this was interesting. It’s very random — it came out of little accidents from “Drakkar Noir.”

“Oblique City”

This song was inspired by another French artist from the same era — early ’80s, before the ’80s became cheesy, kind of French punk. Probably a bit obscure for you, but for us, it means a lot. His name is Jacno. We were really obsessed with this at some point. It wasn’t the easiest one to put together, with all the layers. This one has a lot of key changes, and we were really fascinated by key changes on this album. I think this is what you’re calling “weirdness.” We had to work a lot on that one — it was probably the one we worked the most on.

“Bankrupt!”

The very first stuff we recorded on the album is actually in that track — we did it in Australia. The beginning of the song with the marimba, it’s actually the first take we did for the album. And the very end, the last vocal take we did is on there. So this is the track that followed us throughout the whole process, and it’s a very meaningful track for us. This is neither an introduction nor an outro — it’s a very important part of the album, so that’s why we put it in the middle. Every album we do, we realize it’s not really on purpose, but there’s always an instrumental or maybe two. In the studio, we always do a lot of different things, and we felt like it was totally a part of the album. But it’s not a real instrumental because it’s sung at the end, but three-quarters of it is instrumental. We grew up listening to a lot of soundtracks and instrumental music, so I guess it’s in our DNA to make instrumental tracks as well. Actually, it’s cool live, as well. We’ve started playing it, and it’s really intense.

“Entertainment”

It’s funny because everyone thinks it sounds Asian. It’s true, but the original inspiration was the Éthiopiques compilations. They’re a bunch of compilations of Ethiopian music from the ’60s to the ’80s. We listened to a lot of this. Working with the Ethiopian key, which is a Pentatonic key, it’s very close to the Asian one. We found this melody at the beginning of “Entertainment,” and it ended up sounding very Asian, even though it’s really Ethiopian. Anyway, it’s the Pentatonic key, which has been around for centuries.

It’s the first track on the album because it’s the first track we finished. When we do a new album, we think it could have been made by a whole new band, but maybe this one is the closest to Wolfgang. I’d actually never thought about it, but it’s possible.

On the album’s track sequence:

That’s the specialty of Phillipe Zdar. He’s very good at it. I remember for awhile, we were having arguments, but on this one, he found the perfect order the first time. It took him like two days, and he came back with it, and everyone agreed. Which never happens in Phoenix — we have arguments about everything. But it was just perfect, or we felt it was perfect. Especially on this album, the sequence is quite important. We tried a lot, and we felt, “This is not right.” And Phillipe found a good one, so it’s thanks to him. We grew up with the LP — we are old now, so we’re used to the LP’s A-side, B-side vibe. It’s very important to us, the album format. So it’s something that has to be exactly right.

A sparse, jagged and impressionistic fourth album

Ten seconds into Mosquito, during the eerie churn of “Sacrilege,” Karen O lets loose with one of her iconic vocal tics — a spine-chilling shriek — as the groove beneath gradually swells from spiky funk to Southern gospel rave-up. It’s exactly the kind of titillating art-rock bombast we’ve come to expect from the New York trio — but in the context of the band’s impressionistic fourth album, it’s also the lone “fuck yeah” moment, the sole easy fix among a series of hazy abstractions.

There are hardly any explosions on Mosquito — very little catharsis, very little that “rocks” in even the broadest sense. The music is sparse and jagged, full of loopy percussion and rigid electronic pulses, with ghostly guitars decaying gently into the ether. Karen O sings from the fringes of her songs instead of commanding them, delivering repetitive mantras in a hushed croak. Mosquito, unlike the band’s first three albums, takes some time to simmer before it eventually clicks. But it does, eventually, click: “Under the Earth” is a clear standout — twitchy electro-pop with bass tones that boom like elephant cries; “Always” is saturated with sensual tension, Karen O’s voice wandering nimbly through ethereal synth mist. But the real breakthrough is “Wedding Song,” which harkens back to the emotional grandeur of early gem “Maps,” referencing the singer’s recent marriage and closing the album with a blissful serenade. “In flames I sleep soundly with angels around me,” she sings, dragging out each syllable over dewy piano chords and a kick-drum heartbeat. “I lay at your feet; you’re the breath that I breathe.” It’s an unexpected — but breathtaking — moment of clarity.

