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When Daft Punk's alien ghetto blast "Da Funk" touched down at a Texas rave in the late '90s, there wasn't an X Files-level conspiracy panic, but the ground was irreparably shaken for drummer/ keyboardist/producer Thomas Turner.

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Michael Stipe hates false advertising -- he opens R.E.M.'s first concert album with the assertion "I don't wanna be Iggy Pop" ("I Took Your Name"). And Live attests that their rock has always been about composure, not raw power. Its 22 tracks are steady and regal, so pitch-perfect that they're often indistinguishable from the studio counterparts.

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Back before emo was, you know, emo™, Wisconsin's Promise Ring was the form's late-'90s standard-bearer. Singer Davey von Bohlen and bassist Dan Didier's subsequent band, Maritime, has had a harder time finding its footing, perhaps because 30-year-olds get sensitive about different things than 20-year-olds.

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Young has spent the balance of this century releasing albums terrible (Are You Passionate?), conceptual (Greendale), and gimmicky yet heartfelt (Living With War). So it's strange to encounter a record that's just like he used to make -- distorto riffs for their own sake and quasi roots rock with a tangible sense of loss and hope.

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For 2004's Astronaut, Duran Duran hired Dallas Austin and Linkin Park pal Don Gilmore to overhaul their vintage dance-pop sound; it didn't work.

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Holy Fuck play the sort of id-gripping dance rock that's best experienced in person -- and not just because the pulsing, kraut-rock-meets-D.C. go-go jams sound massive on a club PA. Eschewing laptops, programming, and rehearsals, HF improvise electronic music on (mostly) analog sources, including 35-millimeter film projectors and ancient keyboards.