Two years after Garden Ruin, the Tuscon band headed by Joey Burns and John Convertino are back with a much anticipated new album, Carried to Dust. This is a collection of 15 beautiful songs reminiscent of the American Southwest. Each song is haunting and languid, with vocals registering at barely above a whisper. And each beat played and every note sung lingers, beckoning listeners to give their full attention and turn over their psyche to the music. Numbers such as “Slowness” and “Red Blooms” are just two exemplary tracks of an entire album of finely crafted songs – who makes albums like this anymore? Critics are also taking note, praising Calexico’s sixth studio album for its potent evocativeness and startling beauty. Carried to Dust is a musical fete fit to accompany your transition from summer to fall. (Carrie)

After dazzling us earlier in the year with an EP, Growing is back with a full-length, and it’s twice the fun. Growing is not easy to pinhole. Part electronica, part experimental rock, this Brooklyn duo is notable for its creative uses of melody and rhythm (consider them a gentler Black Dice). All the Way is heavy all right, but the album is considerably softened by the lovely series of mysterious noises and sounds that permeate the record. The six songs all hover around the six-minute mark, and there’s nary a dull moment. Take “Rave Pie Only” (best listened to in headphones), where the music bounces playfully over a steady stream of warm bleats and chirps, or “Green Flag,” whose opening tremolo riff recalls Pink Floyd’s “One of These Days” before settling into a parade of layered croaks, groans and snyth swaths. All the Way is all about mood, texture and atmosphere, and few bands can capture this sound as compellingly as Growing.

So what have Matt and Bubba Kadane (formerly of Bedhead) been up to in the four years since the release of The New Year’s last album, The End is Near? Writing the most diverse and compelling album of their careers, apparently. The New Year’s self-titled release has a little bit of everything: lovely melodies backed by intricate, sparkling guitar parts (“Seven Days and Seven Nights,” “Wages of Sleep”); great rockers that are straightforward but still driven by complex, syncopated rhythms (“X Off Days,” “The Door Opens”); and guitar-drenched waltzes sure to inspire vigorous head-nodding (“The Company I Can Get,” “The Idea of You”). There are even two straight-up piano ballads (“MMV,” “Body and Soul”). It’s refreshing to hear a set of such uniformly well-crafted, sincere songs. Don’t let this one slip below the radar. (Kiri)

Apollo Sunshine’s third full-length, Shall Noise Upon, is not an easily classifiable piece of work. Over the course of its 16 tracks you hear lo-fi pop, psychedelia, folk, funk, samba, country twang and more – it’s a densely melodic journey but clocking in at a mere 38 minutes it never devolves into excess, making it the rarest of the rare: hippy music executed with brevity, not a jam in sight. From the first shimmery notes of delicate opener “Breeze,” the Boston-based trio (along with guest musicians Quentin Stoltzfus, Drug Rug, Viva Viva, among others) flies through this beautifully produced collection of songs with ease and precision, leaving you wanting more. Standout tracks include the wailing psychobilly rocker “Brotherhood of Death,” the sweet and plaintive “Singing to the Earth (To Thank Her For You)”, and the Olivia Tremor Control-esque “666: Coming of the New World Government.” A perfect soundtrack for summer’s end. (Wendy)

Tricky’s first album in five years, and his best in ten, or maybe even since Pre-Millennium Tension in 1996, is occasionally a return to his Maxinquaye/PMT style, though the first track is as drastic a departure from any of his previous styles as you could imagine: jazzy, cool, laid-back. Odder than that is his cover of Kylie Minogue’s “Slow,” which he mumbles and growls through in presumably ironic fashion. Otherwise, this is as overtly biographical as Tricky has been on record. And it’s not just in the lyrics: “Past Mistake” is a breakup song sung with Lubna, the French Moroccan woman he’s making ex. She is one of the female voices he uses here as counterpoint where he used to use Martina; most notable is Italian chanteuse Veronika Coassolo, who even gets a song titled with her name. Bernard Butler coproduces (which he might be more famous for at this point than his tenure in Suede), and between whatever his input was and Tricky stepping up his game for the first time in a decade, this is a small masterpiece. (Steve)

Something truly special and wondrous has made its way into our store. Bell EP is a collection of six songs by Olga Bell that hover somewhere between the breathing bombast of St. Vincent and the laptop electro-twirls of Bjork’s Vespertine. Bell’s vocal melodies are always beautiful, catchy and soaring (a bit of a taboo word in indie music these days). “Expanding File” begins at double-time, pausing every once in a while to assert a click or beep and culminating in a stadium-rock reverb cacophony of Olga Bell’s harmonizing. It ends up playing out as something akin to the Guillemots in that it is astronomically catchy and is best for long drives or train rides to a place where there are a lot of trees. (Andrew)

Many of you remember how crazy we were about last year’s Field Music album Tones of Town and its plaintive melodies, superb songwriting and creative arrangements. Now we have the debut album by a band led by Field Music’s Peter Brewis called the Week That Was, and it’s another bold and daring effort. Supposedly the record’s material was written in one week last year after Brewis discarded his television and exiled himself from the all the accoutrements of our media age. He constructed eight songs centering around a crime narrative. Lyrically the songs are compelling, but that album works because once again Brewis delivers an album of beautifully twisted avant pop, recalling adventurous British rock of a generation ago. The stunning opener, “Learn to Learn,” with its loud crashing drums and guitar-synth interplay, effectively sets the tone for the album, as does its jarring follow-up, “The Good Life.” Music that makes you think and you can hum to — how often do we get that? (James)

It’s tempting to lump Sic Alps with the other garage bands du jour (Jay Reatard, Times New Viking, King Khan, etc.), but beware facile comparisons: the San Francisco duo of Matt Hartman and Mike Donovan have given us one of the year’s freshest (and finest) rock albums. After toiling around the Bay Area psych scene for years, the group has hit its stride with U.S. EZ, a heavy, dark and melodic record, with echo-shreiking vocals, jagged, start-stop riffs and rhythms, and thundering bass lines. The bluesy stomper “Gelly Roll Gum Drop” shows that the band can deliver some hooks, while “Mater” combines a deliriously catchy guitar riff with harmonies worthy of the Velvets. The songs are short and economical, delightfully free of pretense and filler, straightforward in their exuberance and sheer joy. One of my absolute favorite albums of 2008 – check it out! (James)