The Mix

Listen along to this post with our New West Coast Rap Sampler playlist.

The term "New West" has been used to describe various subsets of West Coast rap artists, most of them based in Southern California. There was the wave of street rappers who tried to capitalize on the The Game's breakout hits in the mid-2000s, like Bishop Lamont, Crooked I, Nipsey Hussle and Strong Arm Steady. Then there were kids -- like New Boyz, Y.G., Audio Push, Cali Swag District and the Rej3ctz -- who popularized "jerkin'" and other teen dances.

However, it's the emergence of the Black Hippy crew (Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and Schoolboy Q) and Odd Future (Tyler, the Creator; Hodgy Beats; and others) that makes a new era in West Coast hip-hop seem more like a promise than a wishful dream. These two groups in particular have the potential to make music that not only generates sales, but also inspires hardcore rap fans -- a confluence of critical acclaim and industry success that hasn't happened since the 1990s.

Listen along to this post with our Cheat Sheet: Idols, X-Factors and More playlist.

Once upon a time, pop stars were born the old-fashioned way: they endured pushy stage mothers who signed them up for baby commercials, lived in their vans and played at the local coffee shop, or walked around a local mall somewhere until a manager or scout "discovered" them. Times have changed. We want our burgeoning pop stars to sing for their supper while we watch them compete against each other, gladiator-style, in the karaoke Hunger Games of reality TV. And guess what? It works -- even if sometimes the "winners" don't actually go on to earn much more recognition, and sometimes the second or third or seventh runner-up is the one turns out to be One Direction or Jennifer Hudson.

The point is, competitions like American Idol, X Factor, The Voice and their predecessors (like ye olde Star Search) have given us not only some of current pop music's biggest artists, but also a whole new narrative for the path to pop stardom. So here's our Cheat Sheet guide to the beloved artists who got their start in these would-be celebrity death matches. For the sake of brevity, we're focusing primarily on American and British programs, though these suckers are everywhere, including Idols from the Arab world to Australia, Eurovision pre-contests and competitions of every variety throughout Latin America. Enjoy.

Listen along to this post with our Cheat Sheet: The New Classic Rock playlist.

New Classic Rock is the phrase I use when talking about the growing number of artists and groups who nowadays filter vintage rock, blues and soul through the earthen tones of alt country, the garage rock scene's retro fetishism and the no-frills scrappiness long associated with indie. The result is music that attempts to be relevant with a subtly modern sensibility while also embracing what made rock so essential during its Golden Era (say 1956 to '73).

The movement's holy trinity should surprise no one: Jack White, Jeff Tweedy and Dan Auerbach. The parallels between these musicians are striking. In addition to making vital contributions to New Classic Rock with their own groups (The White Stripes, Wilco and The Black Keys, respectively), all three have engaged in collaborations to help expose younger generations to the work of canonical musicians. White worked with country icon Loretta Lynn, as well as first-generation rockabilly badass Wanda Jackson. In 2010, Tweedy teamed up with Southern gospel legend Mavis Staples. And most recently, Auerbach collaborated with the great Dr. John, whose new album, Locked Down, is a fountain of New Orleans groovery youth. Auerbach has also produced several modern artists who can be tagged New Classic Rock, including a trio of fellow gritty Ohioans: Heartless Bastards, Buffalo Killers and Patrick Sweany.

Though the New Classic Rock has come into its own over the last decade, its roots reach back to the '90s. Of course, that's when Wilco got their start. With its arsenal of dad-rockisms (dig those Exile-like horns), the group's 1996 double album Being There is in many respects the movement's birth. That same year saw the release of Mississippi hill country bluesman R.L. Burnside's A Ass Pocket of Whiskey; produced by the Blues Explosion's Jon Spencer, the album is truly "proto" in the way it set a precedent for the cool indie dude twiddling knobs to bring the music of the older musical great to younger ears.

The decade also saw the first releases from Mark Lanegan (the Jim-Morrison-meets-Gordon-Lightfoot of grunge) and modern Southern rockers The Drive-By Truckers. In addition to worshipping at the twin altars of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young, the Truckers would go on to perform their own cross-generation reclamation work by recording an album with soul icon Bettye LaVette.

Jumping back to our current century, another key player in the New Classic Rock is Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. Featuring a criminally overlooked singer now in her 50s backed by sharply dressed whippersnappers who worship the old-school funk and soul she grew up on, the group heads up a potent revival that has influenced everybody from the late Amy Winehouse to Alabama Shakes, an exciting new group from the South (Jack White totally digs them). Also from below the Mason-Dixon Line are the fabulous North Mississippi Allstars, who boast familial links to the soulfully eccentric sounds that emerged from Memphis and Muscle Shoals in the late '60s and '70s. They rule.

And now, on to the New Classic Rock.

Listen along to this post with our Artist Spotlight: Motörhead playlist.

Lemmy Kilmister formed Motörhead in 1975, after being fired from heavy-psyche masters Hawkwind, for whom he played bass and sang. The last song he'd written for the band was the biker-rock classic "Motorhead." Hawkwind fired him after he spent five days in a Canada jail for cocaine possession (the cops nailed him at the airport), forcing the cancellation of a North American tour. Or, as Lemmy famously put it, they "sacked" him for "doing the wrong drugs." The word "motorhead" was slang for "speed freak," and referred to Lemmy himself; determined to make music that was fast, loud and paranoid (his terms), he quickly launched the band and soon found himself opening for Blue Öyster Cult.

Although the music Motörhead made was so loud and unapologetically tough they could only be identified as a metal band, their direct simplicity and shorter songs put them comfortably in the punk scene alongside The Damned and The Ramones. For this reason, they've always represented a bridge between the two genres, and for years were the only metal band punk kids were "allowed" to like. (Each scene thought the other side were either stupid muscle-heads or wimpy know-it-alls throughout the '70s, '80s and even into the '90s, 'til J. Mascis died for everybody's sins.)

Listen along to this post with our Cheat Sheet: Viking Metal playlist.

Because almost all their songs are either about Norse mythology or Viking culture, the Swedish death metal band Amon Amarth often get mislabeled as Viking metal. Vocal about refuting this, frontman Johan Hegg once said, "I can't imagine the Vikings were into metal at all, except on the swords and stuff."

Pretty funny. The truth is, Viking metal is a very small, super-weird and utterly glorious subgenre of extreme metal that was basically invented by Norwegian teen Quorthon and his band, Bathory, with the release of their 1988 album, Blood Fire Death. Bathory's previous three albums had laid the blueprints for black metal, but on this one, Quorthon pushed out the borders of the music, allowing for expansive, epic songs by slowing tempos, mixing in Scandinavian folk-guitar parts, adding the sound of horses galloping, and spinning lyrics about death on the battlefield, destroying villages, food cooked on an open flame, etc. Then came 1990's Hammerheart: Quorthon dropped the wraith-screech vocal style of his past, simplified the riffs from a black metal pick-flutter to a chunky heaviness and added some chanting hordes, whereupon what we know as Viking metal was truly born.

Formed in 1991 (and also teenaged and Norwegian), Enslaved's own trio of Viking metal albums -- Frost, Eld and Blodhemn -- expanded the definition of this tiny genre with prog rock elements, pre-battle speeches presumably recorded in dank throne rooms and most importantly, as it was a staple of true Viking music, the mouth harp.They also tossed in alternatingly cheesy and clubby synths. These guys got up to some weirdness, but their music is flat-out awesome: just check out their album covers, or listen to all of Frost and "793 (Slaget om Lindisfarne)" from Eld.

Unfortunately, from there bands marked as Viking metal tend to drop off in quality. One thing that makes the genre great is its lack of subtlety, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible to go a little over the top with the chanted vocals and mouth harps. What follows is a list of the Bathory and Enslaved records that both define Viking metal and represent the best it has to offer, which is saying a lot, because this music sounds great when you crank it and goes almost too well with Skyrim. There is also an album at the end that kind of identifies the limits of the genre. If you want to go deeper, you might want to check out Mortiis' Født til å Herske, but you may have to actually be a wood elf to get it. Okay, have fun.

Listen along to this post with our Cheat Sheet: The Modern Bar Band playlist.

The archetypal Bar Band Making It Big is either George Thorogood & The Destroyers or The Fabulous Thunderbirds, brawny blues rockers (remember Blueshammer?) who cut their teeth on classic tunes while wowing party-hard audiences at one smoky club after another. Eventually, they both penned some tunes of their own, blew up and never looked back. Yet the bar band is not permanently fixed to classic modes of blues and rock. It's also a creature of evolution, a staple of regional entertainment whose set lists are in perpetual evolution, so as to reflect the larger trends in American pop music.

Beginning in the late 1980s, a new kind of Bar Band Making It Big emerged. Honing their chops on America's sprawling college-bar circuit (equally party-hard, equally smoky -- at least back then), these bands knew their classic rock covers, yet they were also modern and hip. They came of age loving R.E.M., U2, The Pretenders, The Replacements and other alt rock staples just as much as they did The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison and The Beatles.