Radiating confidence and chemistry

Born Ruffians’ sophomore outing, 2010′s Say It, is an album of rough edges and blurred intentions. But it wasn’t an intentional aesthetic: The Canadian indie-rock trio ran out of funding half-way through the recording process, leaving behind a pile of stark grooves and meandering, half-finished hooks. Birthmarks, the band’s highly crafted follow-up, is an effusive U-turn: radiating confidence and chemistry where Say It so often sagged.

“Needle” opens with a startling statement of purpose: Gleaming choral harmonies give way to a springy bass/kick-drum pulse, as frontman Luke Lalonde wraps his chipper croon over shards of staccato guitar. Instead of relying on clumsy lyrical metaphors, as they often did on Say It (see: the awkward puns of “Sole Brother”), Lalonde’s words now pack an emotional sting: “I am just a no one/ I’m the same as everyone,” he sings, the band charging to a dizzy crescendo, “Spinning underneath the sun, head between my knees.” That mix of sonic quirkiness and lyrical depth is contagious, spreading to the space-funk pulses of “Permanent Hesitation” (a heartbreaking tale of romantic distance) and the glossy “Dancing on the Edge of Our Graves,” which celebrates mortality via soulful pop grandeur. It’s difficult to call Birthmarks the “best” Born Ruffians album — they sound like a brand new band.

Blowing up their early sound and going for arena-pop glory

“No one’s the same as they used to be,” sings Hayley Williams at the outset of her band’s boldly catchy fourth album, her lightning-rod yelp ricocheting off new-wave synths and tense punk-pop riffage. For Paramore, it’s a prophetic lyric: On this expansive self-titled set, they’ve all but ditched the emo stiffness of their early Warped Tour days, plunging head-first into the slick, arena-friendly stylings of modern pop.

But Paramore isn’t an album of safe, simple hooks — it’s a deftly arranged and deceptively eclectic batch of songs, revealing sophisticated new layers with each listen. Working with producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen (who recently brought an expert wide-screen approach to the latest Tegan and Sara album), Williams and company try on new genres like pairs of shoes. The old Paramore wouldn’t have attempted a series of cutesy ukelele interludes, or country-inflected balladry (“Hate to See Your Heart Break”) or dreamy doo-wop (“One of Those Crazy Girls”).

Seventeen tracks is, arguably, a bit ridiculous — this is a pop album after all, not a concept-album prog-rock suite. But in blowing up their sound and going for broke, Paramore deserve props as massive as their ambitions.

A bold move, in favor of a quirkier, sparser, synth-driven sound

The Cold War Kids want respect. Over their career, they have seemingly taken to heart every middling review they’ve ever received, pouncing on flourishing trends and adapting their sound with each new album, from the gritty soul of 2006′s Robbers & Cowards to the murky experimentation of 2008′s Loyalty to Loyalty to the arena-tailored reverb-rock of 2010′s Mine is Yours. But instead of sounding eclectic, they’ve mostly sounded confused.

The band’s fourth album, Dear Miss Lonelyhearts, is another stylistic shake-up. With new recruit Dann Gallucci (formerly of Modest Mouse) replacing longtime guitarist Johnnie Russell, Cold War Kids have shed the expansive, twin-guitar approach of Mine is Yours in favor of a quirkier, sparser, synth-driven sound. It’s another bold move — one that puts more emphasis on frontman Nathan Willett’s blaring, soulful voice. Lead single “Miracle Mile” is the most hard-hitting track they’ve ever penned, Willett warbling over a surge of bar-room piano and Matt Aveiro’s primal pound. It’s the sole moment of familiarity on an album of colorful new twists: The creeping “Lost that Easy” buzzes with electronic hi-hats and new-wave synth-bass; “Bottled Affection” marries hip-hop programming to drizzled guitar noise and a monster chorus falsetto; the closing “Bitter Poem” is a slow-building ballad, laced with melancholy keys and grizzled sax. But Cold War Kids sound at ease in the messiness, rejuvenated by the sprawl — as if they’ve finally learned to write for themselves, regardless of who else may be listening.

