These twin sisters from Calgary worked the jittery end of the coffeehouse throughout their twenties, crafting a sharp folk-rock sound that was a touch emo, but still Canadian-modest. But now, at 32, the Quins have decided to get sweaty. Their seventh album is a veritable bouncy castle of lush, up-to-the-minute indie synth-pop and blown-out radio choruses, less fussy and more whee than anything they've done. Producer Greg Kurstin (Ke$ha, Kelly Clarkson, etc.) surely deserves some thanks for the dance-floor churn. But the duo draw you as close as ever with their bittersweet silk-over-sass harmonies. Emotional processing should always be so liberating.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.