Panic! At the Disco have invented a new genre: emo retropop. Vices & Virtues is the band's first album since becoming a duo (singer Brendon Urie and drummer Spencer Smith), and it's the closest emo has come to the sound of old-school pop and rock, with Beach Boys harmonies and even gypsy-style swing flavoring the usual hopped-up confessions. The group's old lyricist, Ryan Ross, is gone; these songs are missing some of the hyper mall-rat poetry that made Panic's first two albums such daffy fun. But the arrangements are tight, even when the songs get baroque: Check "Nearly Witches," which mixes funk, Fifties horror-movie kitsch and a children's choir to ridiculous — and sublime — effect.

Listen to "The Ballad of Mona Lisa":

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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.