Bruce Warren

For all its slowly gyrating seductiveness, "Gotta Be With You" serves as the hot centerpiece of an album that delivers on the promise and premise of its title. Sultry and soulful, Ronald Isley's falsetto remains commandingly rich and intoxicating.

Hot Chip is clearly made up of geeky music obsessives, each far-reaching in his musical ideas. A quirky, intelligent collection of songs, the band's new album The Warning owes as much to Prince and Aphex Twin as it does to The Beach Boys, New Order and Beck.

"Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken," from the Glasgow chamber-pop sextet Camera Obscura's recent album Let's Get Out of This Country, serves as a gloriously bubbly answer to Lloyd Cole's "Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken," one of the all-time great breakup songs.

British singer-songwriter Alexi Murdoch doesn't exactly rewrite the classic folk songbook on his first full-length studio album. But with his rich, hypnotic ballads and tender acoustic guitar work, he's created a timeless folk-pop record that's likely to endure.

The French band Phoenix's "Long Distance Call" is a lovably catchy power-pop nugget informed by early-'80s pop grooves, the insouciance of the '70s rock band Pablo Cruise and a flood of Hall & Oates sing-alongs.

With its insidious cloud of warm keyboards and droning sitars, Thievery Corporation's "This Is Not a Love Song" qualifies as hipster electronica: It's "Chariots Of Fire" for the indie-rock set, yet palatable enough for those who enjoy the music on VW commercials.

The English rock band Art Brut erupts with a fireball of adolescent rage on "My Little Brother." Singer Eddie Argos sneers and shouts, with sarcastic, often-humorous observations that mock, yet ultimately glorify, the unique power of rock 'n' roll.

Jose Gonzalez was born in Sweden to Argentine parents and raised on bossa nova and Joy Division. Haunting and ominous yet seductively heartening, "Heartbeats" finds him reworking a song originally performed by the Swedish electro-pop band The Knife.

Already the subject of considerable overseas hype, Gnarls Barkley finds DJ/producer Danger Mouse collaborating with Cee-Lo, co-founder of the Atlanta hip-hop collective Goodie Mob. The duo's debut single, "Crazy," is music for an integrated world.