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Since releasing the Magnetic Fields' seventh album, i, in 2004, Stephin Merritt has dabbled in musical theater with Showtunes and scored the audiobooks for Daniel "Lemony Snicket" Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events kid-lit series (under the name the Gothic Archies). Maybe the offbeat side projects explain his unexpected interest in rock.

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Problema número uno: The Mars Volta no longer have the services of superhumanly hard-swinging drummer Jon Theodore, who kept even their knottiest epics grounded in the hips as well as the head -- no small feat for a band determined to fill every millisecond with notes, beats, sound effects, or Cedric Bixler-Zavala's often inchoate howl.

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Turns out, there's a lot to be said for dancing on Pol Pot's grave. In 2005, these Los Angeles-based rockers made history as the first Westerners to tour Cambodia since the dictator's bloody regime, and that triumph lends a visceral confidence to their third album.

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With scene-sibling band Times New Viking leaving underground punk outpost Siltbreeze for Matador, this anarchic Columbus, Ohio trio advances as the label's standard-bearers. Scruffy pop hooks stay buried in guitar shit and junk-shop electronic blurts. Imagine the Fall as classic rockers with these doofs as their belligerent, sprawling tribute band.

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Having lost one member and added three, this Massachusetts-based band features six players and eight songs of chunky, ear-warping rock'n'roll on their sixth album. Throughout the solo-fueled "East to West," frontwoman Sandra Barrett hollers and wails while her bandmates' caustic guitars (all three!) drill millions of tiny holes in your speakers.