German producers Mouse on Mars have a gift for making electronic bleeps and buzzes sound like tangible objects that bounce, bend and collide in physical space. Parastrophics, their tenth studio album if you're not counting a side project with the Fall's Mark E. Smith, is a surreal pop record that gleefully warps the tones and inflections of modern radio tunes into funhouse mirror abstractions. It's disorienting stuff, but pleasantly so, particularly as they stretch a Jam and Lewis-era Janet Jackson hook like taffy in "Polaroyced," smear vocals into a ear-catching blur on the frantically funky "They Know Your Name" and drop hyperkinetic hip-hop beats on "Baku Hipster."

Listen to "Polaroyced":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“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.