(FORTUNE Magazine) – AIMEE MANN Bachelor No. 2 (SuperEgo)

Some folks save their heartache for the shrink's couch. Fortunately for us, the fragile flower behind the Magnolia soundtrack likes to bring her blissful love-gone-wrong songs into the recording studio.

THOMAS CHAPIN Alive (Knitting Factory Records)

This saxophone daredevil was just approaching his creative peak when he died of leukemia in 1998. The hauntingly raucous climax of "Night Bird Song" alone makes this eight-CD box set the jazz pickup of the year.

GHOST DOG The Way of the Samurai: The Album (Epic)

What happens when you grow up listening to too much hip-hop and watching too many spaghetti Westerns? If you're the mad musical genius known as "the RZA," you crank out a brilliantly menacing soundtrack.

STEVIE WONDER Innervisions (remastered) (Motown)

The five flawless albums Stevie Wonder recorded between 1972 and 1978 each deserve to be in your collection. If they're not, start with his newly remastered 1973 funk masterpiece, featuring "Higher Ground" and "Livin' for the City."

THE APPLES IN STEREO The Discovery of the World Inside the Moone (SpinArt)

Like the slightly deranged score for a beach-blanket romp, this psychedelic pop collective's chipper ditties are what the Beach Boys might have sounded like had they been born 30 years later.