Expanding their sonic palette on their vibrant third release

Generationals’ first two albums were unabashedly, painfully indie-rock. Jangly guitars, the sporadic new-wave synth, the bleary-eyed melodies of Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer: They were so ingrained in the tools and tones of their own musical culture, they tended to get lost in the shuffle — sturdy songwriting ultimately rendered anonymous.

Heza, the band’s vibrant third release, doesn’t suffer that same fate. The New Orleans duo have completely expanded their sonic palette, branching into some fascinating new directions: “Say When,” with its tongue-tied percussion and sputtering sequenced synths, sounds like New Order on a beach vacation; “Put a Light On” is adult-contemporary funk, bolstered by electronic loops and digital handclaps; “Kemal” is the biggest head-scratcher (and maybe their best song ever) — a barrage of stabbing reggae guitar, sweaty hand drums, and twinkling glockenspiel. Even when Generationals settle for safe, predictable indie-rock tropes (the surf-rock wash of opener “Spinoza,” the crunchy chug of “I Used to Let You Get to Me”), they’re finally doing it on their own terms — with quirk and personality.

Expanding their brand of rootsy, psychedelic rock

On their sprawling fourth studio album Noami, Seattle’s Cave Singers continue to expand their brand of rootsy, psychedelic rock. Now officially a quartet (with the addition of former Blood Brothers bassist Morgan Henderson), they sound more like a legitimate “band” than ever before: Henderson brings a funky virtuoso edge to these groove-heavy anthems, punching up the high-octane soul of “Early Moon” and anchoring the jittery, two-chord pulse of “Have to Pretend” with deep-pocket propulsion.

But even when The Cave Singers get loud, their sound remains earthy and raw, as intimate as a campfire moonshine-sing-along. Vocalist Pete Quirk is the band’s backwoods sage — and still very much an acquired taste — doling out country-boy witticisms and hippie wisdom in a throaty bark that often resembles Beavis from Beavis & Butthead. “All the weeds, the weeds are growin’,” Quirk croons on “Week to Week,” floating atop a dreamy Laurel Canyon churn, “That’s the way these flowers gonna learn.” Bullshit? Maybe. But, as always, The Cave Singers twist it into an unlikely revelation.

A fascinating follow-up with a slightly out-of-focus aesthetic

If The Year of Hiberation, Trevor Powers’s debut album under the name Youth Lagoon, felt like riding a slow-moving, psychedelic county-fair carousel, then his sophomore effort, Wondrous Bughouse, is like being strapped into the spinning teacups at Disney World while on psychotropic drugs. This woozy, slightly out-of-focus aesthetic is a sharp U-turn, arriving after the pixie-dust electro-pop of Hibernation — it’s as if Powers grew disinterested in idyllic prettiness and purposely decided to uglify and intensify his trademark sound.

“Through Mind and Back” opens Bughouse with two minutes of discordant, fractured ambience, and the vibe only gets weirder from there: “Attic Doctor” is a trippy spookhouse waltz with dilapidated carnival synths, and “Pelican Man” channels the proggy mysticism of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. Even the warmest, cuddliest tracks here (like the mortality-driven fairy tale “Dropla”) find curious ways to meander and wilt: Check “Sleep Paralysis,” with Powers just missing those high notes; or “Mute,” with its organs chiming in and out of tune; or “The Bath,” in which percussion loops abruptly shift in tempo — a detour from the track’s emotional crescendo. But these left-field nuances offer Powers’s music grit and dynamic range: Even at its strangest, Wondrous Bughouse is never less than fascinating.

