A celebration in simplicity. On her fourth album, 2021's Cool, Colleen Green makes catchy, colorful melodic magic out of songs largely structured with restraint. I love this album so much.

The Dillards were the first band to bring the backwoods shredfest genre known as bluegrass out west. Within one year of their arrival in Los Angeles in 1962, The Beverly Hilldillards landed a recording contract with Elektra, a supporting role on the Andy Griffith Show and released Back Porch Bluegrass - fifteen metallic-acoustic rippers that serves as a fantastic introduction to traditional bluegrizzle.

The central African Republic of Cameroon is partially located in the Congo Basin - one of the greenest lungs in the world - but nevermind botanicals and giant frogs, we're here for the funk. Jean Marie Taim and Maurice Foty Kembiwo aka J.M. Tim & Foty, were a Cameroonian musical duo that released a series of funk-infused banger LPs in the late 1970s - and we shall explore and enjoy the first of those.

Def Leppard's fourth album Hysteria is a hit machine - one of the biggest selling albums of all time. Released in 1987 and armed with seven hit songs, 'Thriller with a Mullet' was the biggest adversary to the emerging Hair Hunx dynasty at the time and continues to soundtrack our lives and pad cover band setlists to this day.

The only two likable members of iconic Vietnam War soundtrack band Jefferson Airplane peel away from the group in 1972 and put together a side project called Hot Tuna. Their debut studio album Burgers is pure back porch boogie warmth compared to the bloated and cold catalog of their main band. Classic rock stoner deep tracks all up in this one.

This is the album to start with if you're looking to cash in your PJ Harvey V-card. Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea is really just one story - an iconoclastic musician letting loose and enjoying her life. Then again, PJ Harvey says that most of her songs are not autobiographical, so who knows what.

A half hour of bursting instrumental beauties from the second most famous person from Fredon, NJ.

More Songs About Buildings and Food is the Talking Heads second album and the first of three masterpieces with Brian Eno riding shotgun. This is the LP where the Talking Heads find their sound in real time and begin a decade-long journey making asexuality...danceable.

King Diamond was already a metal legend when he put out the semi-conceptual The Spider's Lullabye in 1995. It's almost an afterthought for King D - he considered it forgettable and difficult to make. For Boogie Chitz, The Spider's Lulz is a classic and contains some of the best 1990's dance beats this side of La Bouche - despite being a thematic European heavy metal record.