ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Katy B - Little Red (Sony/Columbia): The last time the 24-year-old Katy B made a record, we weren't quite clear on what dubstep was. Back when we thought she was the queen of it, a lot of it sounded like your above-average house diva with some updated sound tricks-those swishing back 'n forth hi-hat stutters on "Katy on a Mission" for instance. This follow-up is both so much safer and so much easier to like, gunning for Kylie Minogue's spot via Everything But the Girl's dark-tinged glitronics, with hooks sprouting off every single track: her wraparound "before"/"adore" rhyme, the ghost of Aaliyah haunting and taunting her, the tear-stained ballad "for no reason." Like Broken Bells (see below), she aims for a baseline where nothing means anything except the continuity of the beat. If you're an indie hybrid and don't know what you're doing, this is vague. If you're a dance maven, this is the key to locking swift and unflashy pop choruses into an album-length groove.

Broken Bells - After the Disco (Columbia): Did you know that Broken Bells' self-titled debut debuted in Billboard's top ten when it came out, received a Best Alternative Album nomination at the GRAMMYs and fell only 100,000 copies short of Gold certification? I definitely didn't, and I still defy say, half those 400,000 American buyers to hum me a few bars from James Mercer's most, er, "Vaporized" album ever, or even describe what it sounds like. This doesn't mean it was bad; Broken Bells, was the absolute horizon line for indie stasis, neither good nor bad, with a passable drift and only enough decor and professionalism to ensure its safety in the licensing department and history books alike.

What's unprecedented isn't the attention given this "supergroup" of once-genius Mercer and questionable interloper Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton. It's the fact that the Shins never got to be beloved and famous at the same time. Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow, the two Mercer masterpieces that led Natalie Portman via Zach Braff to give them the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Endorsement in Garden State only reached the top ten of critics' polls if anything, and not even new fans pretended Wincing the Night Away had more than three or four songs up to their caliber when it scraped the #2 slot seven years ago. Burton coasts as he has for years, gliding from moderately famous collaborator to mildly noticeable tunecraft in a shell game so no one notices it's been almost ten years since he gave the industry a "Crazy."