You can hear this mixture of the old and new in Train and Counting Crows. Other groups, Collective Soul and Matchbox Twenty among them, were young enough to reflect grunge's push into the mainstream; a few were (vaguely) alternative themselves. Years before "Iris," a young Goo Goo Dolls played punk shows; Gin Blossoms weren't nearly that D.I.Y., yet their jangly sound betrayed their knowledge of the esoteric power pop of Big Star and Alex Chilton.

The late '80s also gave birth to another permutation of the modern bar band: the jam band. Though Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler and their ilk will forever be linked with the neo-hippie summer festival H.O.R.D.E., their original home base, prefame, was the greater New York City/New Jersey area, where they predominantly played bars, including the now-defunct Wetlands.

Where is the American bar band headed in the 21st century? If Augustana and The Fray are any indication, expect an even more pronounced U2 (and Coldplay) influence -- piano rock, in other words. But it's going to reflect the commercialization of indie rock, too. So yeah, be on the lookout for Indie Hammer somewhere down the line.

Listen along to this post with our Cheat Sheet: Coachella Reunions playlist.

Southern California's mid-April mega-musical bacchanal has transformed from a modest weekend festival to an Olympic-sized two-weekend juggernaut. Increasingly bursting at the seams with fresh sweat, blood, beer and beats, the desert-set Coachella festival has become the ultimate musical celebration, the official opener to the summer music festival season. Each year, the lineup boasts the hippest, hottest artists in rock, hip-hop, electronic, world and indie music, yet it's the old dogs that always make the headlines. Coachella may kick-start the career of the next big thing, but it's more significantly become the place to reunite the last big thing, too. It's a clever way to push nostalgic pleasure buttons and compel old folk to crash the party.

Coachella has helped get some of rock's greatest groups to re-form (even if the members simply do it for monetary reasons; we tend not to care). Here are 15 bands who made (and remade) history at Coachella, from indie-rock gods Pixies and Pavement to heavy-hitting nonconformists Refused, Rage Against the Machine and At the Drive-In to post-punk royalty The Jesus & Mary Chain, Public Image Ltd. and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Listen along to this post with our Cheat Sheet: Classic Femcee Albums playlist.

Nicki Minaj wasn't the first woman to shatter hip-hop's glass ceiling. There's a long list of femcees before her who managed to rise above male chauvinist attitudes prevalent in the genre's followers. Some simply ignored it, like Lauryn Hill and MC Lyte, while others, including Lil Kim and Foxy Brown, reveled in it. The best, like Missy Elliott and, now, Minaj, have subverted our expectations of sexually confident women by giving us plenty of cheesecake rhymes alongside futuristic urban pop that shows they're more than bedroom playthings. Here are a few of the best albums by female rap artists.

Nicki Minaj
Pink Friday
Nicki Minaj is one of the best female emcees in ages, and she's bent on translating her talents into stardom. That means plenty of airy vocals and, in some cases, pure singing ("Save Me"). She's keenly aware of criticism from hip-hop purists: on "Fly," as Rihanna sings the chorus, she says, "Everybody wanna try to box me in, but I represent an entire generation." She straddles the line between hardcore rap and urban pop, bracketing each rhyme with radio-baiting hooks ("Moment 4 Life," "Check It Out"). Meanwhile, on "Roman's Revenge," she matches Eminem while transforming into a "dungeon dragon." [Mosi Reeves]

Listen along to this post with our Cheat Sheet: Ambient Metal playlist.

If some dude would've told you 25 years ago that a significant chunk of the future heavy metal universe would take pride in being mere background clatter, there's a good chance you would have laughed in his mullet. Of course, all music often serves the purpose of background sound (i.e., we do stuff -- party, study, clean Grandma's garage -- while it's on), and from the psychedelic rock that metal largely evolved out of to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music to Hawkwind-style space rock, there's probably always been music on metal's cusp that took that into account. At least into the early '90s, metal proper was "in your face" by definition; in the past two decades, though, that tendency seems to be slipping by the wayside. Metal might just be Muzak to fall asleep to, too!

This change of tune and/or philosophy came from at least a few different directions, most of which had something to do with metal getting druggier, more depressing, or both. Once you've re-embraced your inner Sabbath, as doom bands like Trouble and Saint Vitus did in the late '80s, acid rock and pysch and hour-long meandering plods through the desert with exotic fungi in your hemoglobin can't be far behind. Hence, the aptly named San Jose band Sleep's 1996-recorded/1999-released one-interminable-song album Jerusalem, one of the oldest selections tallied below. Even older is a release from converted Oakland punks Neurosis, who -- along with L.A.'s Isis -- laid the groundwork for what eventually came to be referred to as shoegaze metal (or even "metalgaze," or just plan "NeurIsis metal"). It takes aimless oceanic clues from My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins (and maybe Swans and Dead Can Dance and Radiohead), eventually emerging as a louder, noisier version of so-called "post-rock."

Then there's the black metal side of the equation, where gunked-up church-arson ugliness at some point opens up to haunting melodiousness; the guy most given credit for that is Norwegian neo-Nazi murderer and moron Varg Vikernes of Burzum, included here out of historical necessity, though please don't take his presence as an endorsement of either his views or his continued existence. He's just one more strain from which the 20 albums below likely emerged. Sweet dreams -- or nightmares, as the case may be.

Listen along to this post with our Cheat Sheet: Stripper Grunge playlist.

"Stripper grunge" is the phrase that popped into my head when I first heard My Darkest Days' 2010 single "Porn Star Dancing." After that, it didn't take long to start connecting the dots: Hinder's "Striptease," Saving Abel's "The Sex Is Good," Nickelback's "Midnight Queen," Cavo's "Champagne," Atom Smash's "Rocker Girl" and so on. If you're a fan of modern hard rock, you know exactly where I'm going with this: over the last decade (or so), a generation of bands has emerged that marry the brooding histrionics of post-grunge grunginess, hair metal decadence and hick-hop's working-class braggadocio. In other words: white dude/bro bands who pen riff-raging, big-beat, overly earnest anthems about strippers, cocaine, sex, whiskey, sweet cars, strippers, partying, cocaine, orgies, strippers and all the bummer vibes and toxic hangovers that inevitably accompany such sinfully decadent behavior.

There's a part of me that totally sees the historical inevitability of such a fusion, but there's another part of me that can't shake the contradiction buried at its roots. I'm old enough to remember the "hair metal vs. grunge" culture war of 1992 and '93. It sounds trite now, but teens were choosing sides and sticking to them. Even the musicians themselves were hurling insults at one another, most of which revolved around (1) hair metal dudes questioning grungers' sexuality ("homos") and (2) grungers questioning hair metal dudes' moral fiber ("sleazeballs"). The battle reached a tipping point at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, where apparently some kind of backstage skirmish broke out between Guns N' Roses (who weren't true hair metal, but close enough in terms of said moral fiber) and the gratuitously self-righteous and punk-sarcastic Nirvana.

Despite its intensity, the war didn't last long (pop fads never do). As fellow Rhapsody scribe Chuck Eddy so eloquently puts it, "rock and roll always forgets." By the mid- to late 1990s, those teens growing up in suburban and rural America were unaware of the seemingly oil 'n' water relationship between grunge and hair metal; it was hard rock to them, and they loved it all.

I consider the first true stripper-grunge anthem to be Stone Temple Pilots' "Sex Type Thing," which, granted, is early (fall 1992). Yet it contains several key elements: a dark and brooding sound not unlike Alice in Chains or Soundgarden coupled with sexual bravado and hyper-masculinity. "I am a man, a man. I'll give you something that you won't forget," growls Scott Weiland. Moreover, its groove is truly pole-worthy: heavy, with a grinding beat that's not too muddy or plodding. The fact that S.T.P. helped invent stripper grunge makes sense, considering grunge's older, underground fans dismissed them as "cock rockers" trying to cash in on the success of the subculture's authentic bands up in Seattle.

Another vital precursor was the John Corabi-led incarnation of Mötley Crüe, whose 1994 self-titled album, obviously influenced by Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, represented hair metal's grudging acceptance of America's ever-growing flannel army. Though the album didn't sell well compared to previous efforts, it still went gold, a solid sign that the two genres were slowly coming together. (By the way, the Crüe's video for 1987 single "Girls, Girls, Girls" is highly influential, packed as it is with strippers, poles, skin, motorcycles and black leather.)

Listen along to this post with our Cheat Sheet: Hot Chip's Extended Universe playlist.

I still remember when I first heard Hot Chip: a friend tipped me off to their 2004 album, Coming on Strong, while it was still on import, and neither of us could quite figure out how we were supposed to respond to the band's strange amalgam of hip-hop tropes, pop chops and naïve electronic production.

