Mugison

On his third album, Mugison has fully embraced his rock-and-roll demons. The award-winning Icelander (born Örn Elías Guðmundsson) sounds like he sold his soul to Robert Johnson, Jimmy Page and the devil on tracks like "The Pathetic Anthem" and "Jesus Is a Good Name to Moan." Eschewing the glitchy laptop folk and twee flirtations of his previous recordings, Mugison recruited a full band and — citing influences as diverse as Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Aphex Twin and Sepultura — recorded his most direct, honest and visceral work yet. The singer-songwriter swings wildly from genre to genre and seems, at every moment, on the verge of crumbling into an exhausted, broken-down heap, but holds it together with tight songwriting, jagged guitars and one hell of a howling Hammond.