With such songs as "God Smack" and "Hate to Feel" crammed thick with junkie rage and Oedipal tension, Dirt (1992) is the musical equivalent of coughing blood — harrowing and real. Dense guitars spin ominous, flattened melodies: the sound of cages rattling. Acoustic leaning, the new seven-song EP from the Seattle quartet Alice in Chains is subtler — strings lighten "I Stay Away," and "Whale and Wasp," an instrumental, is darkly gorgeous. On "Swing on This" and "Rotten Apple," Layne Staley's vocals, owing as much to Styx and Kansas as Jerry Cantrell's guitars do to Black Sabbath, evoke pathos as well as anger. Yet this is hardly Alice lite. "I repent tomorrow," Staley sings, wary even of hope, and in nearly every song, the word home wrenchingly resounds — an ache, a bitter prayer.

“Time to Pretend”

Listening to MGMT’s breakthrough song, one might interpret it as being about the excesses of rock stardom, but it’s actually about the duo’s pet praying mantis. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone they got the idea from the insect's jerky movements. The mantis died, but the two bandmates kept the egg sack and allowed the hundreds of eggs to hatch. “We tried to name them all, but they died after a day,” said Goldwasser, with VanWyngarden chiming in, “But the praying mantis dance inspired us.”