Matt Berninger's murmured musings are placed at the forefront, yet the band follow his every pause and sigh, giving the music the impression of riding a wave; things surge forward, then recede.

Petty's roots rock becomes clean and glossy, layered with shimmering vocal harmonies, keyboards, and acoustic guitars. It's a friendly, radio-ready sound, and if it has dated somewhat over the years, the craft is still admirable and appealing. Newsly app http://newsly.me promo code RBRMUS

Born out of chance encounters by three young musicians on uncommon but similar paths, indie supergroup Boygenius collects the talents of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus and results in an exciting and inspired chemistry. Already respectively successful when the idea to collaborate came up, each artist had fine-tuned her own distinctive approach to introspective and often sad-hearted songwriting. These variant approaches come to define the charm of Boygenius. Newsly app http://newsly.me promo code: RBRMUS

Personal tensions fueled nearly every song on Rumours, which makes listening to the album a nearly voyeuristic experience. You're eavesdropping on the bandmates singing painful truths about each other, spreading nasty lies and rumors and wallowing in their grief, all in the presence of the person who caused the heartache. Newsly app http://newsly.me promo code: RBRMUS

Cracker Island marks something of a retreat for Gorillaz, moving the virtual group away from the excess of The Song Machine, a multi-part series of collaborations that sometimes threatened to collapse upon its own weight. Guests are still featured on Cracker Island -- collaboration is one of the chief reasons Damon Albarn launched the group at the dawn of the millennium -- But how does it hold up with the RBR.Music team? Newsly app http://newsly.me promo code: RBRMUS

gospel, soul, folk, dub, and hip-hop recombined with punk energy -- and reaffirm that deeply physical music can have a psychedelic quality. Hear the RBR team try to break this wall of sound record down.

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Blessed and cursed with an enormous amount of hype from the press at the time, The Strokes may or may not be completely arty and calculated, but that doesn't prevent Is This It from being an exciting, compulsively listenable debut. Newsly app http://Newsly.me promo code: RBRMUS

The final album with Jim Morrison in the lineup is by far their most blues-oriented, and the singer's poetic ardor is undiminished, with cuts that rate among their finest and most disturbing work. The seven-minute title track was a car-cruising classic that celebrated both the glamour and seediness of Los Angeles; the other long cut, the brooding, jazzy "Riders on the Storm," was the group at its most melodic and ominous. A worthy finale from the original quartet. Newsly app http://Newsly.me promo code: RBRMUS

Only the Strong Survive may be the first time Bruce Springsteen has recorded an album dedicated to soul and R&B, yet those styles have always been present in his music, welling up in the rhythms and outlook of the E Street Band at their most jubilant. Here Springsteen goes it alone - with varying results. Newsly app http://Newsly.me promo code: RBRMUS

The soul at the heart of Bloodline Maintenance functions as the music that bonds generations, allowing the singer/songwriter to delve into blues, doo wop, and hip-hop, all in a manner that feels heartfelt, not flashy. The result is one of Harper's richer records: it's impossible to separate the music from the message, which makes it all the more resonant. Newsly app http://newsly.me promo code: RBRMUS