The beauty of Thao Nguyen’s 2008 sophomore album We Brave Bee Stings And All can be summed up in two concurrent songs: first, the melancholy two-minute gallop of “Swimming Pools,” full of rapid-fire banjo and knotty, evocative lyrics, and second, the playfully weepy organ/guitar swirl “Geography,” which transcends its light-hearted Jack Johnson living space by taking flight on the wispy yet guttural strength of Thao’s stunning voice. Forgive me for starting a review of Thao With The Get Down Stay Down’s third album, Know Better Learn Faster, with talk of her last one. But after randomly hearing “Swimming Pools” in a Surfing Magazine video report on Volcom’s hillbilly VQS Championships last year, I set out on a weirdly obsessive quest to absorb all of Thao’s musical output. So of course my thoughts were on her last masterpiece as I listened to the new.

Opener “The Clap” boded well, sounding like a ghoulish collaboration between Animal Collective and O’Death, before “Cool Yourself” injected horns into its jaunty 1950s pop. And “When We Swam” furthered the mid-century vibe, girl-group handclaps punctuating Thao’s flirtatious chorus “Bring your hips to me.” But what about the tightly wound anxiety of her earlier work? Backing band The Get Down Stay Down combine forces with guest violinist Andrew Bird to kick things back up a notch on the nervous, mournful “Know Better Learn Better,” before Thao’s stilted, unemotional vocal delivery on “Body” lends extra power to her sexually frustrated lyrics: “What am I?/Just a body in your bed/Why don’t your reach/For the body in your bed?” All the while, The Get Down Stay Down kick out a mean rock ‘n’ roll jam, expertly interspersing pounding drums with angelic whistles, twinkling xylophones, and triumphant horns.

So yeah, Know Better Learn Faster lives up to its predecessor’s excellence, only five songs in. Ghosts of Appalachia turn up on “The Give,” while “Good Bye Good Luck” pogos between snooty Brit-rock and exuberant Americana. “Trouble No More” resurrects the splendid organs of last album’s “Geography,” but the real stunner is the dreamy, all-grown-up “But What Of Strangers.” It’s not that Thao is any less energetic on her third album: it’s just that her energy has evolved, from adoring and adolescent to anguished, adult, and appropriately acerbic. “The album is named Know Better Learn Faster because you can’t,” Thao winks in her press release. If only every musician could wring beauty out of such a straightforward statement. –NM

Beaten Awake has an extensive grounding in the Ohio tradition of low-fidelity roots rock. They’ve shared the stage with homestate royalty The Black Keys and other groups from the greater Midwest, and most importantly they recently backed cult folk legend Daniel Johnston on an impromptu live version of “Casper The Friendly Ghost.” Anyone who can live to tell a tale like that deserves to be heard. What sets Beaten Awake apart is their experimental nature towards the humorous side of production and exposure. Sophomore release Thunder$troke is a taco bar of piano and grounded vocals, with heavy key-laden instrumentals consistently jumping the endorphin levels of the listener.

Thunder$troke is an album produced from the bowels of “bandits raised by weird wolves and home schooled by trees,” according to Beaten Awake’s press. Ryan Brannon, Jon Finley, Joel McAdams, and Tom Raichel are most certainly an eclectic group, and an important notch in the 21st-century post-punk movement. I agree with a number of others that this album takes an even stride after second track “Suite Cheetah,” and sets a keel for the remaining solid listen. The only backlash Thunder$troke may suffer from is the impressive hype which preempted the release, an artistic sand trap that predates their buoyant rock ‘n’ roll.

Beaten Awake’s album covers are an equally entertaining accomplice to their history and music, hearkening back to the days before Photoshop when Xerox copiers and Scotch tape reigned supreme. There’s nothing like seeing four Jack Black-looking characters behind the helm of a mock schooner piloting their vessel through a middle-school portrait backdrop of outer space on the cover of Thunder$troke. In the words of a close friend recounting a 6th-grade portrait: “I want laser beams Mom — and I want a lot of them!” That kind of dependable childhood joy is just what we get from Beaten Awake. By Will Tunstall

Mike Johnson and Eliot Krimsky, the duo that makes up Glass Ghost, have taken the reverse duck flap half-bang haircut to a level deserving of both a high-five and a soft sock to the eye. It’s not that I condone beating up anyone, but these guys are just dagger-stabbing dark — think the collective polar opposite of Fox News reporter Greta Van Susteren on the continuum scale of humans. Glass Ghost are capable of making your bone and your body chill, and their latest album Idol Omens is a haunting beauty.

Idol Omens scared me so much that it has resulted in my act of strictly avoiding listening to Mike and Eliot’s tick-tack falsetto before bed — I don’t want the two of them diving out of the basement freezer and hiding in my closet to watch me all night. Yet the album shifts dramatically between fourth track “The Same” and the appropriately named closing song “Ending.” Lyrically, this back half of the album is crisper and more uplifting, and occasionally a pinging instrumental will reveal itself, before eventually leading each track to drop away again into heavy percussion and slow emphatic speech.

Glass Ghost boasts a uniform solidarity in their recording, resulting in an unfamiliar genre I won’t even try to give a creative name — unless, of course, we can call it Anti-Greta/reverse duck-flap half-bang/pop-flop haunted house whale music. Give Idol Omens a listen while driving somewhere dark and remote with no money in your pocket and your gas tank on empty for the full haunting effect. By Will Tunstall

If my pulse goes above 200 beats per minute, I turn into The Hulk. Luckily, The Clientele are helping my cause by swooning smooth landscape jams that sound like a beautiful Monet painting. I respect the group’s early roots, founded in suburban English town Hampshire, and I admire their adolescent decision to accept the influences of Surrealist poetry while determining it was “not OK to have any shouting or blues guitar solos” on their album. I would cautiously sidestep such claims at any cost, though: A) yelling is gangbusters, and B) blues guitar solos? C’mon man, don‘t ever count those out.

Bonfires On The Heath is a deep and gluey album. Tracks like “I Wonder Who We Are” and “Jennifer & Julia” have the noticeable stamp of Brian O’Shaughnessy’s production. Brian famously produced English legends My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream, but The Clientele lack the epileptic sonic presence of those two groups. Alasdair MacLean and James Hornsey do swing with guitar and bass into the powerful microburst universe of Mel Draisey’s piano and violin talents, but not to any sort of overwhelming effect.

The Clientele have created their own succulent Brit-pop world, and many critics believe they transcend obvious influences. Some even say they’re a landmark indie pop band, whose 1990s output should be respected. In the last ten years, a different stroke has taken hold, not to deny the large niche that still exists for the U.K. haze of The Clientele. It is a niche, however, and one I will gladly explore in times of higher heart rates and west coast glam crash diets. By Will Tunstall