“I want to be your only friend,” folk-rock journeyman Will Oldham announces on the opening track of his new album, Beware, his latest musical venture under the moniker Bonnie “Prince” Billy.

Loneliness and introspection abound on Beware, an album on which Oldham, despite his blustering opening line, doesn’t sound at all self-assured.

They graduated from Harvard. They performed in the movie Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. They released a four song EP every month during the year 2006. Heck, they even made it into my top 100 most listened to songs in iTunes quite a few times. Now (well actually, two weeks ago) Bishop Allen released their third full-length album, and it’s so upbeat and prepped-out.

With the popularity of No Age, it seems that punk is trying to make a revival in the new hipster movement. Although it is well known that punk is dead, as we can see with contemporary labeled punk bands like Against Me! being much more pop based than their 1970’s counterparts, this new attempt by No Age illustrates a resurrection of old punk elements in a more progressive, accesible form. This resurrection is embodied by Wavves, a one-man act headed by San Diego’s Nathan Williams. Williams successfully makes punk seem all too cool again. His music sounds like: the Beach Boys and The Zombies meet heavily synthesized punk with a hint of New Wave and Goth. On Wavvves, Williams’ second LP in four months, songs touch on topics like weed and being apathetic.

Just when the heyday of alt-country seems to have faded, M. Ward’s Hold Time comes along to reinvigorate the genre. The album feels deeply rooted in traditional gospel, blues and country music, less afraid to let its twangy side hang out than many first generation “alt” acts. “Fisher of Men” resurrects the spirit of Johnny Cash, for example, while several of the songs on the album are covers that have been entirely taken apart and put back together. “Oh Lonesome Me” rearranges a famous country song by Don Gibson. With Lucinda Williams providing guest vocals in a duet, the song has been slowed down to a groggy, hungover, lovesick warble, sounding bleak and spare despite the addition of an elaborate classical strings section.

Lunging forward from her 2006 gem Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Neko Case tosses a golden egg our way with Middle Cyclone, the masterpiece promised by her previous four studio albums. Concurrently immersed in cerebral contemplation and frantic, visceral verve, the queen of alt-country seduces us with her atmospheric, luscious vocals.

To those not familiar with contemporary R&B, the solo artist known as The-Dream is a largely unknown entity. Despite reaching gold status and scoring three top-ten R&B singles with his debut Love/Hate, the man born Terius Nash has gained famed chiefly from penning and producing monster hits for the likes of Beyonce (“Single Ladies”), Mariah Carey (“Touch My Body”) and Rihanna (“Umbrella”). While crossover fame has escaped him, his sophomore follow-up will likely launch The-Dream to solo stardom, as Love vs. Money is as professional and concise as mainstream R&B records come.

Disregarding her misguided 2007 My December foray into “serious sounding pop” music, it has been nearly four years since Kelly Clarkson has commanded the airwaves. The singles off her sophomore effort Breakaway were so omnipresent that it's hard to imagine it’s been this long, as it too is almost unimaginable to call her fourth proper studio release a comeback album. Nevertheless, this in effect is what All I Ever Wanted is, Clarkson’s acknowledgment to the record-buying faithful that she’s ready to return to her strengths of singing straight-ahead pop music.

Deftly merging exotic instrumentation with cascading waves of lyrical audacity, Devendra Banhart hatches Surfing, the debut album of his anticipated project, Megapuss. Collaborating with multi-instrumentalist Greg Rogove and Neil Young’s label Vapor Records, the Prince of Psych Folk chases Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon with his sixth LP in as many years. Bizarrely titled leadoff track “Crop Circle Jerk ’94” showcases Devendra’s velvety warble (“You know I used to see fire in the sky, now I see rainbows”) atop a precise, titillating Stratocaster.

Imagine this: around 40 of the biggest stars from all reaches of the indie universe get together and put out a 31-song, double-disc album featuring mostly-new material and several all-star collaborations, like Feist and Grizzly Bear and Bon Iver and Aaron Dessner (The National).

No, this isn’t a hipster’s wet dream — this is Dark Was The Night, a new release spearheaded by the charity group the Red Hot Organization.

A standard indie quartet of bass, guitar, drums, and keyboard, these Brooklyn cuties have found a low-fi, post-punk sound on their self-titled debut that feels less retro than timeless. They eschew any sampling and remixing, on the one hand, and any of the by-now commonplace addition of brass or classical strings, on the other, for the purity of a throwback garage rock band.