What do you do when the world's most flawless bangs walk out on you? Ben Gibbard – the former Mr. Zooey Deschanel and chief of Death Cab for Cutie – mourned with a solo set of Beatles-nuzzling ballads so pretty they'd make any actress jealous. As always, it's fascinating how much emotion Gibbard represses, squeezing out his quaver like so much icing on Cupcake Wars. Former Lives may be chilly. ("Bigger Than Love," his duet with Aimee Mann, would frost oranges in August.) But it's heartbreak made perfect, and there are loads of perverse pleasure in that.

Listen to "Teardrop Windows":

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."