L.A. singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart has been saddled with responsibility for spearheading the freak-folk movement, but with each of his six albums that term has become an increasingly irrelevant way to describe his sound. Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell says that’s the case again on Banhart’s latest LP, What Will We Be, an eclectic LP that dips into lots of classic rock styles. He even warbles in a baritone that’s eerily reminiscent of Jim Morrison on “Rats.” (more…)

The “Christian Rock” pick in this week’s New Music Report (contributing editor Christian Hoard’s current fave) is Scars, the fifth album from British house duo Basement Jaxx. The group’s 2001 album Rooty featured the hit “Romeo,” which charted in the States thanks to its synthetic yet warm vibe, and Scars is their best album since then. All the tracks are all sung by guest vocalists including Santigold and Kelis, as well as smaller names like Paloma Faith, who takes the lead on “What’s a Girl Got to Do.” It’s a song that’s ready for an iPod commercial with its clipped disco groove, keyboard stabs and rejiggered New Orleans brass.

The beats on Scars are often stronger than the songs, but when Basement Jaxx get a hot beat and a hot tune together you get something magical: progressive pop. It is dance music that can venture into the cheesy — but it’s a good cheesy.

Check out all of Rolling Stone’s album reviews.

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Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell guides you to two killer releases in our weekly New Music Report. First up, Losing Feeling, a new EP from SoCal skate-punk duo No Age. Last year’s full-length Nouns was a messy collection of noise rock, and on their new EP the pair tone down the fuzz to focus on hooks — kind of like if Brian Wilson collaborated with Black Flag. (more…)

Christian Hoard returns to host his “Christian Rock” segment of the New Music Report this week. His pick: Built to Spill’s latest album, There Is No Enemy. The long-running Idaho band led by Doug Martsch refused to be interviewed on camera when Hoard was covering All Tomorrow’s Parties for RS last year, and Martsch strikes Hoard as a shy, a small-town guy who likes to shoot hoops and hang with his kids when he’s not cooking up guitar riffs. His songs project a grounded daydreaming — he’s not afraid to indulge idle thoughts about Canada’s beauty, but he knows how to construct a straight-forward song, too. (more…)

Who: Dead Man’s Bones finds Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling and his friend Zach Shields spinning fireside ghost stories into mesmerizing “Monster Mash” sing-alongs with the help of L.A.’s Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir.

Sounds like: The Arcade Fire, Tom Waits and the cast of Sesame Street performing a Kurt Weill musical. Gosling and Shields wanted to collaborate with kids from the start and cite the Langley Schools Music Project’s Innocence and Despair and Nancy Dupree’s Ghetto Reality — two affecting and endearing recordings of untrained grade schoolers singing — as inspiration. “When we first wrote the songs, all the vocals were for the children’s choir to sing,” Shields tells Rolling Stone. “We were never going to sing on the record. But when we were working out the parts for them, we started singing and decided to make it into a duo between us and the kids.” (more…)

Air are well known for their cool electronica records full of mellow space grooves and robo-funk jams, and while their fifth disc, Love 2 isn’t a big sonic departure, there is one key change: the songs were recorded with live instruments. The French duo get help from session drummer Joey Waronker, who’s currently teaming up with Thom Yorke in the Radiohead frontman’s new band featuring Flea and Nigel Godrich. The LP’s key track, “Missing the Light of Day” blends intertwined synth riffs as the pair sing about returning home after a long night of partying. (more…)

Who: Band of Skulls, a British trio whose shit-kicking, bare-bones brand of gritty rock & roll earned them a spot on the hugely anticipated soundtrack to the next Twilight movie, New Moon.

Sounds Like: White Stripes fans will dig Band of Skulls’ swampy, heavily blues-influenced jams, especially the psychedelic stomp of “Light of the Morning” and the hard-charging “I Know What I Am.” But these guys aren’t just blues-rock formalists: they occasionally veer into complex prog-rock territory on tracks like the sprawling, appropriately-titled “Impossible.” “That song was definitely a breakthrough for us,” says singer-guitarist Russell Marsden. “We realized we can make a wider, more epic version of our sound. [Drummer] Matt [Hayward] came up with the guitar hook, this lovely and complex finger-picking pattern. But I just dumbed it down.” (more…)

When power-power guru Matthew Sweet teamed up with the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs for a covers record in 2006, the pair tackled songs from the Sixties and Seventies — like the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” and Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” The two returned this summer with a sequel, Under the Covers, Vol. 2, which boasts bright, bouncy takes on the Grateful Dead’s “Sugar Magnolia” and Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes.”

