Steven Ellison, the artist known as Flying Lotus, was already widely praised for his 2008 album Los Angeles, but Cosmogramma is a jaw-droppingly awesome leap forward in imagination and creativity. In a year that’s already gifted us with many fine and surprising electronica albums, this is now the main contender for best of 2010. The stylistic eclecticism evident on Los Angeles burgeons spectacularly on Cosmogramma: drum ‘n’ bass, trip-hop, jungle, glitch, and dubstep (and probably more stuff I can’t recognize or name) beats mix with ambient, fusion jazz, mellow funk, and collaborations with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane (son of John and Alice Coltrane, the latter being Ellison’s great aunt), harpist Rebekah Raff, Thundercat (bass, vocals), singers Thom Yorke, Niki Randa, and Laura Darlington, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (string arrangements), and more. The man can even make music from ping-pong balls. This is one of those rare electronica albums that’s so original it will appeal to listeners who don’t even care about electronica. (Steve)

Large Canadian indie supergroups are in season! Beyond any superficial similarities to the New Pornographers, though, the main point of comparison between them and Broken Social Scene is a contrast: The Pornos have always excelled at unifying their group dynamic, whereas BSS has sometimes come off as a clunky agglomeration of their members’ strengths and personalities. Not so with the wonderfully open and graceful Forgiveness Rock Record: aided by producer John McIntyre (of Tortoise et al.), the band has turned in its most grown-up recording. (If that seems like faint praise, keep in mind that any successful social scene needs to grow together.) Over the hour-plus album, which sometimes feels like one big satisfying exhalation, the band moves from topical themes (the crisp “Texico Bitches” and gnarly opener “World Sick”) to their trademark investigations of the physics of relationships (the rhythmically busy yet spacious “All to All” and “Sentimental Xs” which adds some North American-style emotionalism to a coolly Euro-sounding beat). All is forgiven! (Bosco)

It’s been three years since Challengers, the first New Pornographers album I can think of that wasn’t universally loved by the indie-supergroup’s (legitimate usage of this overused term) legion of superfans. The aptly named Together, which feels like this large band’s most unified work yet, returns their effortlessly sunny pop to the fore, with the sort of group harmonizing that could power a small city. Together’s chief fault is also kind of its best trait—the fact that the vast majority of the tunes glide past at a medium pace, each striking a uniquely melodic bell but vibing like pieces of a real whole. Even though the brightest moments—the interplay of the vocals and guitar-riffing on “Crash Years,” the arena-size ambition of “Your Hands (Together),” the fay sway of “If You Can’t See My Mirrors”—stand out after repeated listens, Together is an album that asks precious little of you, but offers great rewards for the more dedicated fans. Just right for spring. (M.L. Thrope)

With the departure of keyboardist (and resident moustache) Franz Nicolay, The Hold Steady lost a major pillar of their triumphant barroom rock sound. So, on their first record without him, they compensate the hell out of it with thick, meaty instrumental arrangements, hammering drums, and absolutely massive riffs from guitarist Tadd Kubler. It’s all sounding more classic rock than ever, with Craig Finn’s gradually maturing (but no less sober, thank God. We like our poets good and tipsy in these parts) lyrics vacillating, crisis-style, between fatherly (“You can’t get every girl / You’ll get the ones you love the best”), wearied (“We used to want it all / Now we just want a little bit”) and nostalgic (“Heaven is whenever / We can get together / Sit down on your floor / And listen to records”). Seems like a little bit of a struggle is good for these guys. (Abby)

Last year’s Songs of Shame made me a hardcore Woods believer, so At Echo Lake arrives just in time to keep this warm season cruising along in my corner of things. And wow is it sweet—a wrist-flick confident and easygoing nature suffuse the album, a very accessible, sun-kissed form of modern rustic folk-psychedelia that wastes little time kicking in. Opening tune “Blood Dries Darker” has everything: a killer guitar hook, friendly-ghost-choral background vocals, and an untroubled pace that opens up into a roaring guitar campfire party. The song ends with you grinning broadly, in part because you know there are ten more songs to go. Other highlights for your late-nights: “Time Fading Lines,” a supernaturally cool acoustic-based ember of a tune with guest sitar (!) from true-school out-folkie Matt Valentine, and “Get Back”—not a Beatles cover but an echoey song of youthful but wise advice, featuring the drum skills of Pete Nolan (of Magik Markers and Spectre Folk). A gorgeous record through and through, At Echo Lake will help to gently expand your consciousness. (M.L. Thrope)

Summer’s approaching and we all dream of lying around and doing a whole lot of nothing, but the title of the new Phosphorescent album could give you pause: Making music sound easy is usually pretty hard work. Thankfully, main man Matthew Houck has done his due diligence: Here’s to Taking It Easy is totally on-point in Houck’s patented urban-rustic idiom, with a handful of his sweetly swaying country-pop numbers like “Tell Me Baby (Have You Had Enough)” and the nearly perfect “We’ll Be Here Soon.” Houck wanders around the sound-lands he’s staked for himself too, with distinct tunes like the mysterious and haunting “Hej, Me I’m Light” and the down-home boogie of “It’s Hard to be Humble (When You’re from Alabama).” Another relaxed winner from the now Brooklyn-based, regardless of whether he’s humble about his roots. (M.L. Thrope)

