Braveface by Esser

With a musical bent towards bouncy melodies and eclectic instrumentation, Ben Esser's debut album of fractured pop is still more muddled than sharp. The dark undercurrents in some of his songs make sense. He's often namechecking 1960s British producer Joe Meek, a skilled yet paranoid artist known for both his tragic demise, a shotgun murder/suicide in 1967, and his ramshackle audio experimentation on hit singles such as "Telstar". Esser seems to aspire to create conceptual pop-- not sure if his matching good and bad neck tattoos are commentary on the duality of man or just fashionable ink. But where Meek literally experimented with found sounds and production gear, Esser plays with established techniques and toys to no singular effect.

Two by Miss Kitten and the Hacker

Two opens up the sound about as far as it can go while still paying homage to early-'80s no wave. Instead of sounding like a remastered ESG rethinking if they're truly "Moody," here the Hacker's tracks sound more like Yaz or Mr. Fingers banging out an alternative score to Koyaanisqatsi. Miss Kittin's occasionally indifferent interjections sound a lot less like parody and a lot more like a woman contented in her superficial surroundings.

Moondagger by Daestro

Deastro is a project led by Randolph Chabot, an ambitious young guy from Detroit for whom no mode of expression would seem to be wholly sufficient-- in terms of scalability or just sheer size. Everything he does is dramatic and huge. Chabot also has a good grasp on all the things that conspire to make up pop hooks which helps keep his heaviness light and makes Deastro all the more endearing.

Ocean Eyes by Owl City

The third album from MySpace phenom Owl City, a.k.a., Adam Young, is pristine pop electronica: synths and strings meld seamlessly into dreamy, summery atmospherics. But while Young's compositions occasionally flirt with the nuanced melodicism of Jimmy Tamborello or Jona Bechtolt, he rarely lets even the slightest risky idea emerge. The result is a skillfully crafted record that feels blissfully monochromatic.