6. My Morning Jacket

This Louisville, Kentucky, band's idea of interstellar overdrive comes with the distorted snort of Lynyrd Skynyrd-style guitars and the sweet whiff of bluegrass wet with morning dew. The most high-flying thing about My Morning Jacket is still guitarist-songwriter Jim James' glassy, near-falsetto singing. But on the group's second major-label album, James nails his flights of fancy and worry with an invigorating attention to earthy modernism: pop-song structure ("What a Wonderful Man"), hip-hop-inflected beats, reggae-train rhythms ("Wordless Chorus," "Off the Record"). The result: electric Dixie soul bright with star shine, climaxing in "Dondante" with a shrieking-guitar meltdown that sounds like the '68 Pink Floyd rocketing through "Free Bird."

Next: Beck, Guero