Scottish singer/songwriter Louis Abbott brings some superb, finely-crafted songs and an admirably ambitious scope to the creative forefront of Admiral Fallow. At turns filled with dark melancholy and bittersweet observations, the fine, critically buzzed debut album Boots Met My Face (out now digitally) is a triumphant, visionary work that's simply head and shoulders above most of the wilting, reactionary and derivative music that's clogging the pipe these days and establishes Fallow as an important new indie voice, akin to The Decemberist's Colin Meloy or Tim Smith of Midlake.

Abbott's rich brogue vocals mixed with elegant counterpoint harmony from Sarah Hayes, the band's heartfelt acoustic jangley folk/pop and an occasional heel stomping rhythm bring to mind the pub-buskery of the rising tide of U.K. new-folk traditionalists like Mumford and Sons as well as the fine 80's Scot-pop trailblazers Deacon Blue. But there's more in store as Fallow and producer Paul Savage (Zoey van Goey, Franz Ferdinand) layer on decorative orchestration and a kitbag of instrumental touches, turning tracks such as the sublime "Subbuteo" into musical miniatures of graceful, dramatic power. "Old Balloons" and "Squealing Pigs" turning their gentle folk beginnings into a setting for something bigger, grander and cinematic in scope and sound. A remarkable, quietly epic debut.

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Admiral Fallow - "Subbuteo" (from the album Boots My My Face)

Admiral Fallow - "Old Balloons" (from the album Boots My My Face)

Take the romping piano lines of Ben Folds, add in Beatle-ish harmonies and zig-zagging 10CC melodies, fold in some theatrical/progressive elements a la Queen and Yes, bake in the warm summer sun and you get Jukebox the Ghost's tasty, densely packed music recipe. From their brand-spanking-new September 7 album Everything Under the Sun, "So Let Us Create" is a soaring, smart and agile mini-masterpiece, equal parts neo-art/pop and retro delight. More DC on JTG here.

Jukebox the Ghost - "So Let Us Create" (from the album Everything Under the Sun)

Michael Franti & Spearhead- The Sound of Sunshine - September 21 - Capitol - Eternally buoyant reggae-tinged roots rocker Franti returns with his first album since 2008's All Rebel Rockers, an album that soared at alternative adult radio on the back of the hit "Say Hey (I Love You)". Says Franti: “With time, you get a better sense who you are and how to put together all your musical passions into your own sound." For Sunshine, the sound borrows from breezy Caribbean rhythms but remains solidly entrenched in the heat of Franti's sunny jam/rock energy.

Michael Franti & Spearhead - "The Sound of Sunshine"

Adam Haworth Stephens - We Live On Cliffs - September 28 - Saddle Creek - After four critically-praised albums as singer and songwriter for San Francisco duo Two Gallants, Stephens steps out with his first solo album. Producer Joe Chiccarelli (My Morning Jacket, The Shins) is at the studio helm for an album of striking alt-folk/pop tunes straddling lyrical introspection and scruffy pop melodies. “These songs are about desperation,” says Stephens. “The desperation to make something of living, to find a sense of ease, to find someone to love and to maintain that fleeting feeling of love.” Guests include Patrick Hallahan and Bo Koster of My Morning Jacket.

Adam Haworth Stephens - "The Cities That You've Burned" (from the album We Live On Cliffs)

The original version of "Mixtape" comes from Tift Merritt's excellent, recently-released See You On the Moon (Fantasy). Recorded live at Lincoln Hall in Chicago at the end of July, "Mixtape" is a love song to the connections of music, relationships and memories: "Rewind, the world comes to an end, Turns over again, Another 1000 times. But me, I’ll be the same. No, I never change, Oh, like a rare B-side." Watch the official music video after the jump. More DC on Moon here.

Bestselling author, Oscar-nominated screenwriter and admitted music-holic Nick Hornby, best known for the critical faves High Fidelity and About A Boy, has now turned lyricist for Lonely Avenue, a new collaborative project with famously witty American pop tunesmith Ben Folds (September 28, Nonesuch). Over dinner last year, the two creative types sketched out the idea for the album with Hornby penning and emailing the story-filled lyrics and Folds, as the album states on the cover, "adding music and melody". “I felt like I’d found something rare on eBay or something," says Folds. "Nick should have done it before but it’s his first big effort and I feel like I really scored here."

