Inside the oceanic reverb that soaks every twang and sigh on It Still Moves, the third album by the Louisville, Kentucky, quintet My Morning Jacket, is a first-class acid-country Radiohead swimming slowly to the surface. The group's lack of hurry can be exasperating; some songs seem to take days to hit chorus pay dirt (the swollen-pain refrain in the Day-Glo crawl "Master Plan") and guitar-jam daylight (the midsection of "Run Thru"). But Jacket mastermind Jim James, the band's vocalist-songwriter-producer, knows the difference between wasting time and warping it, although he sings a lot about being fogged in by liquor and hopelessness. "I Will Sing You Songs" is a long bath of rolling-tide guitars, cymbal splashes and James' liquid-silver hallelujah — Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" via Smile-era Brian Wilson. And there is a sharp, Southern-barbecue tang to the brass behind the '68-Fillmore-dream guitars in "Easy Morning Rebel." My Morning Jacket are going nowhere fast — but in all the right ways.

“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."