"Kiss Each Other Clean" is the first studio LP from Sam Beam (aka Iron and Wine) since 2007’s "The Shepherd’s Dog.

However, their latest effort, “The Other Side of Zero,” is lacking. Some songs sound similar to tracks on Lindsey Buckingham’s “Gift of Screws” and The Hush Sound’s “Like Vines.”

“The Age of Adz” is pop-folk-indie sensation Sufjan Stevens’s first proper LP since “Illinoise.” His other recent release, the “All Delighted People” EP, is a freewheeling masterpiece. Does this new album match up to the EP, or possibly even “Illinoise,” the best-reviewed album of 2005?

If you could sit through a Malawi-born vocalist-DJ duo called The Very Best that felt out of place outside of a dance club and Beach House, an atmospheric indie outfit with droning synths and a vocalist with an androgynous, nasally voice, you were handsomely rewarded by Vampire Weekend’s set at the Jackie Gleason Theatre this past weekend.

Now that the music industry loses 71,060 jobs each year (Institute for Policy Innovation) to piracy, music fans can no longer justify illegal downloading on the grounds of keeping greedy labels in check. However, new arguments have arisen.

Critics are calling "Inception" an “elegantly cerebral” film “that succeeds viscerally as well as intellectually.” This is all nonsense. It has a hip and original concept, but lacks many things good movies must have. Here are some of them.