$5 Albums for December 2011

Some great $5 albums at Amazon for December. At least a couple will end up on my best of 2011. Go check out some great music, especially my favorites below...

• Wye Oak: Civilian
• Youth Lagoon: The Year of Hibernation
• Radiohead: Kid A
• Jonsi: Go
• The Roots: How I Got Over
• Tune-Yards: W H O K I L L
• Iron & Wine: The Shepherd's Dog
• The Civil Wars: Barton Hollow
• Ha Ha Tonka: Death of a Decade
• John Hiatt: Dirty Jeans & Mudslide Hymns
• Crystal Castles: (II)
• Slave Ambient: The War On Drugs
• M. Ward: Post-War
• Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
• Telekinesis: 12 Desperate Straight Lines
• Florence + The Machine: Lungs
• She & Him: Volume 2
• Modest Mouse: Good News For People Who Love Bad News
• Ray LaMontagne: Till the Sun Turns Black
• R.E.M.: Green
• Bruce Springsteen: Greatest Hits
• Check out all 100 $5 albums for December and tell me which albums I should check out that didn't make my list

Music Monday | Stretch Yourself

I love to find new, unique, or renewed sounds in new music: Bon Iver's bearded outdoorsman falsetto, Beirut's use of traditional instruments and foreign sounds, Antony & The Johnsons's trembling vocals, Animal Collective's layers and layers of electronic music, and Andrew Bird's lyrical torsion. Sometimes there are new sounds that just don't work for me, and other times they draw me in and stretch me in a new direction. Even when they don't work, I think it's good for us to be stretched. It keeps us from mere consumption and towards understanding it as art.

Let's be honest, some of you just love everything from U2 but don't realize you are stuck in a moment and can't get out of it. Time for something new. Here are two places to stretch.

1. Daniel Knox. The haunting vocals will stay with you in "Ghostsong." If you like it, grab his free Daytrotter session and buy his album, Evryman for Himself.

2. tUnE-yArDs. I don't really know what to say about this, but the critics are crazy about it. The new album from tUnE-yArDs: W H O K I L L is only $5 right now. If listening to this doesn't stretch you a bit, you may have deeper issues.