Kate & Anna McGarrigle, from 1975, is a singer-songwriter session up there with Joni Mitchell's Blue and Neil Young's Harvest, though unlike either in style (or sales). Funny and heartbreaking, informed by French-Canadian parlor songs and delicious harmonies, it's idiosyncratically perfect. This reissue pairs it with 1977's nearly-as-great Dancer With Bruised Knees, adding a beautiful disc of demos and other flotsam. "Skidmore girls come back to town/All the freaks head underground," sings the late Kate on the unreleased "Saratoga Summer Song," a slice of life from a woman who saw the sublime and the absurd as kissing cousins.

Gallery: Random Notes, Rock's Hottest Photos

“Time to Pretend”

Listening to MGMT’s breakthrough song, one might interpret it as being about the excesses of rock stardom, but it’s actually about the duo’s pet praying mantis. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone they got the idea from the insect's jerky movements. The mantis died, but the two bandmates kept the egg sack and allowed the hundreds of eggs to hatch. “We tried to name them all, but they died after a day,” said Goldwasser, with VanWyngarden chiming in, “But the praying mantis dance inspired us.”