(FORTUNE Magazine) – Scapegoat Wax Okeeblow Grand Royal Records

What kind of hip-hop comes out of Chico, Calif.? Laid-back, sun-bleached, and all folked-up, this blue-eyed groove opus is wired for a lazy Saturday morning. Beat maestro Marty James rambles all over the place, name-checking Duran Duran and rapping along to Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata."

Dawn Upshaw Angels Hide Their Faces Nonesuch

It begins with the following couplet by the poet John Dryden: "Music for a while/Shall all your cares beguile." And indeed, Upshaw's interpretation of a Bach cantata and several songs by Henry Purcell is so fluid, strong, and serene that it acts upon a cluttered cortex like deep-tissue shiatsu.

The Dream Syndicate The Days of Wine and Roses Rhino

California's neo-psychedelic trendlet never nicked the charts in the '80s, but it did produce a masterpiece: the Dream Syndicate's feedback-squalling debut. On Rhino's reissue, the band sounds like a prototype for Pavement, with frontman Steve Wynn teetering between spite and narcolepsy.

The Detroit Cobras Life Love and Leaving Sympathy for the Record Industry

They play covers, but don't even think about calling the Cobras a wedding band. Belter Rachael Nagy and her comrades track down lost R&B curios (by the likes of Ike Turner and Otis Redding) and juice them up with piston-grinding garage-rock ferocity.

The Word The Word Ropeadope Records

The Word went down to the crossroads...and wound up taking a totally different exit than Robert Johnson's. Inspired by the House of God church, which uses a steel guitar and bluesy gospel hymns to lift people out of their pews, the Word levitates you with gusts of sanctified riffology.