Sixteen years have passed since these Athens, Georgia natives last pondered love, sex, and outer space over untamed dance beats. Here, they refresh all their tricks, with stripped-down, energetic guitar plus lithe electronics.

For the past few years, minimal German dance music, with its fierce emptiness and slim rhythms, has been a scene with untapped crossover potential. And Mlle Caro, DJ at Paris' renowned house-music club Rex, and Franck Garcia, a producer/DJ based in the south of France, take advantage of the hypnotic genre's possibilities.

"All of my people think I look strange," confesses singer/songwriter/ guitarist/producer Jerry DeCicca with an inscrutable weariness, on "New Face," one of 12 unhurried folk ballads on this Ohio band's second album.

French pop rockers tend to have an effortless melodic gift, and that's the case with Xavier Boyer, leader of Parisian group Tahiti 80.

The Berlin-based duo of Arno Kammermeier and Walter Merziger up the sonic intrigue on tracks by Heaven 17, Aphex Twin, Carl Craig, the Tubes (!), and others with their gospeldeep, elegantly wood-toned beats.