Black Mountain are a little bit Hobbit and a little bit Orc. The Vancouver quintet play flower-brained folk and Satan-friendly hard rock to evoke that moment when the hippie dream got creepy. Their third disc is their heaviest and most concise. "Play those dead-wish chords," singer-guitarist Stephen McBean and singer Amber Webber entreat on the deeply purple doom boogie "Old Fangs." And, boy, do they. Wave after wave of British metal crashes against misty mountains of luded-out acoustic mellowness. But it isn't just a stoner put-on. "The Hair Song" sweetly celebrates getting back to the land and "children" playing the blues; it's a vision of incense and innocence that's impossible to fake this well.

“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.