US kids learn their letters the hard way

Before the sex pistols there was New York's Lower East Side: trash aesthetes with short hair and kinky vixens in B-movie stilettos. Kids with minor drug habits and slim volumes of symbolist verse. Pre-punk 'punk' was Gotham's reaction to smug denim California and prog-pomp stadium blow-out. The new Bowery Bop was about immaculate posing, street-corner nihilism. It was railroad-apartment art-rock out of the Velvets, Stooges, Dolls, with a side order of Nuggets garage psychedelics.

Follow-up to 2000's much-lauded Maroon from Jimmy's offspring

Born in Miami but weaned on the mid-'60's coffee house scene around Boston, Smither remains a strangely undiscovered talent. The 11th album of his 33-year recording career is a masterclass in deftly-picked country blues guitar, drawing on Lightnin' Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt (a sunny-side-up cover of "Candy Man") alongside the more lugubrious Fred Neil. Smither's weathered old pipes are a joy as he tramples over melting chords like a bear with a migraine.

Smart, educational survey of two decades of alt.country

NYC singer-songwriter covered by Ronnie Spector and Laura Cantrell

The most exciting US boy/girl duo since The White Stripes

Savvy electro-rap trio from Brooklyn make their debut

Remastered and elaborately repackaged reissues of nearly everything Sylvian and Co did in the '80s

Glasgow platinum-shifters ring (albeit subtle) changes for their fourth long-player