As to be expected with this particular chemistry, the Folds-produced Lonely Avenue brims with bittersweet pop, Folds' unerringly catchy, piano-driven songs serving as the ideal musical stage for Hornby's droll Brit wit and imaginative character studies. Lead single "From Above" bristles with frisky energy, abuzz with a piano and synth mashup (hello Prefab Sprout references!) while the saga of "Levi Johnston's Blues" makes for killer socio-political satire wrapped in Folds' self-described "cinematic" melodic structure.  “I think we’re a good match", says Hornby of the mutual admiration that kindled the project. "(Ben) was always likely to understand what it was that I wanted to do and vice versa.” A deluxe version of Lonely Avenue includes a 152-page hardbound book with four Hornby short stories, a limited edition manuscript and a special series of photos. Watch the preview EPK video (and the non-album "Things You Think") after the jump...

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Ben Folds + Nick Hornby - "From Above" (from the album Lonely Avenue)

Ben Folds + Nicky Hornby - "Things You Think" (featuring Pomplamoose)

Lizz Wright is in possession of an extraordinary voice, one described by the NY Times as "luminous... smoky and perfectly pitched...one of the most wondrous rhythm-and-blues instruments of our time." She is also an accomplished songwriter who resists easy categorization, seamlessly combining intimate India.Aria-meets-Odetta styled soul/folk and smoldering torch ballads with earthy, gospel-tinged blues and rhythmic jazz undertones. "While I absolutely adore jazz," the 30-year-old rural Georgia native says, "when I'm alone I listen more to singer/songwriters like Jeff Buckley and Damien Rice, whose songs tell a story." Her two most recent albums, both produced by Craig Street (k.d. lang, Cassandra Wilson), were confident expansions of her own personal musical vision, one that seems to happily know no boundaries.

For her fourth album Fellowship, arriving September 28 via Verve, Wright takes us on a more spiritual journey -- but, as always, with a few unexpected stops along the way. Revisiting classic gospel songs of her youth ("Amazing Grace", Shirley Caesar's "Sweeping Through the City"), she also makes room for the Gladys Knight hit "(I've Got to Use My) Imagination", Eric Clapton's "Presence of the Lord" and "In From the Storm" by Jimi Hendrix. There are also original contributions from guests Angelique Kidjo, Me’Shell N’Degeocello, Joan as Policewoman (the lovely "Feed the Light") and frequent Wright collaborator "Toshi" Reagon. Another noteworthy chapter from our most prodigiously talented and intelligent performers, Fellowship breathes with inspiration from what Wright calls her "ancestral place." “It’s just a very big part of my life,” she says. “It reinforces the way I do everything else. It’s that simple for me.”

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Lizz Wright - ("I've Got to Use My) Imagination" (from the album Fellowship)

Robert Plant's first full-length since 2007's Grammy-winning blockbuster Raising Sand with Allison Krauss (and T-Bone Burnett), the masterful Band of Joy (September 14, Rounder) explores a similar stylistic path: bluesy Americana, dark Appalachian folk and barstool roots rock but with a darker, grimier streak. Plant's vocals, a raspy instrument of nuance and unleashed power, binds it all together with producer and in-demand guitarist Buddy Miller aptly filling Burnett's role with moody intensity. In the end it is a uniquely American project shepherded by one of classic British rock's most revered and recognized singers.

"In America," says Plant, "whether it be Woody Guthrie, Fats Domino, the early Elvis, all those guys up in the mountains, music was coming out of the churches and from around the fireplaces, off the steam radio, onto the street, and it gambolled out." With Miller, vocalist Patty Griffin and a seasoned crew of Nashville's best session players, Plant makes sure that Band of Joy is, well, joyous: a celebration and glorious collision of various U.S. styles and one of the most remarkably truly soulful albums you'll hear this year. Lead track, a deep voodoo version of Los Lobos' "Angel Dance" is, we've opined, "a piping hot rhythmic shuffle steeped in dirty blues water...(with) Miller's Keith Richards-meets-Bo-Diddley muddy bed of rumbled riffs, Plant's restrained vocal soul and a gunshot backbeat from drummer Marco Giovino that practically blows a hole in the proceedings." Watch the 10-minute EPK here..."Angel Dance" video after the jump.

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Robert Plant - "Angel Dance" (from the album Band of Joy)

Robert Plant - Band of Joy full album sampler

What can we say...we just love the voice. From Seal's forthcoming album 6: Commitment (September 28), "Secret" is one of those classic, richly produced soul "you belong to me" ballads sure to be dragged out at infinite wedding receptions to come. Produced by the King of Easily Digestible Schmaltz, David Foster (Josh Groban) -- who also handled Seal's fine '09 album of R+B classics, Soul -- "Secret" could be dismissed as mellow pap if it just wasn't such a great melody delivered by one of the most distinctive voices working.

Seal - "Secret" (from the album 6: Commitment)

Enjoy the video and audio stream, but support and respect the artist: buy the music!

