Kimya Dawson and Friends
"Alphabutt"
(K)

Although anybody who thought "Juno" was icky better get a barf bowl, my only problem with the flick was that its soundtrack recycled songs I preferred in their natural habitats. So take these 15 ditties in 28 minutes as the soundtrack to the sequel, in which the adoptive mother cuts off her blond mane so she can occasionally escape the bouquet of talc, poop and sour milk that follows babyparents everywhere. Jollied along by an anarchic chorus of 4-year-olds, it's definitely for kiddies -- hearing a 4-year-old sing along with the fart jokes cured my own ickophobia. But it's also the rare work of art that captures the dizzy infatuation that is dedicated infant care. All that's missing is a song about sleep deprivation.

Girl Talk
"Feed the Animals"
(Illegal Art)

My body already knew what my powers of distinction told me when I replayed the Pittsburgh DJ's 2006 breakthrough mashup "Night Ripper," which is that this is the one that goes for the jugular: historically guaranteed barn burners like "Gimme Some Lovin'," "A Whiter Shade of Pale," "Rebel Rebel" and "96 Tears" validating modern-day filth on the order of UGK's offensive "International Players Anthem" and Three 6 Mafia's odious "I'd Rather" (the one where Project Pat pretends he did his bid as a top). But only when I printed out Wikipedia's list of samples [Wikipedia] -- good enough for downloaders, though an official version comes with the official release -- did I get it. It's like reading along with lyrics no one can fully make out unaided -- by the Clash, say. Mining classics like "Mickey," "Bad Girls" and "Mama Said Knock You Out" for beats you can't ID without a scorecard, chipmunking such totems as the Band, Radiohead, Sinead O'Connor, Styx and the Beastie Boys, marching Kelly Clarkson to Nine Inch Nails and Britney Spears to Air, fabricating duets by Trina and M.I.A. or Public Enemy and Young Leek, Gregg Gillis has plenty to say about music [MySpace]. What he has to say about life, which is that "I'd Rather" equals "Gimme Some Lovin'," remains more limited. Nevertheless, sequences here give me hope. In my favorite, Ice Cube's "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted" turns into Hot Chocolate's "Every 1's a Winner."

Jaguar Love
"Jaguar Love"
(Matador)

This three-song skyrocket of an EP begins with the opener and closer of the pained, poetic album it renders a luxury instead of proving a necessity. With a reformed Blood Brother shrieking his mad visions like Kathleen Hanna on Halloween and a Pretty Girls Make Graves guy overseeing the hooky noise-punk, it's like riot grrrl turned into a style after its surprise factor played out. The non-album track shouldn't have been. It's about one Townes Van Zandt fan ditching another in a Spanish train station after the ditchee tells him he's knocked her up.

Kasai Allstars
"In the 7th Moon, the Chief Turned Into a Swimming Fish and Ate the Head of His Enemy by Magic"
(Crammed Discs)

Where Konono No. 1 play unpolished though by now self-conscious street music, the second band to get its own Congotronics album is a "cultural" collective in which five ethnic groups from Congo's strife-torn, diamond-producing Kasai region fuse and spread their traditions. It serves up the distorted buzz Congotronics fans jones for, sonics that are generally raunchy even though the thumb pianos also generate balafon beauty, and five lead singers [MySpace]. The long track lengths and ritualistic vocals are more village than metropolis even though Kinshasa is their home -- and also more village than the Afro-indie hipster might prefer. Afro-indie folkies won't care.

Jenny Lewis
"Acid Tongue"
(Warner Bros.)

Like so many solo statements, this one's awash in freedom of choice -- string section on demand, a drummer who knows her place, arrangements jenny-rigged beneath verses that could use a groove, and three male notables, including Elvis Costello himself. Only a talent as major as Lewis could half bring it off. But note that it's Rilo Kiley's Jason Boesel whose drums set off the lazy "See Fernando," about a secular saint who'll always buy a sinner a beer, and the wicked "Carpetbaggers" [MySpace], about dirty-booted jezebels tricking innocent young things into helping with the groceries. With Boesel helping, the nine-minute "The Next Messiah" may well convince you that her dad or someone like him was a power-mad con artist. But he fails to deliver "Jimmy Killed Mom" from the skeptical scrutiny due all songs on oedipal themes since the Doors' "The End."

Taj Mahal
"Maestro"
(Heads Up)

Maybe I have a weakness for African-Americans from Hawaii, or maybe this one knows how to bend the blues, croon the diaspora and also sing Hawaiian. Then again, on his strongest non-collaborative album [MySpace] since the '70s, it's possible he's just extra excited. At 66, he leads multiple bands, including Los Lobos and Ivan Neville's crew through previously unmined naturals, from "Scratch My Back" to "Diddy Wah Diddy," and keeper originals such as "Strong Man Holler," in praise of a woman who was sweet 17 in halcyon 1959.

Raphael Saadiq
"The Way I See It"
(Columbia)

In 1996, Saadiq turned the climactic Tony! Toni! Toné! album into a virtuoso history lesson. Six years later, he tried to dazzle Maxwell in his own reflected glory. Six years later yet again, he outdoes himself with a fearless return to retro [MySpace]. Singing with the obliging malleability of last Temptation Dennis Edwards, emoting with the sweet specificity of miracle worker Smokey Robinson, he goes Motown with so much joy in one-man-band craft he'll not only convince the girl he's sweet-talking that this is forever, he'll convince you. This late in the game he's got no time for filler. Even the Katrina lament "Big Easy" stays within the parameters of a genre he inhabits from the inside out.

Wire
"Object 47"
(Pinkflag)

Deprived of Bruce Gilbert's guitar, these fractious lifers return to and improve on their dance-rock '80s. From the scene-setting new-wavey relationship-gone-sour of "One of Us" [MySpace] to the climactic electropunk historo-fatalism of "All Fours," though not always in between, they remind you why they were a great band. But they should know better than to dis the Mekons, who still are a great band when the time seems right.