Ryan Hall

Alternative rock

"Dark Night of the Soul." Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse. Just about a year ago producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse, legendary filmmaker David Lynch and Sparklehorse mastermind Mark Linkous collaborated on a project titled "Dark Night of the Soul." Originally a combination of a full-length album and an accompanying 100-page book of hand-numbered photographs taken by Lynch, the project faced a legal problem with record label EMI that kept any of the music from being released. In order for the music to get heard, the photography book was sold with a blank CD-R with the instructions "Use it as you will."

Noise pop

"Nothing Hurts." Male Bonding. Hailing from London, noise-pop trio Male Bonding plays the same sort of fuzzy garage-punk as sun-baked relatives Wavves and Times New Viking here in the States.

"The Monitor." Titus Andronicus. Named after the mad general from one of Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedies, New Jersey's Titus Andronicus broke out of its middle-class borough with 2008's "The Airing of Grievances."

"High Violet." The National. After releasing a handful of well-received albums, Cincinnati-to-Brooklyn transplants The National garnered a huge fan base and frothing critical accolades with 2007's "The Boxer," a near-perfect album that played like the bastard son of Joy Division's morose post-punk and Bruce Springsteen at his most booze-soaked and blue-collar best.

Rock/hip-hop

"Plastic Beach." Gorillaz. Back in 2001, when Gorillaz's debut first hit, it was little more than a side project for Blur's Damon Albarn and comic-book artist Jaime Hewlett. With a stellar supporting cast, the Gorillaz debut blended modern rock and hip-hop aesthetics in a manner that was as seamless as it was undeniably cool.