After a decade-plus as bare-knuckle contenders for World's Most Riotous Live Band, Gogol Bordello step up their studio game with producer Rick Rubin, who knows how to give pop shape to reactor-grade energy. Everyone is on point: Accordion and fiddle rock as hard as guitars and drums; rhythms from Brazil (frontman Eugene Hütz's new home) blend with breakneck Eastern European dances and D.C.-style hardcore. Rubin pushes Hütz's poignant broken English up front: "May the sound of our contaminated beat," he sings, "sweep all the Nazi purists off their feet." Word.

“Let My Love Open the Door”

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."