That's clearly the way the band must have wanted it, because Hot Chip have gone on to confound expectations with every record, developing into one of the most complex acts in the alt-pop sphere (yet without ever losing sight of the catchiness that keeps you coming back to them). But the band's four full-length albums only tell part of the story. In recent years, its members have spun off a slew of side projects, all of which feed back into the master narrative while complicating the picture even further.

For starters, Joe Goddard's solo project extends the band's remit to dance music's avant garde; his duo The 2 Bears (with Raf Rundell, one of his colleagues at the Greco-Roman label) goes even further in expressing its affection for the deepest dance music. Their recently released debut album wraps a big, goofy bear hug around club culture at its sweatiest (and smiliest).

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs' Orlando Higginbottom isn't a member of Hot Chip, but he's one of the flagship artists on Greco-Roman, and his own oddball, dancefloor pop is clearly a kissing cousin of Hot Chip's style. Actual H.C. member Alexis Taylor, meanwhile, makes up one-quarter of the improvising rock quartet About Group, along with members of This Heat and Spiritualized, and the pianist Pat Thomas; he's also made dance tracks with his bandmate Felix Martin in the duos New Build and Silent Jeffs.

Read on to explore the contours of Hot Chip's extended universe across select releases, and listen to the above playlist of Hot Chip remixes and side projects, including reworks by Caribou, Fred Falke and Supermayer -- even more chips off the old block.

Listen along to this post with our

Cheat Sheet: '80s Black Crossovers playlist.

As we reflect on the death of Whitney Houston, it's important to remember the era during which she emerged. The 1980s were not only a time when technology began to take over the music industry in the form of drum machines, synthesizers and sampling keyboards, but also a time of cultural conservatism. The baby boomer generation of the 1950s and 1960s enjoyed a broad (if waning) influence in pop culture. We like to remember that electronic music, hip-hop and post-punk (which evolved into indie rock) came of age back then. But we often forget that those new and exciting sounds were far removed from the corporate rock and adult contemporary mainstream.

The world of black music was no different. The charts were dominated mostly by artists who launched their careers during the 1960s. The music they produced was often incredible -- indeed, this era is celebrated as the heyday of "boogie funk" and "post-disco," a brief oasis for musicians increasingly threatened by the insurgent hip-hop horde. But it could also be very bland and safe. Much like their white counterparts, older black-music fans were retreating to the safe comforts of the quiet storm, a programming term for classic soul, smooth jazz and lots of ballads. (Nelson George writes lucidly about this period in his book The Death of Rhythm and Blues.)

Black artists trying to break their audience's stupor had an additional problem: the music industry in the 1980s was extremely segregated. We've all heard about how Columbia Records had to force MTV to play Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" because the channel rarely programmed black songs in heavy rotation. Between 1981 and 1985, only three black artists reached No. 1 on the album charts: Jackson, Prince and Lionel Richie. In 1981 and 1982, there were none. Pop radio was scarcely any better: only four songs by black artists reached No. 1 during those two years.

Listen along with our Bay Area Mobb Music Sampler playlist.

Ever since Oakland rapper Too Short started slanging cassette albums like Players out of his car trunk in the early 1980s, the San Francisco Bay Area rap scene has been a source of curiosity and fascination. Centered in the city of San Francisco; East Bay cities like Oakland, Berkeley and Vallejo; and Peninsula cities like East Palo Alto, it's a region truly unlike any other.

While other underground scenes in the South and on the East Coast focus on mixtapes, the "Yay Area" (somewhat fancifully nicknamed for the hustlers who slang coke or "yay yo") produces hundreds of full-length albums a year from both well-known and obscure artists that employ cryptic yet imaginative local slang. Vallejo artist E-40, perhaps the best known Bay Area rapper next to Too Short and 2Pac (who moved to Los Angeles before his 1996 death), even put out a dictionary of "slanguage"; terms like like "D-boy" and "captain save a ho" have been adopted into the hip-hop lexicon.

Bay Area rap dates back to the 1980s, but its most crucial development took place during the '90s. This was the golden age of West Coast hip-hop, when G-funk pioneers like L.A.'s Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Coolio enjoyed a near-monopoly on the rap music charts. In the Bay Area, producers like Ant Banks, Studio Ton, Mike Mosley, E-A-Ski and Tone Capone developed what became known as mobb music. It was a derivation of G-funk's emphasis on "funky worm" keyboard melodies and Zapp-like trunk-rattling bass, yet the bass seemed deeper and the funk arrangements were less dependent on P-funk samples and interpolations. Since most Bay Area artists, like JT the Bigga Figga ("Game Recognize Game") and R.B.L. Posse ("Don't Give Me No Bammer"), recorded for independent labels like In-A-Minute, Sick Wid It and C-Note, they created a hardcore sound rawer than L.A.'s slick, major-label-funded gangsta rap.

The mobb music era roughly breaks down into three overlapping periods that are most easily defined by the style of certain landmark tracks: the N.W.A.-like sampling of the early 1990s and hits like Too Short's "Money in the Ghetto," an Ant Banks production that culled from Kool & the Gang's "Hollywood Swinging"; the sluggishly monolithic trunk bass of Luniz and Tone Capone's "I Got Five on It"; and the bouncy, wholly original funk of 3 X Krazy's "Keep It on the Real." The latter period, which picked up in the late '90s, came from a wave of area artists briefly signing to major labels, and was a response to "jiggy era" hits like Diddy's No Way Out and the resulting influx of mainstream-rap fans. This set the stage for the Bay Area hyphy movement of the 2000s.

Much like the Los Angeles scene that was permanently damaged by the East Coast-West Coast rivalry between Dr. Dre's Death Row label and Diddy's Bad Boy Records, Bay Area rap isn't as popular as it once was. But the players who emerged during the mobb music era continue to thrive as regional stars. In the Bay, independent hustle is a must, and the region will continue to pump out dope music for the streets, whether the pop market pays attention or not.

Listen along with our Cheat Sheet: Indie Hype playlist.

Indie Hype. We all claim to loathe it, we all claim to ignore it, but ah, the truth hurts: the buzz/backlash/backlash-to-the-backlash saga of a fresh new artist like, say, flashy noir siren Lana Del Rey is an irresistible lure. Her new Born to Die, finally out this week after months and months of think pieces and message-board wars, is the latest record in the hot seat, joining a pantheon of wildly overhyped acts in the past decade that range from cautionary tales (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Bravery) to tentative successes (Vampire Weekend, Interpol) to enormous, arena-filling triumphs (love you, Arcade Fire). Will Lana fade into obscurity like Black Kids, or hack out a respectable career like Arctic Monkeys? Who knows, but by the time we find out, we'll have moved on to someone else.

Listen along to this post with my Cheat Sheet: Bands Who Sound Like AC/DC playlist.

Let's imagine, just for the sake of argument, that you're stuck on an island where there are thousands upon thousands of albums, but no AC/DC. And yet, one fine day, you're jonesing for AC/DC nonetheless. What would you do? Where would you turn?

Thankfully, there is an easy solution. The key is that AC/DC are not merely a band; they are, in some ways, a musical genre. It seems they emerged from a tradition of hard rock acts that, in 1970s Australia, set out to serve a working-class teens-to-20s subculture of rowdy train-riding glam-rock partisans known as "sharpies" for their snazzy Italian striped cardigans and Bowie haircuts. And some of those sharpies grew up to be "bogans" -- the not-entirely-flattering Australian term for the working class to whose musical tastes AC/DC and other pub metal bands like them seem to appeal. In the land of marsupials and Vegemite, bands who sound more or less like AC/DC are not hard to find.

And Australia's not alone -- at least one well-known British ensemble (namely, Humble Pie) sometimes sounded quite a bit like AC/DC even before there was an AC/DC to sound like. And from Germany and Switzerland to Maryland and North Carolina, numerous bands have picked up on AC/DC's caveman species of stomp over the decades and given it their own garage punk, bar boogie or hair metal twists. If they're not the real thing, they're a decent approximation. What follows is a cross-section primer on some of the groups that illustrate this phenomenon. They'll at least shake you part of the night long. On the highway to heck.

For this Cheat Sheet, I adopted a non-canonical view of No Wave, that wonderfully short-lived music and art movement that coughed up some of the most daring and extreme groups of the post-punk era.

To being with, the majority of the movement's progenitors are featured. These include James Chance & the Contortions (who also recorded under the name James White & the Blacks), Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars, Beirut Slump, DNA, Bush Tetras, 8 Eyed Spy and Glenn Branca's outfits Theoretical Girls and The Static. Primarily performing in D.I.Y. art spaces and galleries in Manhattan in the late 1970s and early 1980s, these groups shared a love for ruthlessly atonal textures, razor-sharp anti-rhythms and short bursts of sonic aggression.

No Wave at the time was often framed as pure sonic nihilism: the end of rock, the end of punk, the end of culture, really. The music is definitely harsh and radical, but in hindsight, it's also startlingly original, a creature of bold synthesis. These bands totally rocked, despite the fact that they discarded just about every accepted notion of what rock music should sound like up to that point. Hell, most of them couldn't even play "Louie, Louie"!

