It ain't exactly a party-starter. The first single from Metals, Leslie Feist's hotly anticipated third album, is a total downer, a bruising ballad about a fracturing romance. ("How come you never go there?/How come I'm so alone there?" Feist sings.) But the music is riveting: a tense soul-blues vamp, spiced with horns and raggedy electric guitar, with Feist's clear, piercing voice—at once sad, remorseful and accusatory—demanding your attention all the while.

Listen to "How Come You Never Go There":

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• Four Years After '1234,' Feist Returns With Raw Follow-Up

“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."