(FORTUNE Magazine) – B-52's Nude on the Moon: B-52's Anthology Rhino

If we're talking about the evolution of irony in America, then the B-52's shaped pop culture as much as Dylan ever did. A quarter-century (gulp!) after the band first infected the nation with a hot-pink strain of sci-fi camp, songs like "52 Girls" sound just as resonant as "Maggie's Farm"--and a lot more fun.

Norah Jones Come Away With Me Blue Note

Norah Jones has a voice that leaves you spellbound; her debut, a delicate offering of foxy, jazz-flecked chamber pop, instantly puts the 22-year-old chanteuse in the company of Cassandra Wilson and Shelby Lynne. Starting now, you're going to be hearing it at cocktail parties for the rest of the decade.

Rye Coalition On Top Tiger Style Records

The basement metallurgists in Rye Coalition take the primary ore of classic rock--the tasty riff--and subject it to electromagnetic mutations. The result, in songs like "Stairway to the Free Bird on the Way to the Smokey Water," is a blistering combustion that threatens to turn your speakers into smoking husks.

Steve Earle Guitar Town MCA Nashville

If Guitar Town's moonshine-Springsteen jangle doesn't seem all that revolutionary these days, well, neither does the Louisiana Purchase. Back when Ryan Adams was still in Garanimals, Earle was staking out the promised land of "alternative country," and this 1986 album (being reissued) was the howl of his manifest destiny.

Brendan Benson Lapalco StarTime International

You can judge the superiority of a pop record by the way the singer deploys the word "yeah." Eleven seconds into the surging, Ziggy Stardust-ish power chords of "Tiny Spark" you know you're in very good hands. Benson's "yeah" is perfect--somewhere between a smirk and an invincible rallying cry.