The Dum Dum Girls' 2010 debut, I Will Be, was girl-group rock cut with low-fi guitar frizz. This disc is all hi-fi, sonically and emotionally, piling on Phil Spector echo and Go-Go's gloss as singer-guitarist Dee Dee Penny mourns a faraway lover and a fatally sick mom: "Death is on the telephone/I lie and say she isn't home," she sings, somewhere between the Shangri-Las and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. The six-minute "Coming Down" repeats the phrase "I think I'm coming down" almost 20 times, each falling like a hammer.

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“Ambling Alp”

The "Ambling Alp" was the nickname of the six-and-a-half-foot-tall Primo Carnera. Though the song is named after the Italian-born 1930s heavyweight champion, Yeasayer are actually paying tribute to boxing legend Joe Louis with this first-person psychedelic dance-rock tune. “I was always interested in writing a song that had boxing mythology in it,” Yeasayer’s Chris Keating said. “It’s pretty fascinating: There were so many amazing characters, and it was so closely entwined with 20th century history.” Yeaseyer also invokes German champ Max Schmeling and hints at the historical significance placed on the historic bouts between the Nazi-era boxer and the African-American Louis.