The debut from L.A.'s Glasser (born Cameron Mesirow) begins with a magic trick. The opening "Apply" kicks off with a lumbering beat that's weighed down further by a groaning synth — but then the vocals hit, and against all laws of physics, the song takes flight. Glasser has a Björkian gift for pairing airy melodies and occasional gale-force belting with polyrhythmic, electronics-dense beats. On "Ring," her voice is multitracked into lush harmonies, and her abstract lyrics ("The clouds were dust, raining on us/There was a phantom me in a bed of love," she repeats on "Home") often carry a surprising emotional wallop. The album is over in just 38 minutes, but it feels like some long, gorgeous dream.

See the hottest live shots of the week

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."