Imagine that you are one of the foremost bands in today’s burgeoning electro-pop scene. Imagine that this scene is like a family, and that FM Belfast is your baby brother. You have spent all your time working hard for your parents’ approval, tweaking your synthesizers and drum patterns until they sound perfect. You write anthems that sound great on record, but find it difficult to recreate the same excitement in your live shows. Your eventual success does nothing to relieve the weight of responsibility that sits heavily on your shoulders.

More about: FM Belfast

Whatever else I may have to say about Caspian, I give the band credit for not self-applying the label “post-rock” when describing their music. If only their critics would show such restraint; of the dozen press clips stacked on the band’s MySpace page, half praise the New England fivesome for their (to quote Rocksound) “emotionally devastating post-rock.” Those of us who were blown away by the violent crescendos of “Like Herod” and “East Hastings” back in the late 90s will have no trouble finding our footing in the soaring guitar solos and crashing cymbal storms of Tertia.

More about: Caspian

For the past 12 years, Norway’s Supersilent have been the reliable stalwarts of a particular style of indeterminate, electronics-heavy free improv that the group itself pioneered. As the flagship act of the Rune Grammofon label, a new Supersilent album has been released every few years since 1997, each named in numerical order, each with uniformly minimal sleeves. Judging by the cover alone, 9 is certainly no exception. The same white Helvetica on a solid modernist block of color. Only the color changes with each album; this time it’s a pleasant cerulean.

More about: Supersilent

Fewer recordings in life demand repeated listens less than lackluster mix tapes. When the only value the arrangement provides is the context of its creator, well, you had better hope that the beat-matching and editing maestro responsible for your 90 minutes of life has some sort of personality that transcends the mediocre and the meh. Enter Scuba (a.k.a. Paul Rose) and SUB:STANCE.

More about: Various Artists: Ostgut Ton

Listening to an Eluvium record is like staring at a river. It moves, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. While you stand still in front of it, waiting for something interesting to happen, you suddenly realize that your mind is flowing along with it. You watch your thoughts and feelings float by in the water, at enough of a distance that you can’t distinguish them well enough to call them by their names.

More about: Eluvium

Frauhaus! is like an itch you don’t want to scratch. For the album’s bite-sized 30-minute duration, London-based trio Wetdog jabs, plods, and stammers out some of the best jaunty female post-punk since The Slits or The Raincoats. And while its fair to say that Wetdog exist in the spirit of these pioneering groups, they’re not here to pay homage. To compartmentalize them in such an air-tight micro-genre would be to assume that these ladies subconsciously desire to be a cover band.

More about: Wetdog

I can forgive a lot in the name of a good pop song. I can ignore that this band is a dance rock holdover in a post-Rapture indieverse. I can fail to take the obvious snark bait presented by Montreal indie rockers with a form of “wolf” in their name. For a few really great hooks, I could even refrain from making a joke about We Are Wolves saving the money they might otherwise spend on a fourth album and investing in a time machine to carry them back to 2001 (where, like some protected species of wolf, they could be released into their natural habitat).

More about: We Are Wolves