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This Brooklyn group's previous albums established them as shoegaze confectioners, molding candy swirls out of Yuki Chikudate's soaring, translucent voice and guitarist James Hanna's Kevin Shields–worshiping production. But here, Asobi Seksu do something My Bloody Valentine can't -- leave Shields behind.

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Thank God for that voice. Without such caramel pipes, Beirut's Zach Condon would never be able to own his shape-shifting styles -- elegant French pop and Balkan folk on past albums, Mexican funeral marches here. But like a musical version of conceptual photographer Cindy Sherman, he embodies the essence without disappearing completely.

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Vetiver's music sounds like it was written in midday sunshine, yet longs for a dark bedroom in the dead of night. Andy Cabic's balmy folk songs pull from pert shades of doo-wop ("Everyday") and Latin syncopation ("Strictly Rule"). But his whispery voice can take on a Donovan-like sultriness, making a song such as "Sister" far sexier than a song named "Sister" should be.

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Multi-instrumentalists Eric Ronick and Than Luu met while playing with different bands (they toiled individually for Panic at the Disco, Ambulance LTD, M. Ward, Boredoms, etc.) and recorded this debut on breaks from their paying gigs.

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Matt and Kim (their real names) come on like a punked-up Mates of State -- a couple so cute that you'd walk away from their frantic live shows feeling mushy, if someone hadn't just mushed you. But the love songs on their second album are for their home borough of Brooklyn as much as for each other.

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Over the course of his five solo albums, Andrew Bird's music has become a custom- tailored suit: fussy and impossible for anyone else to wear. Just try to imagine anyone else singing about "proto-Sanskrit Minoans to porto-centric Lisboans / Greek Cypriots and Hobishots / Who hang around the ports a lot," as he does on "Tenuousness." Imagine anyone else wanting to.