El Perro Del Mar: Siren Song

El Perro Del Mar rises from the same Gothenburg, Sweden indie pop scene that has produced artists such as Jens Lekman, Jose Gonzalez, Love is All, and others. What unites El Perro Del Mar (a.k.a. singer/songwriter Sarah Assbring) and these artists, besides geography, may be a certain soft-spoken way with Sweden’s famous prowess for international pop, a gentler touch than their Stockholm peers, from ABBA on down to Robyn.

That touch is mostly felt in Assbring's murmuring vocals, soft-edged to the point of shushing off consonants, alluring in a way that makes you want to lean in closer. It’s a delivery that lets her songs about heartache and loneliness feel like a welcome bed of down pillows, instead of the concrete cell those emotions can be in real life.

On new album Pale Fire, Assbring combines those vocals and her typical melancholy with newly electronic backdrops--including one striking sample of Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”-- toying with faint echoes of house and especially of ‘90s trip-hop and chill-out music, as with the deep-muted funk bass, piano chords, and busy-skittering backbeat of single “Hold Off the Dawn.” – Eric Grandy, Google Play

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Antenna: New Artists You Need To Hear

In a year when many genres seemed to reinforce themselves—indie folk got folkier, retro soul more soulful and so on—December's Antenna recognizes some acts that have made late 2012 that much weirder and wilder, from electronic eccentrics to acid rock purveyors to less categorizable artists.

Gary Clark Jr. is one such hard-to-pigeonhole artist: a superb blues guitarist with pop tendencies (he's worked with Alicia Keys) who also lets loose with raucous riffs, as on the fuzzed-out "Numb." There's also plenty of heaviness in Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats' "I'll Cut You Down." Comprised of monster guitars and menacing vocals, it's rock 'n' roll fried, melted and psychically distressed.

Jay-Z, "December 4th"

Though it was announced as a retirement release, Jay-Z's The Black Album was equally a victory lap. It opens with "December 4th," Jay's formal toast to himself, complete with his mom narrating the day of his birth in between producer Just Blaze's triumphant chipmunk soul. It's now difficult for anybody who listens to rap to look at this date on the calendar and not think of Shawn Carter. – Andrew Nosnitsky, Google Play

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Paul Wall, "That's the Way Luv Goes"

While Paul Wall's national popularity peaked shortly after the Houston rap gold rush of the mid-2000s, the rapper and his famous fronts have receded quite comfortably into his hometown's still-bubbling underground scene. "That's the Way Luv Goes" highlights his skills as a sensitive balladeer without completely abandoning his more playful instincts that once had the internet goin' nuts. – Andrew Nosnitsky, Google Play

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KT Tunstall, "Black Horse & the Cherry Tree"

Scottish songbird KT Tunstall ascended to stardom in 2004 on the strength of this addictive tune. Tunstall tells a story that's a cross between a Brothers Grimm fable and a Gothic romance, but the whole thing revolves around her throaty, powerful pipes, insistently slashing acoustic guitar riffs, and some skeletal percussion, with ghostly "whoo-hoo" background vocals working as a sort of folk-rock Greek chorus to the tragic tale. – Jim Allen, Google Play

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