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"Adventures in Solitude" closes the band's fine new album without conserving hooks: Opening with a few spare verses and memorable interludes, the song soon blooms into a series of rich, warm-blooded choruses, as Neko Case rushes the spotlight and the strings sweep in.

In Ghana, the '70s was a time of political repression, high inflation, and funky pop music. A young British emigre named John Collins formed the Bokoor Band with locals in 1971. The Bokoor Beats retrospective captures a band full of pride and confidence from Ghana's then-recent independence.

From its name to its stripped-down acoustic Americana, the L.A.-based duo Chris & Thomas revels in straightforward simplicity. But make no mistake: There's nothing easy about writing songs as purely infectious as "Take These Thoughts."

Smashing Pumpkins was one of the biggest alternative rock success stories of the 1990s. Now famously bald-headed lead singer Billy Corgan has reunited with one of his original bandmates, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, to release the first new Smashing Pumpkins album in seven years: Zeitgeist.

After stints as a member of The Dambuilders and Those Bastard Souls, Joan Wasser is finally attracting attention with her own spellbinding voice front and center.

An ordained preacher at 15, Keite Young now aims to conquer the sinful world of secular music. At 27, he showcases all the tools on "E.N.S.," including a keening tenor, a sharp falsetto and a thorough knowledge of both the gospel idiom and the school of funk.

Two new offerings show her versatility on clarinet and tenor sax. On Poetica, the Tel Aviv-born New Yorker leads a small jazz combo and a string quartet. Then there's Noir, a CD that celebrates a modified big-band sound.

Kate McGarry is an equal opportunity vocalist. On her new CD, she revamps jazz standards with hints of popular music, and infuses her natural jazz instincts into pop, folk and original compositions.

By the early 1930s, Louis Armstrong had already revolutionized jazz. Through the next four decades, he would continue to reinvent himself. Along the way, he produced landmarks of the 20th century in American music and entertainment.

Dax Riggs' rollicking "Living Is Suicide" contemplates the futility of existence dressed up as a garage-rock anthem. Prickly and ghostly, occasionally plodding, occasionally amazing and deathly serious, it's one of the year's most delightfully forbidding songs.