White-beat pirates can come home from Jamaica with riddim realness, or sand in their shorts. Producers Diplo and Switch, a.k.a. Major Lazer, definitely do JA right. Recorded at Kingston's legendary Tuff Gong studios, this EP twists dancehall and dubstep into kinky new directions. M.I.A. gets militant on "Sound of Siren," and a Thom Yorke remix of "Jump Up" (from Major Lazer's 2009 debut) spikes a naughty party jam with futurist spookiness. The best moment, though, might be "Good Enuff" — a roots-reggae tune with sweet vocals from Canadian Lindi Ortega that provides a little soul amid the gangsta beach bingo.

“IRM”

Fashioned to mimic the sound of a magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, "IRM" (the French designation for the brain scan) grew out of Gainsbourg’s love of the sound of the clickety-clack of medical machinery. The IRM album project also marked the fulfillment of two goals for the singer: to document a traumatic experience, and to record an album with Beck. Though her co-creator and producer didn’t necessarily know the details of her water-skiing accident and resulting cerebral hemorrhage (which lead to the IRM of the song's title), he somehow knew how to handle the material. "Beck had a way of guessing what I was thinking and feeling without me telling him," said Gainsbourg. "We never discussed these things explicitly."