The Heist is one of the year's big sleeper hits: an indie hip-hop album from a Seattle rapper, Macklemore, and beatmaker, Ryan Lewis, that debuted at Number Two on the Billboard 200. The record has its charms (the single "Thrift Shop," a cheeky ode to second-hand duds) and its virtues (the marriage-equality anthem "Same Love"). Unfortunately, Mack­lemore's virtuousness overwhelms his far more modest charms: whether name-dropping Malcolm Gladwell and touting his work ethic or boasting about his indie bona fides, the dude's self-righteousness tests, and, eventually, exhausts, your patience. A pity, because his partner's beats are playful and inventive.

Listen to 'The Heist':

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”