At the same time, they weren't truly anti-history. They had their fair share of influences and idols. Captain Beefheart and The Velvet Underground were key, but so were mid-1970s Miles Davis (On the Corner, Get Up With It, Agharta, Pangaea); minimalist composers such as Rhys Chatham and Tony Conrad; the great James Brown; and of course Suicide, who were probably No Wave's most direct ancestors.

There are plenty of reasons to resist thinking of moombahton as a "real" genre. There's its origin, for one thing. According to club lore, Washington, D.C. DJ Dave Nada single-handedly created the sound when he spun a copy of Silvio Ecomo's 2009 single "Moombah (Afrojack Mix)" at 33 RPM instead of 45, turning the raucous mixture of synth stabs and Caribbean drums into a gelatinous mixture of reggaeton and chopped 'n' screwed trance. A few blog posts later, moombahton was suddenly the new buzz genre for global beat fanatics around the world. A compilation on Diplo's Mad Decent label, Blow Your Head Vol. 2: Dave Nada Presents Moombahton, mapped the style's particulars -- a bouncy, 110-beats-per-minute groove; the syncopated toms and snares of the "Dem Bow" riddim; and the squealing synth stabs and pitch-bent arpeggios of Dutch house.

Of course, one compilation does not a genre make. In early 2011, when Mad Decent asked Dave Nada to put the collection together, there was apparently so little actual moombahton out there that he resorted to decades-old songs like Shabba Ranks' "Dem Bow" and El General's "Pun Tun Tun" -- righteous tracks, mind, but hardly evidence of a vibrant new movement.

Critic Brandon Soderberg captured the contradictions of moombahton in an excellent piece for the Washington City Paper: "Moombahton arrived fully formed, the product of a talented, savvy, well-connected DJ. The domino effect of blog coverage immediately took hold of the genre, and once one site declared it important, all the others followed -- if they didn't, they risked appearing out of touch. It helped too that D.C. had a new thing to call its own. Less than a year after the Moombahton EP, the cover of Washington City Paper announced 'Our Year in Moombahton.' A bunch of people told a bunch of other people that a new, regional subgenre with a fun origin story and a cool global sound was, like, the thing."

The David Crowder Band's bio is about as un-rock 'n' roll as you can get. The group was formed to provide music for the church that Crowder himself started while still a student at Baylor University: the University Baptist Church, founded with Chris Seay in Waco, Tex., in 1995. Crowder initially picked up his guitar in an attempt to pen songs for the worship portion of the service, making music that was released on two indie discs.

It was only a natural progression, then, that D.C.B. started touring, becoming known for their innovative worship tracks and Crowder's unique appearance (think a kinder, gentler Unabomber). Despite their growing popularity, they made it a point to be home at least half the year to minister at the church where it all started. But Louie Giglio, the founder of the Passion conferences and sixstepsrecords, eventually convinced Crowder of the influence the band's music could have worldwide, and they signed a deal and found a larger platform.

At the time of sixsteps' initial launch, Crowder could have easily become lost among worship contemporaries like Chris Tomlin and Charlie Hall. D.C.B.'s 2002 label debut, Can You Hear Us?, was solid but understated, with Illuminate expanding on that firm foundation in 2003. It wasn't until 2005, though, that the band's sound began to explode. A Collision melded bluegrass, folk, electronics and more, with the band running the gamut, leaving very few musical stones unturned. EPs, remixes and other rarities helped build fan loyalty between studio projects and gave band members the opportunity for greater experimentation.

Now, as they celebrate the release of their latest studio disc, Give Us Rest, the David Crowder Band have announced they're calling it quits. The band that challenged the definition of "worship," infusing their music with random references and sound effects (Turkish delight, typing sounds, EKG machines) -- not to mention guest artists (Ted Nugent) and odd tech tools (from Lite Brites and Speak & Spells to a drumming robot named Steve 3P0) -- will be no more after 2012.

Rather than mourning that loss, though, we are choosing to celebrate all the amazing music they gave us over the years. If you haven't experienced the phenomenon known as the David Crowder Band, it's not too late. For longtime fans, this will serve as a trip down memory lane.

Afropop is a messy, unwieldy misnomer of a genre at best. But if such a broad, sprawling world can be said to exist, South Africa is most definitely one of its epicenters. From Miriam Makeba to Hugh Masekela, from isicathamiya choruses to kwaito beats, the country has produced some of the world's most prolific and fascinating Afropop artists and movements.

That global significance speaks to the distinctive personality South African pop has honed over the years. The stylistic permutations and regional variations are extensive, of course, but some common currents run through much of the country's most memorable music, like a penchant for pairing traditional folk styles with peppy pop beats and smart, articulate political commentary -- all couched in some of the sunniest, smoothest melodies you've ever heard. South Africa has endured some of the world's most well-known and incomprehensible sociopolitical struggles, so it only makes sense that many (perhaps all?) South African artists (many of whom saw their careers stymied by apartheid) have a lot to say about the state of affairs in their country, and remain committed to working toward peace and social justice.

Dig into our Cheat Sheet guide to some of South Africa's best and most beloved pop icons, artists capable of putting a smile on your face and a thoughtful furrow in your brow simultaneously.

Also, be sure to check out our playlist:

Cheat Sheet: South African Pop

Because their records weren't always available in the U.S., and there weren't a whole lot of people playing the drone/doom/stoner metal they'd allegedly mastered, for years Boris were these mysterious Japanese dudes (and dudette!) so cool they named their band after a Melvins song (off Bullhead) and put out records that consisted of one hour-long track, records so cool that you only heard about them from the very biggest metal dorks.

Formed in 1996, the band has released more than 20 albums, including a half-dozen different collaborations, most notably with Japanese noise-messiah Merzbow and American hipster-drone kings Sunn0))), that are mostly still unavailable in this country. Their first and third albums, Absolutego and Flood, are in fact single-track hour-long deals that are both awesome and, of course, not available for streaming. But the band has continually moved far beyond the borders of any one genre, into noise, garage rock, punk, straight stoner rock and even radio-friendly emo-metal. Nor is it a linear progression: They'll follow up an unadulterated pop record with a crashing freakout with Merzbow, then go back to playing breathy Radiohead tunes. Then more heaviness. It's weird, and it's gone on for years.

For a band that so tirelessly prolific -- they put out three albums in 2011 alone, including two on the same day -- this has made for some super pop-y moments that, when you put them against the ultra-heavy psychedelic-drone stuff, gets downright confusing. It's obvious that they're not trying to cash in -- if that were the case, they'd pick a genre. Maybe they're exploring the various possibilities of music or something. That's crazy.

Anyway, for folks unfamiliar with this band but intrigued by their approach to music, we've compiled the records they've made available digitally below.

The past year has seen a crop of excellent releases from the most talked-about rising stars in classical music, a varied set of neo-traditionalists who breathe life into the genre though fiery performances, scandalous outfits and bold programming choices. Astonishingly, none of them are older than 30.

The pianist who might get the most headlines is Lang Lang, whose well-styled programmatic flair has made him classical music's poster child. Using the same bold media-embracing panache of Lang Lang, plenty of other oversized talents have made waves through style and scandal: take the skirt length of Yuja Wang, who gets mentioned as classical music's Lady Gaga, or the Vogue spread by hunky violinist Charlie Siem. Perhaps less hyped but no less revered are gimmick-free recordings from violinists Alina Ibragimova, Arabella Steinbacher, Julia Fischer and Ray Chen.

This Cheat Sheet looks at some of the brightest young names in the classical world, many of whom have the talent and marketing smarts to expand the genre's audiences.

Alice Sara Ott
Beethoven
After critically successful recordings of Chopin and Liszt, 23-year-old German-Japanese pianist Alice Sara Ott releases her first Beethoven set with a bold agenda: demonstrating the two distinct personalities of the composer using a pair of C-major sonatas, the Op. 2 No. 3 and the Op. 53 "Waldstein." The prior of these -- light, mercurial and joyous -- was dedicated to Haydn, and the latter -- brooding and pensive -- was written near the end of his life, when his hearing was failing. Ott capably bridges this divide with clean, confident playing, restraint in her pedaling and plenty of power.

Louisiana Hayride was a "barn dance"-style radio program on KWKH out of Shreveport, La., that was loosely modeled on its more famous cousin, Nashville's The Grand Ole Opry, along with Chicago's lesser-known WLS Barn Dance. The program, originally called Cradle of the Stars, launched on April 3, 1948, and went on to feature some of the most revered names in country music.

In fact, from the onset, Louisiana Hayride proved to be an invaluable tool for breaking new artists and new singles, as Hank Williams -- who first appeared on the show in August 1948 -- would attest. (Williams, who eventually had his own sponsored radio program on WSM/Nashville, would often record Hayride shows ahead of time so he could tour.) Performing a new song on a show like Louisiana Hayride was very often just the leg up an artist needed to propel a regional hit. With a firm commitment to exposing new and regional talent to a wider audience, the show became a beloved stop on artists' Southern tours.

