In five stellar LPs as the word-spluttering frontman for the Hold Steady, Craig Finn proved that nobody can match his ear for the way American losers talk. And in a Finn song, they're usually talking themselves into their next doomed move. Cut with a country-rock pickup band, his first solo album is full of bleakly funny noir tales. His characters are like the psycho-eyes loners from On the Beach or Nebraska, except strung out on religion. Finn's gotten canny enough as a singer to pull off a tour de force like "Western Pier," the chilling ballad of a drifter with grudges against the world that not even Jesus can avenge.

Listen to "Western Pier":

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“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"