Thirty-six minutes of escapist pop bliss

In the past, the inherent quality of Tegan and Sara’s scrappy tunes has always eclipsed the duo’s actual talent. And, really, that’s been an essential part of their charm: In spite of their nasally voices and ramshackle instrumental skills, these twin Canucks have wrangled their hooks through sweat and persistence, expanding and refining their sound with each subsequent album — from the bratty Lilith Fair-emo of 2004′s So Jealous to the layered, sculpted art-pop of 2007′s The Con and 2009′s Sainthood. But with their seventh studio album, Heartthrob, Tegan and Sara are no longer underdogs. Working with a top-tier trio of hip producers (Greg Kurstin, Mike Elizondo, Justin Meldal-Johnsen), they’ve plunged head-first into slick, air-tight ’80s synth-pop, each melody and riff buffed and waxed with studio sheen.

Turns out, commercial grab-ass is their true calling: Heartthrob is nuclear-catchy from start to finish. Tegan still handles the robust arena-friendly singles: bittersweet, butterflies-in-stomach electro-anthems like “Closer” and “Drove Me Wild.” Sara’s songs — even within this high-gloss context — are still quirkier and more eclectic: “Now I’m All Messed Up” is heart-melting piano ballad turned new-wave belter; “Shock to Your System” closes the album with a sensual R&B stunner, mingling spacey synth flurries with a sparse piano-drums groove. Heartthrob is a glitzy parade of nostalgic, windows-down catharsis — 36 minutes of escapist pop bliss.

A warped retro-rock mixtape, blurring the line between parody and tribute

Midway through “Oh Yeah,” a psych-funk goof from Foxygen’s debut LP, the band launches into stoned hokey-pokey: “Put your left hand out and shake it all about,” yelp Jonathan Rado and Sam France, “It’s arms and legs, bacon and eggs.” The song shambles its way through a noisy dual guitar solo, chipmunk R&B falsettos, and a proggy instrumental climax, punctuated by a squealed “You’re freakin’ me out!” Talk about an understatement.

We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic is equal parts “so obnoxious, it’s excellent” and “so excellent, it’s obnoxious,” functioning as a warped retro-rock mixtape, blurring the line between parody and tribute. Like their fellow musical provocateurs MGMT, Foxygen clearly don’t take their grab-bag revisionist approach too seriously: With their bratty vocal stylings, goofy genre juxtapositions, and fondness for surreal wordplay, their songs carry an off-hand, tongue-in-cheek charm, even if the eclectic complexity of the arrangements suggests they’ve studied the vinyl of their ’70s forefathers with religious zeal.

Silliness sometimes overpowers style. “Bowling Trophies” is a blues-rock throwaway marred by studio hiss — just for the hell of sounding dated; on the drunken blues-rock title-track, France can’t decide whether to imitate Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison. Nonetheless, their highlights drop jaws: The flowery, faux-British psych-pop of “San Francisco” would come off as a Syd Barrett send-up, were it not so damn lush. “Shuggie” is the biggest revelation, a funky strut through trippy mellotrons, abrupt tempo changes, and “Age of Aquarius” group chants. In Foxygen’s restless hands, musical stupidity is savored like a fine wine.

Death Grips, These New Puritans and more bring out the fun in Biophilia

It’s not as if Björk, Iceland’s avant-pop electro-princess, really needed to put out a remix album. Biophillia, her eighth studio LP, is remembered more as a multimedia experiment than a collection of songs – with accompanying video games, art installations, iPhone apps and live shows that featured a freaking tesla coil. Considering this, bastards may seem like a frivolous concept on paper, but it’s the rare remix album that actually improves upon the original, adding exotic eclecticism and percussive flair to Biophilia‘s frigid, monotonous soundscapes.

“Sacrifice” was once a droning, ambient dead-end – in Death Grips’ hands, it’s borderline danceable, punched up by in-the-red beats and a demented bassline; the creepy, crawling 16-Bit version of “Hollow” sounds like Radiohead vacationing at Bowser’s Castle. But bastards is an improvement not only due to its bountiful beats, but also its diversity: These New Puritans layer Björk’s anguished cries over dubby sub-bass, stark piano chords, and Middle Eastern chants. The collection’s most arresting moment is also its simplest: “Moon” is transformed into a haunting electro-lullaby, augmenting a single-string harp flutter with breezy electronics somewhere between The Books and The Postal Service. Biophilia‘s astral art-rock beauty commanded respect, but the more down-to-earth bastards adds a missing ingredient: fun.