Within a year of its debut, the program was so popular that a regional 25-station network was pieced together to broadcast portions of it. The music was certainly a large part of that popularity, but the rotating emcees who kept the show moving with interviews and artist cues provided another kind of magic. Here, the artists were given a chance to connect with the listeners and let their personalities shine.

By 1954, a special 30-minute version of Louisiana Hayride was broadcast overseas on Armed Forces Radio. Another watershed moment came in August 1954, when a teenaged Elvis Presley made his debut, singing "That's Alright Mama." (Incidentally, it was Hayride emcee Horace Logan who coined the iconic phrase, "Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.") By the late '50s, however, the growing popularity of rock 'n' roll, in addition to the rise of televisions, cut into the show's popularity. On August 27, 1960, Louisiana Hayride ended its regular run.

In the years since, there have been many attempts to revive the name and what it stood for. Probably the best testament to the program is the volume of quality live music recorded during its tenure. Rhapsody has many of these releases available, so let's take a listen to some of them.

Click here to listen to a playlist:

Highlights from the Hayride

We don't know about you, but this time of year makes us want to strap on a pair of sparkly gold stilettos, squeeze into something that's possibly too tight given how much we ate over Thanksgiving, and get our ho-ho-holiday on -- on the dancefloor, of course. Thankfully, many of our favorite pop stars seem to feel the same way, obliging us with festive dance pop originals and clubby remakes of the classics, all decked out with killer beats and groovable hooks. To get you in the holiday spirit, we've assembled this little guide to the brightest lights on the holiday pop tree, from the Biebster's naughty, brand-spanking-new Under the Mistletoe to Destiny's Child's ode to Rudolph. It's Christmas -- with a beat you can dance to. 'Tis the season to get your booty wiggling!

Click here for a playlist:

Christmas on the Dance Floor

Justin Bieber
Under the Mistletoe
The Biebster + the holidays? Why didn't someone think of this sooner?! The boy wonder knows how to get you in the festive mood. And we do mean mood: things get downright naughty on "Christmas Eve." The classics are craftily reworked (Santa comes to town with hip-hop swagger; the drummer boy goes clubbing), and the originals are finely tuned to show off Bieber's surprising range, from dubby coffee-shop pop to soulful country. Plus, a bunch of fabulous guests stop by, including Usher, Boyz II Men and, yes, Mariah Carey. Mistletoe is no Mimi holiday album. But it's one heck of a holiday party. [Rachel Devitt]

The thing about Christmas music is you either love it or hate it. There isn't usually much middle ground. For those of us who love it, the warble of Alvin & The Chipmunks' "Christmas (Don't Be Late)" and Bobby Helms' rockabilly-ing "Jingle Bell Rock" are welcome at least the first 10,000 times we'll hear them--in the car, in the supermarket, in our sleep--between now and December 25th. For those poor souls who have to spend the next month or so trying (unsuccessfully) to get that seizure-inducing "Carol of the Bells" song out of their heads, we're sorry. You have absolutely no use for the list below. But, if you're like me and you listen to Darlene Love's "White Christmas" and, especially, her "Marshmallow World" in June, well, have fun, and don't miss Ella Fitzgerald's bangin' "Jingle Bells," the made-for-Jimmy-Buffett wonder "Mele Kalikimaka" by Bing Crosby, the backup singers in Elvis' "Blue Christmas" or any of Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas.

One thing: This list was supposed to be 25 albums, but it's actually 30. That's because I'm a weirdo and couldn't decide on just 25. I love Christmas music.

One other thing: Somebody needs to put out the soundtrack to Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas. But for now, this'll have to do.

1. Various Artists
A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector
Weird enough to actually like Christmas music? Well, Darlene Love's "White Christmas" and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" are the two best Christmas songs ever. The Crystals' "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" is third, and The Ronettes are always wonderful. Anyone who disagrees is getting coal in their stocking. [Mike McGuirk]

One of America's most successful indie labels doesn't run out of Brooklyn or Portland or L.A., but rather the modest metropolis of Durham, N.C., home of the Blue Devils of Duke University and the Bull Durham Tobacco Factory. It may not be the likeliest of habitats for a record label to blossom, but Merge Records has slowly risen to indie-powerhouse status.

Founded in 1989 by Superchunk's Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan, the label released a handful of indie classics by the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel, The Magnetic Fields and Superchunk themselves during the 1990s. But it wasn't until a little collective called Arcade Fire found themselves on the Billboard 200 for 2004's Funeral that the label started getting its due. Since then, bands like Spoon and She & Him have also had chart success, but perhaps the label's biggest feat to date was Arcade Fire's unprecedented Album of the Year Grammy win for 2010's The Suburbs. In the following year, albums by Wye Oak, Destroyer, Wild Flag and Telekinesis have helped earn the label further indie cred.

Below, we spotlight key albums from Merge Records' vast catalog. For a sampling of each album, check out our

Cheat Sheet: Merge Records playlist.

To get your head around trumpeter, virtuoso and jazz godhead Wynton Marsalis, you have to understand his oversized musical personalities. He's both the aggressive improvisational badass who spurred the Young Lions movement and the cocksure young interpreter of baroque trumpet concertos. He's at once the curmudgeonly jazz educator, the neotraditional cultural gatekeeper and the most celebrated black composer in contemporary American music. He's jazz's greatest ambassador and its narrow-minded mouthpiece. But above all, he's an unquestionably brilliant overachiever and an omnivorous musical searcher. Marsalis turned 50 this year, giving us a chance to revisit his highlights and listen from every angle.

Listen along with my accompanying playlist:

Celebrating Wynton Marsalis' Jazz

Click here to listen to an accompanying playlist:

Cheat Sheet: Urban Latin

"Urban Latin" is at once an extremely specific and yet incredibly vague term, but for our purposes here we've defined it loosely as Latin music that in some way cozies up to mainstream hip-hop and R&B, whether through its beats, its aesthetics, its collaborations or its target audience. We've focused this Cheat Sheet on three prominent styles: reggaeton, Latin hip-hop, and the newest big player in this game, bachata. That Dominican pop genre hasn't always been as urban-identified as, say, reggaeton (in fact, bachata was originally the music of the rural poor), but many of its biggest stars are carving out an aesthetic kinship to R&B that feels organic and sounds hot.

Case in point: Romeo Santos, the former lead singer of bachata boy band Aventura, who continues his former group's interest in hip-hop and R&B on his just-released, hotly anticipated solo debut. Get to know some of Santos' fellow "urbanites" with our Cheat Sheet!

There was once a time when Americans treated the idea of British rappers as a joke. How could the English, with their funny accents and halting rhymes, approach the dexterity and rhythm of quality hip-hop music? Those days ended with the classic 1997 compilation Black Whole Styles, and Roots Manuva's groundbreaking 1999 debut Brand New Second Hand. Since then, we've been aware that the U.K. has a strong hip-hop movement that rivals our own.

However, our knowledge of it remains incomplete. It's not our fault -- most U.K. rap never makes it across the pond. Last week, Professor Green -- who is both hailed and criticized as the U.K. Eminem -- released his second album, At Your Inconvenience. It's expected to debut near the top of the British charts, yet it's not scheduled for release in the States. The same goes for Chipmunk (Transition) and Wretch 32 (Black and White).

Ironically, the stuff we hear tends to be via indie labels, like Ninja Tune and its Big Dada subsidiary (Roots Manuva, Wiley and Dels). It's often experimental, with obvious appeal to adventurous listeners -- electronic and indie fans in particular. Meanwhile, traditional U.K. rap gets ignored, perhaps because American hip-hop fans are assumed to be more conservative in their tastes. But even a reputation as critic favorites didn't help Dizzee Rascal, whose 2009 U.K. hit Tongue N' Cheek was never released here; nor The Streets, whose final album, Computers & Blues, didn't get a proper retail release (although it's available digitally).

The singer-songwriter movement is generally depicted as an outgrowth of the 1960s folk revival. Near decade's end, as the story goes, denim-clad bards and feathery songbirds such as James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne shifted folk music's gaze off the world outside, including all its myriad political and social crises, and cast it upon humanity's inner realms (i.e. questions addressing emotional and psychic health, existential inquiry, love, relationships, even faith). Though these artists pushed folk into an orbit closer to pop's sonic palette, their music remained predominantly acoustic, centering around the solo performer as well.

What this version of history doesn't totally take into account are those who pushed the singer-songwriter archetype far beyond the sonic boundaries of folk music. Some, of course, were hardcore folkies for years before opening up their respective styles to unexpected influences and novel inspirations. Joni Mitchell and the great John Martyn, both of whom explored hybrids of jazz and funk, are perfect examples of this. However, the idea of "the confessional," the aesthetic cornerstone of the singer-songwriter, popped up in genres as distant as soul, progressive rock and symphonic pop. Look at it this way: had Marvin Gaye hung out at David Crosby's house in Laurel Canyon in the early 1970s, he would most certainly go down as one of the decade's great singer-songwriters. Right?