The problem with labeling a band as “prolific” is that it’s usually no compliment, especially in an oversaturated age. Let it be known that Thee Oh Sees are the exception that squashes the rule: Warm Slime, which we believe to be the 11th (!) album by this John Dwyer-led ensemble, just plain destroys! Oh, sure, starting an album with its title track is a bold move, but few bands have the cajones to make the title track a 13-minute-plus beast that hammers away like “Warm Slime,” the rhythm section holding down a stomping Bo Diddley beat as Dwyer’s yelped vocals and high-tensile guitar strings compete for attention. The rest of the album holds true: Dwyer & Co. are bona fide garage-rawk scientists, using heat and reverb to stretch the form into all kinds of shapes, speeds and sizes: “Castiatic Tackle” is a proper burner that almost rewrites 60s history, while “Everything Went Black” pairs a familiar garage beat and riff with Dwyer and Brigid Dawson’s high-pitched vocals narrating a brief, sordid tale. There’s plenty of rhyme and reason to it: When it comes to Thee Oh Sees, we always say—more, and please! (M.L. Thrope)

Does any band make dance-pop sound as effortless as this Spanish quartet? Delorean has been around since 2000, but it may have taken this long for the world’s indie and dance-club scenes to drift close enough together for the band to sound so right at home. (They’ve toured recently with Miike Snow and jj, for example.) The Balearic-sounding Subiza is the band’s first album since 2007, but it was the 2009 EP Ayrton Senna that it really follows on from. Breeze-kissed and full of simple hooks (mostly generated by sunny guitar chords and bouncy pianos), tunes like “Real Love” and “Endless Sunset”—no, they aren’t coy with their song titles—are almost genetically designed to activate your summer deck-party. Mixing up the steady rhythms are a few tracks like “Simple Graces,” which borrows a Fatboy Slim-style stutter-beat to winning effect. (Bosco)

We are living in the age of Jack White, perhaps the one and only working rock musician today who can do whatever he wants, whenever. He splits vocals more evenly with the Kills’ Alison Mossheart on the dope second album from their swamp-rock collaboration The Dead Weather, swaggering through 11 tunes with such bravado that they suggest how the Blues Explosion might’ve turned out if they’d only stayed focused on converting their love for the blues into the raddest, baddest rock sound around. Sea of Cowards opens with a trio of dominant songs—“Blue Blood Blues,” “Hustle and Cuss” and “The Difference Between Us” (the latter particularly feeling like a lost and heavy Blues Explosion artifact, with Mossheart evoking a scorned Karen O)—but in all honesty, this album’s mojo never really lets up, even when it takes its foot off the gas. Which it doesn’t really do till the closing number, “Old Mary.” After just 35 minutes of smoke, meat and sultry stomping (and you will find your booty driven into a wicked reverie, yes you will), you’ll be exhausted and happy. (M.L. Thrope)

If you’re like me, then you took one look at this Canadian band’s name a few years ago and dismissed them immediately as attention-hungry party-mooks. Well, as their third album, Latin, proves, they might be all that stuff, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re dismissible. Latin, the first Holy Fuck album in three years, is full of sleekly groovy instrumentals built with standard rock gear and electronics. The really cool thing is these Fucks never try to draw undue attention to that fact—they’re just pumping out the soundtrack jams with the tools they wanna use. And as simple as the music is, there’s something tricky going on inside it: ”Silva & Grimes’ is a gracefully loping tune that makes you think of highway-driving but somehow avoids any Krautrock vibe. “Red Lights” resembles Ratatat in a good way, an open-source tune that seems to call for a vocalist but, lacking one, develops its own voice anyway. Cool trick there! And that’s the lesson to Latin: There’s much more here than meets the eye. (Bosco)

Yup, it’s just what it says it is: the Flaming Lips doing a song-for-song remake of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Perhaps you’ve heard of it: It was on the Billboard 200 for something like 20 years and features songs like “Money” and “Breathe” lots of other tunes played to death on FM rock stations. Yeah, that one. In many ways, this is as pointless an album released all year, unless you, like me, don’t think rock music has a particular point other than to entertain. And entertain this Dark Side of the Moon does. It’s not a perfect record, and I would have preferred a better roster of guest stars than Peaches and Henry Rollins (although both are fine; Rollins does not sing lead on any tracks, so you can relax), but really, why quibble? These are timeless songs, and it’s a blast to hear them redone some 36 years after the original. And “Us and Them” sounds so naturally like a Flaming Lips song you’ll think it’s an original. Oh, by the way, we were told that the vinyl would be a Record Store Day exclusive, but now it will be released again, just not on colored wax. Stay tuned. (James)