The World According to Björk, Aoki, Tweedy and a Gaggle of Teenage Guitar Girls

Musically speaking, Sky Blue Sky is just as lucid. New member Nels Cline — a longtime L.A. fixture — plays hyper-articulated blues-rock guitar lines that single-handedly arrest Wilco's creeping avant-gardisms. Those tendencies distinguished the band on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but wore thin on the follow-up, A Ghost Is Born. On Sky Blue Sky, Wilco knock out memorable, "easy feeling" anthems that should shame a half dozen freak-folk bands into retirement. And tracks like "Shake It Off" and "Walken" forge a new sound that feels like it's been around forever — chooglin' blues rock for poesy-addled yindies.

Daniel A.I.U. Higgs,Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Thrill Jockey) So, yeah, we're living through a moment when underground indie is transforming into a global mainstream. In the U.S. alone, fan faves like Modest Mouse, the Shins and Arcade Fire reliably shift 100,000-plus copies in their first week of release. Yet I can comfortably predict the third solo album by Baltimore resident Daniel Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs will not make it onto the Billboard Heatseekers chart. Higgs — an emo icon before the genre even existed — is an advertisement for pursuing a singular vision to the end of the line. Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot consists of six drones for piano, guitar, banjo and Jew's harp, recorded entirely on cassette recorder. Please, though, keep reading! This record is a sad, beautiful, harrowing journey into the depths of isolated expression. Included is a book of Higgs' visual art — visionary images in the mode of Walt Whitman or William Blake, a sensibility honed in his former day job as a tattooist. Why should you bother? Because in an overheated market, one forgets the virtues of longevity. Since 1989, Higgs has recorded 11 albums with his band Lungfish. They are probably more obscure now than when they started, but you can hear his convictions deepening with each release. On this album, he has become what he set out to be — a religiously omnivorous post-punk mystic. At this point, this kind of focus and dedication is way more unique than yet another indie rock record cracking the top 40.