Over seven albums and fifteen years, psych-pop trio Blonde Redhead have refined their darkly surreal music and, particularly with 2007's self-produced 23, found focus in the more spontaneously created songs that still remained awash in a sea of chiming guitar brush strokes and dense synthesizer layers. For Penny Sparkle (September 14, 4AD), recorded in Stockholm and their home base in New York, the trio opted for more guidance in the studio and handed the production reins to the team of Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid (Fever Ray).

The result? After 23's internally directed and "intense" recording process, these new songs don't have quite the taut, efficient energy of their predecessors but they do stretch a bit in finding their own comfort zone, albeit a rather dark one (despite the album's title). For singer/bassist Kazu Mazino the creative process was something of a dreamscape experience. "I fell in love with the music like falling for someone you've known for a long time," she writes. "It was dreamy and sometimes was very stormy." To wit: the minor-chord majesty of "Not Getting There", a noir-ish bit of cantering percussion and Depeche Mode-ish synth foundation bubbling under Mazino's swirling, windswept vocals.

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Blonde Redhead - "Not Getting There" (from the album Penny Sparkle)

Blonde Redhead - "Here Sometimes" (from the album Penny Sparkle)

Wooden Wand- Death Seat - October 26 - Young God - James Jackson Toth officially "retired" his alias Wooden Wand a few years ago for the exceptionally fine and sadly overlooked roots/rock album Waiting In Vain. With that album now just a fleeting memory of major label promises gone south, Toth and Wooden Wand return with an album that picks up where 2007's James and the Quiet left off, reviving the eccentric, ramshackle folk, psychedelic meanderings and waltzing country blues, his reedy tenor a potent Neil Young-and-Joe-Henry-on-the-Nashville Skyline instrument of roughhewn, humble grace.

Wooden Wand - "Death Seat Sampler" (Excerpts: "The Mountain", "Ms Mowse", "Tiny Confessions")

Leonard Cohen- Songs from the Road CD/DVD/Blu-Ray - September 14 - Columbia - When iconic songwriter Leonard Cohen embarked in 2008 on his first live tour in fifteen years, no one would have expected that two years later the gruff and elegant Cohen would still be playing to adoring crowds and critics throughout Europe and beyond. Songs from the Road captures a dozen Cohen classics from his extensive, ongoing world tour -- nearly all recorded at a different performance -- and many which did not appear on his 26-song Live in London 2009 CD/DVD collection.

Leonard Cohen - "Suzanne" (from Live in London)

OK color us a little taken aback with "Rhythm of Love", the completely winning jumble of acoustic guitars, off-kilter beat and fizzy summertime vocal harmonies from The Plain White T's. Taken from their forthcoming album The Wonders of the Younger, due October 19 via Hollywood. As the song says, "Play the music low and sway to the rhythm of love."

Plain White T's - "Rhythm of Love" (from the album The Wonders of the Younger)

Bruce Springsteen refers to his classic 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town as "my 'samurai' record...stripped to the frame and ready to rumble." Raw and bristling with anger and exhilaration, Darkness was culled from more than 70 songs written at the time -- a number of which now show up in a massive, six-disc (3-CD/3-DVD) box set arriving November 16 via Columbia. In addition to the remastered original ten-song album, the box includes The Promise, a full 21-track album of rarities and outtakes mixed by Springsteen's long-time collaborator Bob Clearmountain. These tracks "perhaps could have/should have been released after Born To Run and before the collection of songs that Darkness on the Edge of Town became," reflects Springsteen.  "There isn't a weak card in this deck,"adds long-time manager/producer Jon Landau. "The Promise is simply a great listening experience."

On the DVD front, there's the 90-minute documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness... from award-winning filmmaker Thom Zimny (and debuting on HBO October 7). A second DVD includes a 2009 live rehearsal video where Springsteen and band performed Darkness in it's entirety AND twelve more songs taped live in NY, New Jersey and Phoenix 1976-78. A third DVD is a full 26-song live performance "House Cut" recorded in Houston in 1978 for in-concert jumbo-screen telecast during the show. And did we mention the 80-page book of Springsteen's notes, rare pics and recording info? Without a doubt this collection -- six hours of video and two hours of audio -- is one of the finest catalog reissues ever assembled. See the full track listing and watch a preview of The Promise DVD documentary after the jump.

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Bruce Springsteen - "Save My Love" (from the album The Promise)

Edie Carey- Bring the Sea - November 2 - Acclaimed performing songwriter Edie Carey delivers her seventh album in just over a decade, once again deftly weaving folk, Americana and blithe Shawn Colvin-styled acoustic pop with an ear for memorable melodies and wry, incisive lyrical imagery. Producer Evan Brubaker is back helming the project which features guest turns from Shawn Mullins and Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket. Lead track "Easy Now" easily reaffirms Carey's way around a sweetly turned out, understated pop/folk song.

Edie Carey - "Easy Now" (from the album Bring the Sea)