Album

Jim jarmusch's imminent set of dryly comic vignettes, filmed over the course of a decade, will pitch him to a new generation, as it features Jack and Meg White, Wu-Tang Clan (RZA scored Jarmusch's last film, Ghost Dog) and Steve Coogan among its cast. One of the better sequences sees Tom Waits and Iggy Pop mock-bickering over who's more famous, and both contribute to this studiously cool soundtrack.

UK pedal-steel veteran gorges on electro-exotica

As leader of Denton, Texas' Centro-Matic and its slacker country cousin, South San Gabriel, Johnson has been a prolific purveyor of all things bleak and oddly beautiful. Like 2002's solo debut Murder Of Tides, Vultures Await is a narcoleptic song suite of plucked guitar, sombre piano and drums like stuttering heartbeats. Cloaked in strings and cracked vocals, it's hardly laugh-a-minute, but absorbing nonetheless.

Listless reunion for avant-garde eggheads

The reunited Crush core blow up your speakers

Songwriting duo who made up the important bit of Crowded House

This frustrating compilation trawls the archives from the early '40s to the late '80s to assemble 20 of the divine Miss Lee's greatest film and TV performances. While some clips are understandably washed-out, Lee's wide-ranging voice is black-coffee-and-honey throughout. What lets the set down is the decision to cut gushing tributes from celebrity fans into the performances. That aside, fine stuff.

Legendary 'bootleg' recording of the Velvets on home turf, taped just before Lou Reed went home to mama and then became the godfather of gory glam

Soft-pop group so good Stereolab named a song after them

First album of joint material since 1976's Whistling Down The Wire