Chicago

It's pretty easy to argue that Bloc Party's 2005 debut, Silent Alarm, was the high point of the dance-punk craze that peaked a few years ago. It met the quota for Gang of Four-style pointiness but combined it with an emotional heft rare in the genre--the melancholy wail of front man Kele Okereke clicked with the group's deceptively catchy thump to give the music a cathartic, dance-your-bad-feelings-away groove not dissimilar to what you get from Donna Summer's better jams.

Few bands over the past couple of decades have been as prolific and unpredictable as Circle, the Finnish group that coined the term NWOFHM (New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal) to help establish its place in the firmament. While heavy metal has certainly been at the core of most of Circle's music, the clever acronym doesn't do justice to the band's range--over the years (32 studio and live albums since 1994) Circle has given us its own spins on techno, prog, Krautrock, drone, free jazz, and much more.

The first time I heard Those Darlins, this trio from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, struck me as a group of pals who started playing songs together just for kicks--the way lots of rock and country bands form, I'm sure. But their performances hum with a spirit of fun and camaraderie that I rarely hear these days--and without devolving into a loose jam session or hootenanny.

Composer George Flynn, who chaired Musicianship Studies and Composition at DePaul University for 25 years, has just released his latest album on Southport Records--the sixth recording of his rigorous music for the imprint since 2000. The three pieces on American City were all written between 1995 and '98, while he was still a faculty member at the school, the result of a decision to compose new works for each of the three major student ensembles--chorus/chamber choir, orchestra, and wind ensemble.

With his geek-chic style, New York rapper Theophilus London might look like he belongs in a class with tight-pants new jacks like the Cool Kids and Kid Cudi, but his music bears only a passing resemblance to theirs. The superficial cheekiness of his current release, This Charming Mixtape--its title references the Smiths and its cover spoofs Elvis Costello's This Year's Model--doesn't really prepare you for the weirdness in its guts.

Guitarist Jeff Parker maintains a pretty strong presence in Chicago, which is something we should all be grateful for. What's unfortunate is that he's only made two records as a leader--we're talking about one of the most exciting and original guitarists of the past 15 years. His most recent outing is the 2004 Thrill Jockey release The Relatives, which veers away from the austerity of his 2003 trio recording for Delmark, Like-Coping, thanks to the plush electric piano of a fellow named Sam Barsheshet.

Los Cam­pesinos! know misery and dancing aren't antithetical, and that in fact combining the two can be a really excellent experience. The second album the Welsh septet released last year, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (Arts & Crafts), is dominated by lyrics about heartbreak, smoking, drinking, and heartbreak set to pogo-worthy indie rock with a heart of punk.

Cosmic. A couple of weeks ago I had a serious moment with the Flamin' Groovies' Teenage Head at my bandmate's apartment and started a listening regimen that was roughly one spin of TH for every other record I played. Then I get an e-mail that the Groovies--or at least two of the main Groovies--are reuniting for the Ponderosa Stomp, a music festival that's been happening in New Orleans for the past few years that I'm sorry to say I didn't even know existed.

One of the strangest things I've witnessed in my years as a music fan has been Ween's career arc. In the late 80s their schizophrenically demented, hilariously adolescent lo-fi pop detritus was so weird that even some open-eared college-radio kids couldn't get into it, but now Gene and Dean--having long ago committed to material that's at least straightforwardly genre driven, if not exactly straightforward--are among the prime movers in the jam-band universe, enjoying a sustained mass popularity unprecedented in their career.