(FORTUNE Magazine) – Badlands: A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska Sub Pop

Women deliver the killer moments on this song- by-song reconstruction of the Boss' bleak 1982 landmark: Buy it just to gasp at Chrissie Hynde's "Nebraska," Dar Williams' "Highway Patrolman," and especially Ani DiFranco's hushed, clenched, capillary-chilling update of "Used Cars."

Lenny Kravitz Greatest Hits Virgin

Give the guy a break. Cynics knock him as a recycler of classic-rock tropes, but gems like "Let Love Rule" and "Fly Away" prove that Lenny's learned good things from his elders. A peanut-butter sandwich might taste like nostalgia too, but it sure is satisfying.

Philip Glass Symphony No. 5 Nonesuch

Time to set aside the stock portfolio and ponder a few big issues. How big? Try symphonic subtitles like "Creation of the Cosmos" and "Judgment and Apocalypse." (Whoa.) Erecting a choral cathedral from a stockpile of sacred scripture, Glass puts the "magnum" back in magnum opus.

Ruben Gonzalez Chanchullo World Circuit/Nonesuch

Possibly the most laid-back of all the Buena Vista Social Club's spinoff albums, this warm, sunset-hued session with Cuba's beloved octogenarian pianist lollygags and weaves like an old cat slinking along a Havana alley. Rarely does virtuosity sound so unforced.

Sigur Ros Agaetis Byrjun Fat Cat

It makes sense that this music comes from Iceland: Eerie, craggy, glacially slow, and glazed over with a gleaming coat of sonic frost, it could easily serve as the windswept soundtrack to a film about life along the Breidha Fjord.