Ange

With a moody slow-mo intro, followed by a wickedly funny history of methamphetamine and capped by an intriguing roll call of deviant speed-freaks, the first 15 minutes of The Salton Sea promises, and delivers, far more than the rest of the movie can handle. Val Kilmer is the widower hunting his wife's killers among Los Angeles' drug detritus.

Belated release of 1979 live session

Dennis Hopper-directed noir-by-numbers from 1990. Don Johnson's ambiguous stranger drifts into a sultry small town to run a con, and gets caught between lust for married Virginia Madsen and troubled teen Jennifer Connelly. Routine; but cherish this movie for the once-in-a-lifetime soundtrack Hopper persuaded Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker and Taj Mahal to jam.

Killer whodunnit thriller couples smart noir with plenty of blood

Debut album from Brighton-based art-rock eccentrics

Gritty Southern rebel off-loads her emotional freight in a brilliantly paced set

Kathleen Edwards was one of the highlights of this year's South By Southwest Festival in Austin. Surely, I thought, she couldn't sound as good on a dull Wednesday night in a dingy London basement. But she could and she did. The buzz created by her debut, Failer, attracted some top London record company bosses to her first ever UK date. Among those were alt. country specialists Loose—although if they have designs on her, they must have been dismayed by the competition, which included Warner's chief, John Reed. And he surely could not have failed to be impressed.

First four albums from Wayne Coyne's favourite progressive act, expanded and remastered

After the early patronage of Howe Gelb, Oregon's Matt Ward dished up 2001's End Of Amnesia, one of the most breathtaking albums of recent years. Transfiguration...is another masterclass in deft guitar picking, smudged with piano, harmonica and a voice like honey drizzled onto a dry creekbed. The behind-a-screen-door quality of production adds to the strangeness, while the likes of "Undertaker" often stop, start, scuff around then veer off at a tangent. Somewhere between a Gelb bothering to finish off songs and The Band at their most bucolic.

Potent jazz piano trio debut