Hope nobody’s been taking the Roots for granted lately, you know, given their cultural ubiquity (late-night TV and all that). Because lucky album number 13, Undun, is a bit of a mind-blower: a suite of songs about a fictional (in name, at least) kid from the inner city whose thoughts and life-decisions come to life through Black Thought’s hard-hitting flows and the band’s sui generis synthesis of hip-hop and soul. (And jazz—a few instrumentals on the album flex some avant-muscle.) The story of Redford Stephens (partly inspired by a Sufjan Stevens song; he’s one of the album’s guests, as well) is something that’ll take a while to get to know—Black Thought is always ahead of the beat and he expertly piles narrative into his compact delivery. What any pair of ears can tell on first listen, though, is the bracingly cool slap of these tracks: "The OtherSide" and "One Time" have such insanely good group-chemistry, keyboard-melodies settling into the pocket hand-in-glove style. Sure, you can expect it from ?uestlove & Co., but like I said, don’t take it for granted. One album, one story told, one life undun.

A Record Store Day exclusive that we didn’t think would stick around, this compilation of singles and never-before-on-LP tracks from NYC’s undisputed champeens of soul-revue-style funk finds Sharon Jones and her accomplices in top form. Featuring classic tip-on artwork and equally vintage grooves, Soul Time! will be gone when it’s gone, and you need this stuff on vinyl (if you do vinyl—otherwise, it is on CD): the easy sedan roll of "What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?," the shrug-’n-bounce of "When I Come Home," and 10 more tracks (nine if you wanna get shirty about "Genuine Pt. 1" and "Genuine Pt. 2" being two songs), each with Ms. Jones declaring that it’s "soul time!"

Sunn O)))’s second album was its first great statement, and after going out of print a few times on a few different labels (and at least once with a bonus-disc of collabs with Nurse with Wound—not here though), ∅∅ Void is issued again, on the band’s Southern Lord imprint for the first time. Monolithic and brutal in their architecture, these four long pieces carve space into the air with ebon scythes (like that?), immense drawn-out crescendos of eternal night (how about that?). Distinguishing characteristics are there in the mists—the scraping textures of infernal machinery coming to life deep within "Rabbit’s Revenge" (a modified Melvins song); a harder, darker intent at work on "Ra at Dusk." But to be honest, damned if we can make out Petra Haden’s violin on the album. But that too is part of the Sunn O))) experience: accepting what can’t really be sensed in the endless pitch-blackness of the double-o void.

Um...whoa. What would you expect from this record’s title? A bunch of good-to-great rock songs, sure, okay. So why does this assembled batch of singles come off like one of the best rock albums of 2011? Consistency of style, consistency of quality, quality of quality. At 25 songs spread over an efficient 55 minutes, Singles 2007-2010 surveys the concentrated garage-rock history contained within the person of Ty Segall. And it is damned formidable, kids! Just about every song strikes some rough-cut punk gold, like melody and energy getting married in your blood. Seriously! Twenty-one Segall original rippers plus four tunes hijacked from NYC punk-weirdos Chain Gang, Thee Oh Sees, ’70s Canuck proto-punks Simply Saucer and the almighty Gories. Perfect capers each one. Just shut up and do what we tell you this one time! Please! Come on!

Even on record, Kate Bush is one of the most powerful presences in music. On her tenth album (and second release of the year!), Bush’s slightly deepening voice—still instantly recognizable—is set in warm but minimal settings, often no more than piano with spare bass and drum parts, unfurling tales of cold-weather emotionalism in songs that approach and (in two cases) surpass the 10-minute mark in a kind of long-form song structure. "Lake Tahoe" is a stunner, art song in service of a gothic story about a long-lost pet, filling out its 11 minutes with gently building drama. "Misty" goes further in every sense: a 13-minute love story where the ill-fated lover is a melting snowman. "Snowed In At Wheeler Street" features a little-known guest, Elton John, playing the part of Bush’s lover, the emotional scale again blown out to gothic proportions. More than 30 years on from her debut, Bush still spins a web, and we’re happy to be caught up in 50 Words for Snow’s wintry embrace.

There are many worlds out there, and, given the time, the Dust-to-Digital label would give us the grand tour on all of them. The Atlanta imprint’s latest vital artifact is a lovely, compact, four-disc set surveying 50 years of African 78s. That fact stopped me in my tracks. Of course—of course Africa would have every bit the incalculable history pressed onto 78 that we would in the States (if not more). I felt guilty for a minute, then got over it by diving headlong into this incredible document. Split geographically, the set gestures in 25 directions per disc; the first, orbiting the continent’s northwest, will remain my favorite, due to my abiding love of music of the Maghreb, and in the sounds of Yetna Taddeghegn and Messaoud Habib (to select just two) you’ll hear the roots of your favorite Sublime Frequencies artists, not to mention Tinariwen, a wide swath of Egyptian and Algerian pop, and so on. The other three discs trek around the continent and onto surrounding islands like Madagascar, and wonders reveal themselves with every single song. (Opika Pende is curated by Jonathan Ward of the excellent Excavated Shellac blog.) What’ll come as a great surprise, especially to stateside fans of crackly old music from 78s, is the shocking clarity found here. What’s more, this music lacks the shiny surface found in too much modern music production, African or otherwise; where Wilson Makawa’s guitar might be too tinny today, captured when it was, it carries a warmth and purity beyond words. And as with every other DtD release, Opika Pende comes with a thick, gorgeously laid-out book giving every song its time and place while also sparing its mystery.