Spanning the late 1960s to the early '90s, the collection of albums below is an attempt to chart just a few of the non-folk musicians who created some of the most deeply confessional music of the last half-century.

Be sure to also check out my

Cheat Sheet: The Singer-Songwriter Beyond Folk Music playlist.

Deep house never really goes out of fashion; somewhere, there'll always be someone playing jazzy chords over a disco beat. For whatever reason, though, the style is particularly hot right now, with artists from Los Angeles to the Ukraine sinking their teeth into the slower tempos and moody melodies of dance music at its most romantic.

In part, it's a reaction to minimal techno's long, anemic reign of clicks and bleeps; it's also a logical extension of pop culture's cyclical appetites. Birthed in the 1990s, deep house fits the emerging decade's desire for the near-vintage, the just-past-its-prime-becoming-prime-again. But the return of deep house means more than that. It's also a reminder of disco's role as the genesis of all contemporary dance music; it unlocks the door for R&B to sneak inside. And, unlike what's happening in commercial dance music right now, the new deep house requires you to meet it halfway. While hardly bereft of riffs or hooks, it veils more than it yields.

Read on to sample some of the deep-house highlights of the past year or two, and hear even more on

The New Deep House playlist.

Also, to check out the roots of deep house, listen to our Chicago House Cheat Sheet.

"Heavy psych." Just the words themselves sound cool. When someone says a band plays heavy psych, you immediately at least have an idea of what you're in for. Specifically, super loud guitars, howling feedback and long floating sections that sound like you're docking your space craft on, um, Uranus. Or maybe Saturn. Anyway, fun, fun, fun.

That said, psychedelic music, as a whole, can be kind of annoying when it's too poppy (The Zombies) or too plink-plink-y (basically anything that the Ba-Da Bing! label used to put out). But when the music is a combination of heavy metal and space rock (see Blue Cheer and Hawkwind) or a more Stooge-punk hybrid like Monoshock, I, personally, can't get enough. Then there's all the Japanese dudes — Acid Mothers Temple (the very definition of psych rock), Mainliner (the definition of heavy psych) and Boredoms (good luck). There is a wide range of styles and bands that fall under this umbrella. And the line goes from the '60s all the way up to the present day.

Granted, this music is not for everybody, and psychedelic music, is, in the end, utterly personal. Even some fans of heavy psych who love the glacial crush of My Bloody Valentine will hate Captain Beyond. No matter, because the idea is to bring the listener to a different level of consciousness. That in itself is a very specific and ambitious concept that lends itself to extreme subjectivity, so it's no wonder.

The Smiths may just be one of the greatest indie rock bands of all time. They've certainly influenced a wealth of artists since their '80s heyday. The proof is in the enduring quality of their songbook and in the legions of new fans they continue to win all over the world. This is a band that can play a mix of 1950s rockabilly, '60s folk-rock, stark post-punk, lush orchestral pop and stately piano ballads. They had a punk rock drummer and a funk bassist, and Morrissey and Johnny Marr were one of the great songwriting partnerships. Marr was riding such a creative peak with The Smiths that he can't even remember what he did to come up with some of the guitar sounds he made. Likewise, Morrissey's game-changing lyrics are thought of as bookish and self-pitying, but they can be full of ribald, street-smart humor, brutal violence and moral complexity. For all the talk of heartache, the lyrics are often biting and witty.

Here, we celebrate their work with a Cheat Sheet featuring new, remastered versions of nearly every record in their catalog. Also, be sure to check out our playlist:

Cheat Sheet: The Smiths

"Hipster metal" is not so much a style of music as a state of mind. And we're not necessarily talking about the minds of the musicians themselves, who in most cases will deny the classification entirely. The phrase has probably been around for only a few years, and like similar accusations in other genres ("hipster rap," for instance), it's at least partially a pejorative — implying, as it does, that these aren't Real Metal Bands Listened to by Genuine Honest-to-Satan Metalheads, but rather acts marketed to (and, in some cases, at least tentatively embraced by) theoretically gullible indie rock twerps. Who'll fall for anything, after all, right? And even if they don't, taking an end-run shortcut around metal's troo fan base seems rather unseemly. Or at least, that's what some metal magazines would say — though, to be honest, if those mags weren't at least a wee bit hip themselves, they might not know of such bands at all.

So how do you figure out which bands qualify as hipster metal, anyway? Well, there's an awful lot of guesswork involved, but some reliable telltale signs might include: (1) putting out albums on Matador or Jagjaguwar; (2) having parody song titles; (3) regularly getting booked as the token metal band at festivals conspicuously lacking in metal; (4) sporting ironic-seeming '70s-porn mustaches; (5) having no members who aren't underweight; (6) having members who used to be in Dinosaur Jr.; (7) coming from Brooklyn or Austin; (8) stringing riffs reminiscent of classic metal bands end to end but opting not to have a singer; (9) regularly getting hyped as "psychedelic" or "eclectic"; and/or (10) getting called "metal" by people who don't know any better, despite sounding more like the White Stripes or the Flaming Lips.

Not all of the 25 bands below score high points on that checklist — in fact, a couple might even be considered hipster metal just because they're too rock 'n' roll not to be (plus, there's definite overlap with "stoner rock" and "doom" in certain cases). In fact, a few might even stretch the definition outright. But which ones? You tell us.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist:

Cheat Sheet: Hipster Metal

"Latin crossover" has meant many things over the years, from pop songs featuring Spanish lyrics to Latino artists who cracked the predominantly white mainstream charts. It's a vague, loaded and problematic term. But underneath that confusing umbrella, talented artists of Hispanic heritage have added rich musical, stylistic and sometimes linguistic strains to the tapestry of American pop music. That's what we're celebrating with this Cheat Sheet on Latin Crossover Artists, compiled in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, which is observed September 15 to October 15.

Click here to listen to an accompanying playlist:

Cheat Sheet: Latin Crossover Greats

Shakira
Laundry Service (2001)
The Colombian diva was already a pretty massive star in Latin America when she released her English-language debut in 2001. Her newly blonde hair aside, everything Shakira fans already loved her for was still there, perhaps even with some arguable improvements: sexy, hip-twitching beats; throat-clutching vocals; solid songwriting (particularly for an artist who was learning English as she went); and a musical body that was pop at its core but Latin in its soul. She danced fetchingly through a sprawling stylistic world here, from tango to belly dance, punk licks to heartfelt ballads. In short, she made America audiences fall hard for her version of Latin America.
See Also: Kat DeLuna

Pop punk is one big, fat oxymoron if you think about it, but if The Ramones were the first punk band, then "Blitzkrieg Bop'" and their obvious affection for teenybopper pop also made them the first pop punk band. Punk, in its earthiest of roots, may just be poppier than any self-aware devotee would ever admit. But since The Ramones, the genre branched off into several differing sectors, some more snot-nosed and anarchic than others. This Cheat Sheet highlights more of the latter: groups that nail the requisite sneer but add irresistible pop charm that even a mom could love (well, maybe), full of punks more likely to scream about orgasm addictions, getting stoned in the afternoon, suburban stagnancy and losing their nose-ringed sweetheart than any unjust isms. Starting with 1976's Ramones, we travel through time and highlight 20 of pop punk's most successful and influential albums to see how the genre has grown, changed and thrived.

Click here to listen to my playlist:

Cheat Sheet: A Pop Punk Timeline.

The Ramones
Ramones (1976)
Forget about "Anarchy in the U.K.": Punk started the minute the needle hit "Blitzkrieg Bop." The Ramones' debut has it all: buzz saw guitar riffs, insanely catchy tunes and an obvious love for 1960s teen pop. Their original "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" is even more authentic than the cover of "Let's Dance." The extra demos show they had it from the start. — Nick Dedina

More or less invented and/or exhumed (by a band called Death, naturally) in the sweltering swamps of Florida in the mid-'80s — though perhaps anticipated by any number of violently thrashing ensembles in Switzerland, Germany, the north of England and the San Francisco Bay before then — death metal takes ugliness to an extreme. Since its inception, it has occasionally got a smidgen more melodic, technical or grindcorelicious, yet it is still primarily comprised of bands named for autopsies, carcasses, obituaries and deicides. They growl like scary monsters (and not so you can make out many lyrics) about toxic garbage, bloody gore, internal bleeding, broken hands, dehydration and all manner of great green gobs of regurgitated monkey guts. And oh yeah: suffocation! Lots and lots of suffocation. Death-metal bands love that! Here are some to know.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist:

Cheat Sheet: Death Metal

With the arrival of Alice Cooper's new record, Welcome 2 My Nightmare -- a concept-album sequel to his 1975 classic Welcome to My Nightmare -- we got to thinking. It seemed like the whole idea of the concept album, a major facet of the rock era, with entries from damn near everybody -- The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper's), The Beach Boys, The Kinks, Floyd, Yes, Genesis, The Who -- had died a horrible, somewhat goofy, death. In my addled mind, I somehow got the idea that besides pretty much anything by Mastodon or R. Kelly (who both sang a cellphone conversation or hid in a closet), the concept album had gone the way of the dinosaur since Roger Waters' The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking came out in 1984. Boy, was I wrong.

