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It's a known statistic that every ten seconds someone from California sings a song about cars. And Beck Hansen is not immune. "These ice caps melting down / With the transistor sound / And my Chevrolet Terraplane / Going around around around," he lilts in seashell echo over a peppy surf-pop beat on "Gamma Ray."

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Mugison has often been stamped as the Icelandic Beck, but on his fourth album, he edges onto John Lennon's turf. The irreverent electro rocker, no stranger to smirking puns and helter-skelter noise, marks a straighter course with Mugiboogie's ramshackle rock and Plastic Ono Band snarls.

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If the ultra-lo-fi shitgaze genre (Pink Reason, Times New Viking) represents one extreme of indie pop, Son Ambulance clearly represents the other. Omaha-based multi-instrumentalist Joe Knapp spent three years making Someone Else's Déjà Vu, and the album is another reminder that lush studio-reliant soft and prog rock of the late '70s can still offer legitimate inspiration.

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When she's singing, pioneering mystic punk Patti Smith can be extraordinarily mortal. But in recitation, she approaches the godly, delivering her poetry's surreal grace with sheer force.

Ratatat / Photo by James Kendi

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Who? Guitarist Mike Stroud and multi-instrumentalist Evan Mast, who, together as Brooklyn's Ratatat, dig deep into the studio and spool a blip and blop fusion of electro-rock-and-pop, which at times, even ventures into hip-hop and reggae territory.