Onstage, Tim Harrington looks like an accountant on a rampage: The Les Savy Fav singer is a balding dude fond of stripping half-naked and making out with random audience members. On their fifth album, LSF match Harrington's energy with music that's both melodic and expertly brutal, zipping through punk-inspired shout-alongs about drug-fueled sex ("Lips N' Stuff") and hanging with lowlifes ("Dirty Knails"). Ruin isn't as irresistibly tuneful as 2007's great Let's Stay Friends, but like that album it shows off Harrington's secret weapon: his sensitive side. Harrington's voice takes on a wobbly indie-boy ache in songs like "Dear Crutches," where he begs a lover to "be a hammock for my heart." He's not just a hooligan — he's a hooligan with the soul of a poet.

“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.