If you made a hipster-rap bonus baby in a laboratory, you couldn't do much better than Theophilus London. The 23-year-old Trinidad- born Brooklyn MC's neo-retro hip-hop mashes up TV on the Radio's vocal cadences, old-school break-dance beats and the forlorn melodic tug of a Smiths fan (he dropped This Charming Mixtape in 2009). "Why Even Try" recalls Tom Tom Club's electro-bubblegum classic "Genius of Love," but place-holder lyrics—“ "Back on the road again/Hitting Paris on a 10," from "All Around the World"—show that even in hipster rap, you need to rock the words, too.

Listen to "Last Name London":

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“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."