Not only are there tons of concept albums still coming out, they're emerging from genres as far afield as progressive metal and hip-hop. Even better, the results are still often slightly crappy, a time-honored tradition of this '70s, uh, tradition. Let's face it, making a record with a unifying theme is not easy, and there are gonna be holes. Often musicians just get points for trying (in my book anyway). And I have to admit, I often like the crappy concept albums better than the "successful" ones. Below, you'll find a cross-section of some of the concept albums that came out in the past decade. As you can see, the art form is far from dying, and is just as suspect as ever.

Alice Cooper
Welcome 2 My Nightmare
While there's no escaping the fact that the most hardcore drug referenced on this sequel to the 1975 album is, uh, caffeine (track 2), at least former members of the Alice Cooper Band are playing the music. And even though there are both Auto-Tune vocals and rapping, there are moments when the group's '70s ferocity is recaptured, sort of. Their proclivities for cabaret music and Broadway dramatics are also touched on. To be fair, that rapping ("Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever") is done as a joke, and Cooper's trademark sly humor is everywhere here. [Mike McGuirk]

Oh, the marvels of modern technology! A handful of long-forgotten Hank Williams masters have been lovingly restored, and now the resulting three-disc set is available digitally. Rhapsody is using the release of Hank Williams: The Legend Begins to shine a spotlight on one of country music's most beloved icons. Here's where to find his best work.

The Legend Begins (2011)
This three-disc set, featuring previously unreleased gems, is a boon for Hank fans. The bulk of the collection consists of live takes from Williams' syndicated radio series, the Health and Happiness Show. The quality of these recordings, which include staples "Lovesick Blues," "Happy Rovin' Cowboy" and "Lost Highway," is impressive. The Rare and Unreleased disc surprises with "Fan It" and "Alexander's Ragtime Band," songs Williams recorded at age 15. Engineers were able to restore the decades-old acetate, and the scratches and pops make you feel like you're listening to a part of history.

Hiram King Williams may be known as the father of country music, but the singer first learned how to play the blues from a man named Rufus Payne, aka Tee Tot. This blues influence is evidenced in recordings throughout Williams' career, but comes to the forefront on the album Low Down Blues.

Since releasing its first strange transmissions in 2004 and '05, Los Angeles-based Not Not Fun Records has become one of the underground's most exciting, prolific and influential labels. Their aesthetic is commonly described as "hypnagogic pop," a tag that does a nice job of capturing the gooey and decayed fusion of synthesizer music, psychedelia, dub, lo-fi rock, exotica and '80s dance pop favored by much of the label's roster. We're talking freaky heavies with names like Sun Araw, Peaking Lights, Robedoor, Maria Minerva, LA Vampires, High Wolf, Sex Worker, Dylan Ettinger and Psychic Reality.

What's interesting is how every one of these artists feels like a honeybee clone working together to construct a deliciously eccentric hive, yet never at the expense of individual expression. On initial spins, Too Down to Die, Robedoor's neo-Spectrum descent into the phantom zone, sounds dimensions removed from Peaking Lights' narcotic-disco masterpiece 936, not to mention Maria Minerva's Cabaret Cixous, a collection of bedroom-diva grooves mired in solitude and loneliness. Spend enough time with them, however, and shared patterns and sensibilities emerge: the meticulously layered productions that feel like Third World salvage jobs built from discarded technology, the shuddering reverb cascading into negative infinity and, most importantly, the knack for bridging extreme avant-garde rock and dance music. This last quality really is key. No matter how out there any one of these musicians venture, always underpinning the music is a firm, if at times oddball, belief in the importance of communal body movement to (deranged) sound.

In the 1960s, most of the country charts were controlled by a handful of Nashville producers, and their fondness for lush string sections, syrupy background vocals and corny lyrics came to be known as the Nashville sound. At the same time, rock 'n' roll artists — who mostly wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, and had a hand in shaping their own sound while in the recording studio — were showing a growing number of young, blue-collar country lovers a different way of making music.

But back in Nashville, it was business as usual, which meant session musicians played, the singer sang and the producer added all the sonic "extras." Fed up with the way things were, Willie Nelson left Nashville in 1971 and headed back to Texas. Around the same time, Waylon Jennings' manager, Neil Reshen, hounded, badgered and harassed his record label to let the singer have complete creative control and produce his own records. In 1973, RCA released Jennings' Lonesome, On'ry and Mean to commercial and critical success. After that, the floodgates opened.

Here's a playlist with songs from the original players in the outlaw movement, plus some artists who buck the current Nashville norm:

Outlaw Country: Old-School Classics and Future Gems.

Continue on to read reviews of key albums in the genre.

Like the country's rich and varied natural landscape — and its thrilling and often tumultuous socio-political history — Colombian musical culture is exhilarating, breathtakingly diverse and at once richly historic and cutting-edge. Its musical claims to fame encompass everything from wide-ranging folk traditions to some of the world's biggest Latin pop stars, from rock heavyweights to alt-folkloric hip-hop. Colombian musicians are also equally brilliant at both artistic importing and exporting: salsa inundated the country and Colombians made it their own, while homegrown cumbia has infiltrated nearly every sector of the Latin world. What we've assembled here in this guide to Colombian music is only a very brief introduction, but it will give you a taste for just how deliciously diverse this country's musical heritage is. Dig in.

Click here to listen to an acompanying playlist:

Cheat Sheet: Colombia, the Heart of Latin Music

Fanny Lú
Lagrimas Calidas
Like Shakira? Try Colombia's other blonde-bombshell pop star. OK, her debut album doesn't sound much like Shakira's ardent belly-dance pop: instead, Lú laces her bubblegum beats through with the accordion-driven strains of northeast Colombia's vallenato music. Her first single, "No Te Pido Flores," a folklorico-lite coffee-shop-pop slice of sun, rocketed her to stardom in 2006.
See Also: Ilona, who bridges Lú's sweet alt pop with Shakira's throatiness. Soraya, who slings everything from bluesy pop rock to sleek dance pop.

We admit that the title of this Cheat Sheet we've compiled ("we" being Latin editor Rachel Devitt and Jazz editor Nate Cavalieri) is a bit unwieldy, a bit amorphous, a bit hard to pin down. But so is the movement we're talking about. And that's what it was: a movement. The Latin music scene that set New York (and, eventually, the world) on fire in the mid-20th century grew out of several styles: jazz, soul, and what would come to be known as salsa, of course — but also earlier Latin dance sounds like mambo, cha-cha-cha, and boogaloo. Leading the charge were musicians who immigrated to New York from Puerto Rico and Cuba, and began innovatively interweaving traditional Caribbean music with mainland pop, interlacing jazz improvisation and composition with Latin dance structures and infusing American soul with Afro-Latin rhythms.

Finally, it's also about the movement of bodies: this is music made for dancing! Here, we'll trace the rise of what's often called the New York sound, from its roots in 1950s jazz and mambo through its coalescing in N.Y.C. clubs and on the Fania label in the '60s, all the way to its culmination in the unstoppable wave of '70s salsa.

Various Artists
Fania Records 1964-1980: The Original Latin Sound of New York
If a zeitgeist could be boiled down to one album, this is what it would sound like: boogaloo, jazz, mambo, salsa and soul, all of it laced through with the hip-twitching traditional rhythms of Cuba and Puerto Rico. This is the definitive introduction to the heady brew that intoxicated New York and the world in the mid-20th century, from the label that defined the movement, thanks to its glittering, star-studded roster: Willie Colón saunters on "The Hustler," Hector Lavoe crowns himself "El Cantante," the Fania All-Stars tear up the Cheetah, and Celia Cruz, the Queen of Salsa, is positively regal on "Quimbara." — Rachel Devitt

Earth, Wind & Fire were the biggest black rock band of the 1970s. But today, they're among the era's most misunderstood platinum acts. The group's discography nearly mirrors black music's evolution, from the Afrocentric jazz of the Black Panther years to the quiet storm balladry and slick corporate funk that marked the end of that tumultuous decade with a merciful whimper. As the visionary leader, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Maurice White sought to encapsulate it all, and he succeeded remarkably. When you hear an Earth, Wind & Fire record, you know it. The soaring brass section led by Andrew Woolfolk and the Phenix Horns, the marvelous interplay between White's cool spoken-sung vocals and Philip Bailey's lush falsetto, and White's kalimba (aka African finger piano) gave them a unique, oft-copied sound. However, their capacity for hit singles has sometimes reduced them to pop-culture clichés, whether it was 1979's wildly over-the-top disco nugget "Boogie Wonderland" or Julia Louis-Dreyfus doing the funky-white-girl dance to "Shining Star" on Seinfeld.

