Take a Spin

Indie rock

"Smoke Ring for My Halo." Kurt Vile. Philly troubadour Kurt Vile began dropping his enigmatic mix of mumbled classic rock, hazy folk and streetwise proto-punk in the middle of the last decade, gaining considerable notice for 2008's "Constant Hitmaker," 2009's "Childish Prodigy" and 2010's "Square Shells" EP.

These records found Vile playing the elusive prankster, ducking and weaving through a lo-fi fog of spacey effects, offering layers of gorgeous guitar work offset by seemingly mundane or outright nonsensical vocal observations that played like private jokes that only Vile got.

Indie rock

"We Live In Rented Rooms." East River Pipe. New Jersey's F.M. Cornog (aka East River Pipe) spent a good part of his adult life drifting aimlessly as a self-proclaimed "garbage-head," a habitual drug and alcohol abuser who drove his life into an abyss he was certain he'd never get out of.

Ending up homeless and sleeping on park benches and in train stations, he was rescued by Hell Gate label owner Barbara Powers, the woman who encouraged Cornog to clean up and pursue music. Years later, the two are happily married with a young daughter and a pet dog, with Cornog holding down a full-time job selling tile for a Home Depot.

Every few years, Cornog hunkers down in his modest home studio and crafts shimmering guitar-pop masterworks, aching mini-opuses that fuse Television's shimmering fretwork and Springsteen's blue-collar realism to his gritty tales of drifters, drug addicts and gamblers.

Punk rock

"First Four EPs." OFF! Keith Morris comes as close as punk rock can come to having an elder statesman. At the very least, he can lay claim to having been at the forefront of the movement.

As the original vocalist for the hugely influential Black Flag -- as well as the frontman for hard-core legends the Circle Jerks -- Morris and his cohorts helped build the entire West Coast underground scene.

Punk

"Everything in Between." No Age. Los Angeles shoe-gaze-punk duo No Age captured critical accolades with the release of 2008's superb "Nouns," an album that meshed frenetic skate-core with hazy walls of distortion and melody.