Coheed and Cambria
Neverender: Children of the Fence
Columbia

Say what you want about Coheed and Cambria, but they can never be accused of not finishing what they start. This band's scope of ambition has been enormous from the very beginning, and it has remained focused, driven, and single-pointed since their debut album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade, back in 2002. The grand sci-fi/fantasy concept of The Amory Wars (aka "The Story") grew from the graphic novel and comic book series that vocalist/guitarist Claudio Sanchez authored, and has pushed this group toward the ultimate realization of its vision in Neverender: Children of the Fence in 2009.

Dan Deacon
Bromst
Carpark

From the first few minutes of Bromst, Dan Deacon's second Carpark full-length, it appears he may be going back to his university days at SUNY-Purchase, where he studied electro-acoustic composition. A slow-building track, naturally called "Build Voice," it repeats his vocal sample over and over with plenty of reverb -- an avant-garde piece, for sure. Still, it's only an introduction, and Bromst unfurls as an extravaganza of noise-pop that looks, not to the dance field, but to the slowly burgeoning indie rock fetish of voices, either in harmony or in chorus (think of Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes).

The Decemberists
The Hazards of Love
Capitol

King Decemberist Colin Meloy's love for the heydays of British folk-rock has always served as the foundation on which he builds his crafty, idiosyncratic chamber pop, but on Hazards of Love he's taken that bedrock and built his own version of Stonehenge. A 17-song suite (think one continuous song with track ID's peppered throughout for sanity's sake) about a girl named Margaret, shapeshifters, forest queens, and fairytale treachery, Hazards of Love is ambitious, pretentious, obtuse, often impenetrable, and altogether pretty great.

Fever Ray
Fever Ray
Mute

At first, it's a little difficult to determine where the Knife ends and Fever Ray begins. On paper, it's clear -- the Knife is the project of Karin Dreijer and her brother Olof, while Fever Ray is Karin with co-producers Christoffer Berg, Van Rivers, and the Subliminal Kid -- but the differences aren't as distinct when listening to Fever Ray the first few times. Initially, the album's dark, frosty atmosphere feels like a continuation of the Knife's brilliant Silent Shout. Eventually, though, Fever Ray reveals itself as far darker and more intimate than anything by the Knife.

Keri Hilson
In a Perfect World...
Mosley Music/Zone 4/Interscop

After lengthy delays and some surprisingly low-performing singles, In a Perfect World... was issued in March 2009 and happened to sync up with Keri Hilson's first solo Top 20 hit, the coquettish trunk rattler "Turnin Me On." Prior to this, Hilson was quite familiar with high chart positions as a songwriter and featured vocalist.

Mastodon
Crack the Skye
Reprise

First off, a warning: the best way to encounter Mastodon's Crack the Skye for the first time is with headphones. Reported to be a mystical -- if crunchy -- concept record about Tsarist Russia, this is actually the most involved set of tracks, both in terms of music and production, the band has ever recorded. "Ambitious" is a word that regularly greets Mastodon -- after all, they did an entire album based on "Moby Dick" -- but until now, that adjective may have been an understatement.

Martina McBride
Shine
RCA/Sony Music

Shine is Martina McBride's first recording in two years, following up her successful self-produced album Waking Up Laughing. While the previous album was entirely self-produced -- a rare reward in Nashville, but one McBride earned with a string of platinum selling recordings -- on this set she is listed as a co-producer with the veteran Dan Huff. McBride has long been associated with anthemic songs, and an album by her without them would seem incomplete; in other words, there have to be real showcases for that incredibly powerful singing voice of hers, and Shine is no exception.

Pearl Jam
Ten [Legacy Edition]
Epic/Legacy

For the twentieth anniversary of their debut Ten - an event that arrives in 2011 and is being celebrated in 2009, but who's counting? - Pearl Jam went all out and delivered not one but three reissues, all in increasing levels of lavishness. All this commotion camouflages the real noteworthy aspect of this anniversary edition: Pearl Jam brought in their longtime producer Brendan O'Brien to remix Ten from the ground up, to strip away the studio affectations of producer Rick Parashar and mixer Tim Palmer that made it a bright, shiny anomaly during the dingy heyday of grunge and make the album sound more liked the rest of the band's work (which O'Brien produced, after all).

Röyksopp
Junior
Wall Of Sound

Makers of sophisticated dance-pop with more than enough production finesse to intrigue electronica listeners, Röyksopp complete their transition from trip-hop maestros to electronic popsters on their third album, Junior. As on 2005's The Understanding, the melodies here are unmissable, whether there's a star vocal feature or not -- and, to signal their rising status, there are several here.