Then there's that other black rock juggernaut of the '70s, Parliament-Funkadelic. The two organizations were rivals, and P-Funk figurehead George Clinton claimed that E.W.F. were "earth, all wind, and no fire." They celebrated the African American experience in markedly different ways. P-Funk adopted a cryptic language based on street slang, black popular culture and authors like Ishmael Reed. Their music was often intentionally cryptic, which not only protected them from homogenization (or "the placebo syndrome"), but also created a cult of believers dedicated to propagating Clinton's message of funk epiphany.

According to mainstream pop-music history, hard rock and disco were mortal enemies in the late 1970s. The former perceived the latter as overly effeminate and in many cases explicitly gay; the latter dismissed the former as macho and homophobic. It's a relationship best exemplified by the infamous Chicago disco riots. In the summer of 1979, disco haters — most of them lunkheads who had little understanding of rock 'n' roll's tangled history beyond stereotype and myth — gathered at Comiskey Park during a White Sox game and voiced their displeasure with the trend by participating in a record-burning bonfire, one that quickly devolved into a spat of random violence and vandalism.

However, if we rewind a few years more, back to the first half of the decade, the relationship between the two subcultures was significantly different. In its earliest stages, beyond a few main characteristics (howling diva vocals + saccharine strings + incessantly pounding beat), disco wasn't a genre of music per se; it was more of a philosophy of how to make urban club-goers shake their asses all night long. Profoundly inspired by the concert-as-epic-dance-party concept that acid-rockers and hippie groups such The Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers Band had innovated on the ballroom circuit, a string of DJs in New York (among them Francis Grasso, David Mancuso, Nicky Siano and Walter Gibbons) devised methods of mixing and blending music that allowed these disco pioneers to craft long, uninterrupted flows of sound rather than a collection of discrete tracks.

The rise of Sub Pop Records is a tale of Cinderella stature: Prince Charming came in the form of a rogue Aberdeen poet, and the rest, as they say, is history. But that was only the beginning of the story. From longhaired grunge to squeaky-clean indie folk to a world-music imprint and now hip-hop, the Seattle label has proven time and again to be one of the most reliable tastemakers in the biz. For over two decades, they've helped define whatever "indie music" is, or soon will be.

Sub Pop's formative years are often synonymous with the advent of grunge, but this isn't a totally accurate perception. Sure, they kick-started the careers of Nirvana and Soundgarden, but they also gave artists like Sebadoh, Sunny Day Real Estate, Codeine and Julie Doiron a platform on which to evolve — and to ultimately influence.

Below, we spotlight 15 key albums from Sub Pop's salad days. (Stay tuned for a Cheat Sheet of Sub Pop's post-2000 catalog.) For more from the label's early years, check out our comprehensive playlist of Sub Pop stars:

Sub Pop Records, The Early Years ('88-'99).

Nirvana
Bleach
Nirvana's heaviest album, with its prominent Melvins influence, delivers the band's perfect prescription — a head-nodding riff, Kurt Cobain's freaked-out loner verses followed by mirror-punching just before the chorus — just as powerfully as it did in 1989. Their next record would go global, but Bleach pile drives harder. The crisp remastering of this deluxe version dares you not to turn tracks like "Scoff," "Swap Meet" and "School" all the way up. An entire live set from the early days is included, and the sound on these cuts is fantastic. — Mike McGuirk

Latin alternative music, like anything lurking under that ambiguous "alt" umbrella, is a hodgepodge hive of sounds, ranging from gritty rock to twee pop, from experimental electronic music to quirky hip-hop. But one aspect of the sound is easy to pin down: initially a kind of boys' club (or at least a club in which admittedly very talented boys got most of the attention), the world of Latin alt has recently been invaded by captivating, critically acclaimed, incredibly talented female artists. In fact, there are so many fresh new female faces in this world that we're focusing here primarily on women working in the cantautor (aka singer-songwriter) tradition, and saving the hard-rocking outfits, punk bands and emcees for another time. But even within that concentration, a wealth of sonic diversity exists, from Juana Molina's ambient electro-pop to Rita Indiana's techno-merengue, from Pistolera's folklorico rock to indie-pop darling Ximena Sariñana, whose masterful self-titled sophomore album dropped this week.

Check out selections from all these records, and more, with our

Cheat Sheet: Latin Alt Divas playlist.

Ximena Sariñana
Mediocre (2008)
Yes, Sariñana has got a fantastic new album out — a rich, complicated, well-rounded effort that showcases her newfound musical maturity. But as soon as you're done falling in love with that one, go back to where it all began. The child of a screenwriter and a famous director, the Mexico City-based artist has intertwined the film and music worlds over the course of her short but impressive career, whether she's singing telenovela theme songs or creating the kind of cinematically crafted indie pop found on this debut. While not as complex as the stuff to come, Mediocre's title belies its content. Sariñana hooks the listener in with a peppier pop aesthetic, even as she maintains a cool, slightly detached hipness.

Last week I was packing up boxes in my mother's basement in Portland, Ore., when I came across an old favorite: Fennesz' 2001 album Endless Summer. Not the most germane music for sorting through thousands of LPs and CDs, perhaps — I find my teenage punk favorites get the job done a lot quicker — but it turned out to be the perfect fit for July's sweltering weather. As I nursed a cold Ninkasi Radiant Ale with the hum of the freeway wafting over the pine tops, deciduous leaves wind-whipped into a white-green froth in the hazy afternoon light, Fennesz' pink-noise fantasia felt tailor-made for the scene.

Apologies if that prose rubs you purple, but Christian Fennesz' super-saturated music tends to have that effect on the senses: working with guitars and computers, the Viennese musician has a way of turning the six-string's ring into a powdery, pastel explosion of color and texture. Endless Summer, as its Beach Boys-riffing title suggests, is a pipeline to the sublime.

Like all musical styles, reggae has progressed considerably from its early days. Spawned from mento and ska, the music took root in the 1970s, when The Wailers reached international success and paved the way for artists like Burning Spear, Black Uhuru and Steel Pulse. Much of that initial burst was produced in outdated, shambolic studios that provided much of the soul and authentic flavor so representative of the movement.

As reggae gained momentum in the 1980s, artists had more resources, like synthesizers and digital instruments, to experiment with. But by the next decade, many reggae fans were looking for a return to the genre's classic sound. The 1990s saw the emergence of the conscious dancehall scene, which re-instilled the values of roots reggae with an updated musical delivery. Artists like Sizzla and Capleton bounced from Nyabinghi chants to hip-hop to one-drop riddims, helping to establish the roots revival scene. Not surprisingly, this movement has since been led by the children of such legends as Bob Marley, Jimmy Riley and legendary producer King Tubby. But international artists like Sicilian-born musician, producer and vocalist Alborosie (rumored to have purchased King Tubby's old analog delay unit to get an authentic sound) have also made a significant mark on the scene, which is still going strong.

Ever since fusion devolved into flaccid pop-jazz in the 1980s, the genre has been treated with suspicion by more than a few jazz snobs. In fact, fusion didn't get a fair shake right out of the gate. When Miles Davis went electric and started performing before rock audiences, critics couldn't stop condemning the man. "SELLOUT!" they proclaimed ad nauseam, even though the music he made was wildly challenging and ambitious.

Between 1969 and 1976, fusion's first and second waves produced some of the most powerful and forward-looking music of the post-hippie rock landscape. This is the era I'll spotlight here. Now, it's important to point out that fusion took on many forms throughout the 1970s. In addition to rock, jazz mingled with funk, Latin music and even avant-garde classical. We'll touch on all these incarnations. That said, the decade also produced something called "jazz-rock," a phrase critics and fans often used when talking about Blood, Sweat & Tears; Chicago; The Electric Flag; and similar ilk. These artists don't figure here; however, definitely check out my Cheat Sheet on Classic East Coast Horn Rock, if you dig classic rock with brass and horns. And while I'm touching on related topics, do explore my Krautrock Cheat Sheet: much like progressive rock, the German movement had quite a lot in common stylistically with fusion.

Last, but certainly not least: don't forget to crank my Glory Days of Fusion playlist.

"Run the World (Girls)" may mark the first time Beyoncé has ever assembled an actual army of ladies to stage a pop-culture gender coup, but she's always claimed a powerful position for girls with her music. Bey's been on a girl-power trip for a long time, from Destiny's Child's strong sister anthems (see "Bills, Bills, Bills" and "Independent Women Pt. 1") to the tables-turning "Suga Mama," from the "A Milli" answer song "Diva" to the Fosse-fied kiss-off "Single Ladies." As fiercely original as they are, however, those female-focused cuts are also steeped in a long history of girl-power pop: mainstream-friendly tunes that make you wiggle your booty and maybe think critically about what it means to do so.