Liars
Point Your Pistols to the Sigh (Adult Swim)
Buzzing psychetronica menace like this can only be used to soundtrack two things: preparing for a night of doing unspeakable acts, and experiencing the inevitable crash afterward.

Hooray for Earth
Never (Dovecote)
It starts out sounding like it’s going to be a brain-drilling industrial assault, then shifts gears into a dreamily expansive noise-pop beauty. Feedback never sounded so sweet.

Graph Rabbit
Only Fields (Butterscotch)
With its chiming bells and simple but plaintive melody, “Only Fields” is the kind of song you want comforting you when it feels like all that’s holding your heart together is Scotch tape and sheer will.

Saint Lou Lou
Maybe You (Kitsuné)
A shimmery little ballad that leaves us feeling all floaty in that first-love kind of way. And we’re not just saying that because Saint Lou Lou comprises gorgeous identical-twin sisters from Sweden. Hello!

Sandra Kolstad
The Well (We Will Change It All) (Trust Me)
Chilled-out electro pop from Berlin (via Norway), carried along by percolating synth-bass and lyrics like “We want the water from a deeper well.” No idea what that means, but it sounds profound.

Winterfylleth
The Fate of Souls After Death (Candlelight)
Bleak, caustic, and monumentally fucking depressing, a song like “The Fate of Souls After Death” could only have emerged from somewhere as monumentally fucking depressing as Manchester.

Chrome Canyon
Generations (Stones Throw)
When the robots finally tear down our cities and rebuild them to suit their own soulless purposes, the synthetic arpeggios of “Generations” will be the soundtrack.

PVT
Shiver (Felte)
And when the surviving remnants of humankind finally pull themselves out from the rubble and survey the landscape, this minor-key electro lament just might make everything seem a bit better.

Bob Mould
The Descent (Merge)
Bob Mould shamelessly plunders his own past to write a surging-guitar rocker that sounds like a Sugar B-side. Of course, when you laid the foundation, you’re entitled to build on it.

Paul Banks
The Base (Matador)
Ditching the Julian Plenti nom de rock, Interpol frontman Paul Banks delivers a moody number that seems like a small part of a larger picture. In other words, give us more, more, more.

Chairlift
I Belong in Your Arms (Japanese Version) (Columbia)
Sure, Chairlift already released this song eight months ago on the Something album. But this version is in Japanese! Super kawaii!