Prince of dudes Kurt Vile is growing up fast. His second Matador album is—well, let’s not say "mature," but it is a definitively refined version of the affectingly unkempt rock he’s been turning out for the past few years: still scruffy and cigarette-raspy but mellow and honestly emotional. Smoke Ring for My Halo could be your new soundtrack to laying around in bed all day. "On Tour," a lackadaisical tune that just shuffles along without any push from Vile and his band, is one part romantic, one part optimism and one part brilliant indolence. "Puppet to the Man" is a slacker resistance anthem, a street-rock cousin to Spacemen 3's "Revolution" in a way, and a drop-dead classic song that’d give any mixtape a whoa-factor. "Runner Ups" captures everything that makes this such a great album: Vile’s world-weary yet insistent vocals, the sparkling picked acoustic guitar that contrasts so well against his vocals, and an almost orchestral hum of electric guitar filling out the background.

This is a duo? On their fourth album since debuting in 2005 (with the Dodo Bird EP), singer Meric Long and the wickedly powerful drummer Logan Kroeber make an awfully big sound, though No Color—which, naturally, is brimming with color and verve—exists well within the strictures of indie rock without ever coming off as formulaic. Kroeber deserves to be called "lead percussionist," the way his fluid pounding propels each song and even seems to veer into some quasi-melodic status. And then, as good as they sound on songs like "When Will You Go" and "Hunting Season," the real coup is that they got indie-goddess Neko Case to contribute vocals to not one or two but five songs, with the call-and-response of "Don’t Try and Hide It" the best of the bunch (though all are cool). Charlie Sheen doesn’t know a thing—Dodos are really doing the winning.

No gimmickry here: Portland outfit Eternal Tapestry heads directly for interstellar space and gets real gone on these five expansive instrumental tracks, writing a soundtrack for Kerouac’s On the Road if the road had been a path past the Rings of Saturn and straight on out of the Milky Way itself. In a way, all you really need to know is the song titles—"Ancient Echoes," "Cosmic Manhunt," "Galactic Derelict" —and that Eternal Tapestry absolutely backs them up, going deep into the trip-realm with blistering long-form guitar workouts, the kind that you think of when you look at Hawkwind album covers. If it’s nothing too new, trust that it’s deeply affecting and highly recommended for the heads out there.

What a fresh disc this is—a jazz-trio session that's airy, accessible and challenging all at once, the kind of record you don't need to be a jazz fan to dig. The namesake Alon Nechushtan is out front on piano (as well as all compositions and production), rhythmically forceful but fluid as can be, throwing jabs on "Different Kind of Morning" while dancing lyrically around the rhythm section—Dan Weiss on skins and Francois Moutin on bass—on "Dr. Masterplan" and "Spring Soul Song," a touch of melancholy coloring the fringes of the latter. I&rsqo;ve been writing this as Words Beyond plays in the store and pretty much every customer has asked about it—so give the samples below a try.

Nicolas Jaar is a young electronic-music producer based in New York—so young, in fact, that he may not be able to get into the sort of clubs that would play his esoteric but sexy quasi-house tracks. Jaar generally works at slower than normal BPMs, using the space between beats as spare canvases for his modulated vocal samples, hinting at slinky R&B, and flicking percussive crackles across piano chords to dramatic yet understated effect. "Colomb" is the song best described above, but those moods pervade Space Is Only Noise. "Too Many Kids Finding Rain in the Dust" is a bit like Nick Cave’s "Red Right Hand," except with all the theatrics turned inward to radiate noirish vibes and potential decadence. "Problems with the Sun"—and hey, who hasn’t had those?—foregrounds a shuffling beat and Jaar’s tweaked-down vocal, resulting in a leftfield dance-floor classic waiting to happen. DJs: Keep this record close at hand after midnight. Others: You will blow minds at the party when you drop this stuff.

There’s been no shortage of "cinematic" music over the past decade plus—you know, stuff designed under the tired conceit of being for a movie "that hasn't been made yet." If this idea has ever moved you—and even if it hasn’t—you need to hear this new Grails opus. Deep Politics is a gorgeous, cohesive blast of evocative sound, perfectly symphonized in rock instrumentation and constantly nipping at your nerves—did I hear this in a film? Did they use "Corridors of Power" in some creepy documentary on corporate corruption? Where have I heard "All the Colors of the Dark" before? (It's a Bruno Nicolai composition from the 1972 film of the same name.) Why does "I Led Three Lives" fill me with such dramatic dread? Because this stuff is awesome, that’s why. Do check it out.