Donna Summer
Crayon
Sorry, but we don't love to love this former disco queens colorless pop album. Baby.
The Saturday Knights
Mingle
What? Everybody knows Saturday night is amateur night — you're better off staying home.
We Are Scientists
Brain Thrust Mastery
They are not scientists but convincing indie clones from a Williamsburg lab.
Ladytron
Velocifero
On their latest, the British electroclash quartet forge industrial that's actually danceable.
Islands
Arms Way
This second release from the former Unicorners blows our minds with a weird new world of lush art rock.
Audiosurf
This $10 downloadable game, which converts almost any audio file into a rhythmic racetrack, redefines what it means to play music. Pilot a sci-fi vehicle down a highway studded with power-ups and obstacles in patterns generated by the song. Fans are clogging forums with tips on the best tracks to ride. (Try Neutral Milk Hotel's Holland, 1945!) — Nate Ralph
The World Ends With You
The makers of Final Fantasy have ditched the medieval milieu for cyber-Tokyo. The stylish renditions of the trendy Shibuya district are as dazzling as the J-pop soundtrack is grating. Combat is crazy funif youre ambidextrous. Use your stylus to slash at enemies on the bottom screen while scanning the top for button prompts. — Chris Kohler
Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel
Julia Keller
The machine gun "rendered individual valor largely irrelevant," writes Julia Keller in her biography of Richard Gatling, the man who gave warfare a shot of industrial-age efficiency. More than a literary portrait, this is a lyrical ode to an era in which the inventor reigned supreme and the US Patent Office occupied two small rooms yet contained the collective aspirations of thousands of tinkerers and dreamers. Gatling himself proves personally unremarkable, but Keller delivers an evocative reminder that our own great age of innovation is hardly without precedent. — Jeff Howe
Buying In
Rob Walker
The author, a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, maps the new contours of consumption in our post-Mad Men age. Some of his points (consumers invest brands with meaning! Internet-empowered shoppers can still be swayed by marketing!) will be obvious to anyone who's taken Psych 101 or visited a shopping mall. And Walker's attempted Gladwellisms — "murketing," "Desire Code" — get old fast. Still, the case studies of brands that have successfully captivated an increasingly fickle market are always engaging and frequently enlightening. — Jason Tanz
