Click to listen to 'Soul Punk'

For ex-Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump, "solo album" is more than a record you make when you leave your band. It's a record that you make by yourself, playing every note on every instrument – drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, trumpet, trombone, sax, mandolin. Besides handling instrumental duties, Stump supplied some terrific songs, too, with big hooks ("People Never Done a Good Thing"), electro pep ("Spotlight [New Regrets]") and lots of unabashed Michael Jackson. Stump is an excellent, nimble singer, but it's his songwriting that makes this one of the most irrefutably catchy albums of 2011. Soul? Punk? Try pop.

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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.