iTunes classifies the new Bedroom Walls album as children’s music. Fantastic! Sing along, kids, starting with track one: “In Anticipation of Your Suicide.” I’m not sure how the iTunes program determines genre, but a slight tweak of that system might be in order.

The band that started as a solo project of Wolf Parade front man Spencer Krug has turned into a full band effort, but still sounds exactly like you’d expect Krug’s solo material to sound. That is, it sounds like a semi-lucid, drugged out brilliant little avant-garde pop record that Krug recorded in his bedroom.

“Cursed Sleep” is the new single from Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s upcoming album The Letting Go, and it’s worth getting just to try to pronounce the names of his collaborators.

How could someone who was so good for so long go so very wrong? Vince Clarke was the Midas man of eighties pop, recording Speak and Spell with Depeche Mode, Upstairs at Eric’s with Yaz, and then a zillion hits with Erasure. That wasn’t exactly my thing back then, but you can’t say it wasn’t good – it was irresistible.

The only thing now keeping total Scandanavian rock and roll domination in check is their tendency to seem a bit, oh, goofy. (How serious is a band with a song called “Hey Kwanongoma?”) The Ark – yet another glam-rock unit coming Straight Outta Ølmault, or Malmüüter, or some other place that will require extra keyboard tricks – are no exception.

These guys are from Asheville, NC, and their record label’s website says they fucking rock, which I guess they do, in a sort of run-of-the-mill, Angry Young Men with Beards type of way. The Poles feature deep, theatrical growling for vocals, dark, heavy guitar work, and lots of bashing on the drums. You know – rock, man.

Rainer Maria’s records have always been like a Fourth of July sparkler: pretty, jovial but too quickly extinguished. The trio had a habit of releasing nine-song albums that fluttered in and out of the emo genre, and rarely clocked in over 30 minutes.

With up and coming acts like The Subways and Arctic Monkeys, the UK may be the grounds for the another indie rock revival, and Archie Bronson Outfit is more proof of this trend. Their angular guitar sound is complemented by the quick staccato tempo of Franz Ferdinand, gut-wrenching vocals, and a vast array of instrumentation.

Reining from the land of Deutsche, Rammstein has built a name for themselves as wondrous storytellers, a band steeped in imagery and metaphor, scaling the depths of inner-turmoil through compelling and even cutting lyrics. Of course, most of us stateside haven’t a clue.

Don’t let their jump to an indie record label fool you. The guys of Cincinnati-based quartet Moth return – polished and proper – with their fifth LP, Immune to Gravity.

The music of Howie Gelb and his on-again, off-again group Giant Sand is often described as Southwestern, as though we know what that means. Ah, the familiar sound of avocados and lizards.

Twenty-one-year-old Slick Ballinger picked up the guitar at age fifteen. He’s shared the stage with such artists as B.B. King and Pinetop Perkins, and even though 94-year-old Othar Turner of the Mississippi Rising Star Fife and Drum Band took young Slick under his wing and taught him to live and breath the blues in a small house with no electricity or running water, there seems to be one key element missing on his debut album: SOUL.