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The Boy with No Name is a sparkling surprise, as the Scottish pop band Travis returns with a sharp batch of winning pop songs. Best of all is "Selfish Jean," on which singer Fran Healy disparages an ex-lover over a chiming, instantly memorable guitar hook.

Upon first listen, "Not Yet" flaunts the emotional energy characteristic of the London-based band The Veils. Subsequent attention reveals a surprising assortment of themes and ideas, including references to war, motherhood, disease, death and even a veiled mention of homosexuality.

In a career that spans seven decades, pianist Hank Jones has worked with everyone who's anyone in jazz, including Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Billie Holiday. One of the last of his era, Jones celebrates the legends of his time, seeming to downplay his own genius.

He is the most important jazz musician of all time, and even that's an understatement. Louis Armstrong defined American popular culture in the 20th century as a musician, an actor and an entertainer. As a singer and trumpeter, he taught the world to swing.

As the old New Yorker cartoon said, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." And if you're an online gamer, your opponents may not know that you're a 27-year-old white mother pretending to be a large, black male warrior.

The electronic artist Mocean Worker grew up around the greats of jazz and related American musics. On his new CD, he draws upon his history to create vintage-sounding, danceable grooves which aren't quite jazz — but sound a lot like it.

Miranda Lambert's album Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is appealingly nervy and dark — never more so than on its crackling opener, "Gunpowder and Lead," which outlines the tale of a woman lying in wait for her abusive boyfriend, shotgun in hand.

Israeli-born pianist and composer Anat Fort spent the last seven years in New York, much of it working on her first album for ECM Records. She says that though some of the music was written quickly, it took time to discover how to perform it.

Thornton is about to release his fourth album as a singer-songwriter, Beautiful Door. The disc reasserts the actor and screenwriter's status as a serious roots-rock musician — one who's unafraid to address his own specific foibles and missteps.

In the past, Eisley has made music characterized by an off-center sway that's all about being overcome: by the moment, the emotion, the music. But Combinations and the song "Taking Control" are about overcoming, with a newfound directness and heaviness.