Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox used to bury his voice under raging feedback swells or oceans of whooshing reverb. But he's grown far more confident in recent years – and on his third solo disc, Cox takes another step in the direction of unabashed pop, singing about modern love in a molten-candy croon that could almost belong to a Fifties teen idol. He uses his newfound swagger to sell a set of surprisingly sticky hooks: Nearly every tune features a bright, immediate melody, leaving behind the diffuse musings he's favored in the past. Cox values songwriting ahead of texture these days, and the effort is paying off.

Listen to "Mona Lisa": 

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“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.