The pair popped by the RS studios recently to show off some of their work stripped down to just two acoustic guitars and vocals. Check out their rendition of Yes’ “I’ve Seen All Good People: Your Move/All Good People” from their latest album above, and Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” (from the first covers LP), after the jump. (more…)

Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell spotlights the Avett Brothers’ major-label debut, I and Love and You, in this week’s roundup of essential new releases. The North Carolina trio get an assist from Rick Rubin on the disc, which results in polished songs including upbeat jams and pretty piano ballads, like the title track, which shows off brothers Scott and Seth Avett’s Beatlesque harmonies. (more…)

Who: A crew of country roots-rockers led by 27-year-old Cory Chisel, a Wisconsin-based singer-songwriter who croons like Nebraska-era Springsteen, dresses like a Deadwood extra and recorded his first EP in his family’s Minnesota cabin.

Sounds Like: Chisel’s Death Won’t Send a Letter is filled with woozy gospel organs and broadly strummed acoustic guitars, and a few famous faces — Brendan Benson co-wrote first single “Born Again,” and his Raconteurs bandmates Little Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler guest, along with My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel. (more…)

On new supergroup Monsters of Folk’s debut album, Jim James, M. Ward, Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis deliver 15 songs that touch on straight-up country and bluegrass, but they also veer into atmospheric ballads, like opener “Dear God.” The best part of the album: it doesn’t sound overworked. Instead, it comes off like a couple of buddies sitting around on the porch at a late-night jam session, especially on standout “Whole Lotta Losin’ .”

Also on the New Music Report radar this week: A Brief History of Love, the debut from duo the Big Pink, delivers druggy shoegaze crafted with synths and squealing guitars. (more…)

Who: Washed Out is the one-man dream-pop project from Ernest Greene, a 26-year-old Southerner who lives in the low-key town of Perry, Georgia. “It’s as rural as you can get,” says Greene. “Not much goes on around here.”

Sounds Like: Greene crafts impossibly gorgeous pop that mixes up woozy synthesizers, droney shoegaze textures and funky, sometimes danceable beats. Greene has only released one 12-inch and a cassette on small independent labels but he’s already getting solid buzz in the music blogosphere, thanks to killer tunes like “You’ll See It,” which evokes French synth-pop group M83 and “Feel It All Around,” which features soaring, angelic vocal chorales. (Cool fact: Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould is a big fan and was spinning Washed Out tracks during his DJ set at this year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival).

For the most part, it’s almost impossible to understand what Greene is singing about — and that’s just the way he likes it. “I’m getting more confident in putting my vocals up front,” he says. “Maybe in the future you’ll be able to understand what I’m saying. I’m going more for an atmospheric vibe in my songs. And I really don’t want to ruin the illusions people may create for themselves.” (more…)

In this week’s roundup of the best new releases, Kevin O’Donnell breaks down the debut EP from the Drums, one of indie-rock’s biggest buzz bands this fall. Summertime delivers spiky post-punk and super-catchy songs about surfing and going to the beach, kind of like an upbeat Cure. Plus, there’s Yo La Tengo’s Popular Songs, one of their best and most diverse albums yet. The Hoboken, New Jersey trio break out delicate ballads, ghostly pastorals and feedback-drenched jams on their latest LP. Listen to samples of the records’ best tracks and get the full report in the video, above.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

Who: Los Angeles-based trio the Entrance Brand craft sprawling, virtuosic psychedelic rock that has earned them big-ups from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, who signed the crew to his Ecstatic Peace label.

Sound: Frontman Guy Blakeslee spews wailing, guitar-heavy thunder as bandmates Paz Lenchantin and drummer Derek James keep the stoner-metal grooves chugging along nicely on epic tracks like “Grim Reaper Blues, Pt. 2,” where Blakeslee shrieks and howls like a young Robert Plant. “We have these psychic resonances between us,” says Blakeslee of his group. “I’m a trebly guitar and trebly-voiced singer and I need a heavy bass and sick drums. They both know what to come up with to give our music more depth.” (more…)

Rolling Stone’s Christian Hoard names Yacht’s See Mystery Lights his “Christian Rock” pick of the week in the latest edition of the New Music Report. Get a listen to summer jam “Summer Song” and learn a bit more about the Portland duo above. Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans record dance music tricked out with oddball spoken word sections, sing-along hooks and an assortment of sound effects. It can be raw, snarky and luxuriantly digital and it’s like a Talking Heads album in sensibility — topics covered on See Mystery Lights include gentrification and the afterlife — but while it’s arty music, it’s easy to get down to.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don't have iTunes, download it here.]