The Atlanta, Georgia, band was started in 1977, when keyboardist / vocalist Jason Bryant, saxophonists Billy Ellis and Willie "Sonny" Killebrew, guitarist Bruno Speight, bassist John Alexander Simpson, drummer James Earl Jones III, and lead vocalist Mary Davis formed a group called Sounds of Santa Monica that played at Atlanta nightclub the Regal Room.

Doyle Bramhall II put his solo recording career into hibernation following the 2001 release of Welcome, choosing to concentrate on his thriving career as a sideman and producer. It was hard to blame him for deciding upon this route, not when Eric Clapton picked him as a lieutenant guitarist and Elton John, Sheryl Crow, and Derek Trucks all regularly came calling. Bramhall channels all this experience into Rich Man, his first album in 17 years and also his best.

Anybody seeking an exhaustive Britney Spears compilation has been waiting for a collection like 2013's The Essential Britney Spears. Where other Britney compilations ran no longer than a single CD, this is a double-disc set with over 30 tracks more than enough space for all of her hit American singles, although that does mean that there are some singles from non-U.S. territories that are missing in action.

Like 2004's Greatest Hits: My Prerogative, 2009's The Singles runs 18 tracks but the selected songs result in a very different listening experience. To begin with, the five years separating the two compilations were tumultuous ones for Britney Spears, but they resulted in a clutch of hits that kept her on the charts despite all the drama, hits that firmly entrenched Britney as a dance club diva. This stretch of six singles – "Gimme More," "Piece of Me," "Womanizer," "Circus," "If You Seek Amy," "Radar" – along with the excellent new Max Martin-written and produced single "3" (much better than any of the three new cuts on My Prerogative), help push The Singles away from teen pop and toward pure dance-pop bliss, a shift in tone underscored by the virtual absence of ballads (the only one included is "Everytime," which in this context plays a bit as a chill-out number). In some regards, giving her early sticky bubblegum and fluffy ballads a bit of a short shrift does downplay Britney's era of dominance, but it does result in a stronger overall listen, since there are no slow patches here, just a parade of relentless hooks and rhythms that wound up defining the sound of a decade.

The Seeds were one of the most influential bands in the '60s American garage rock scene; they delivered hypnotic, stripped-down tunes dominated by Daryl Hooper's circular keyboard lines and the fuzzy, feral guitar breaks of Jan Savage, while lead singer Sky Saxon wailed a thinly veiled paen to drugs and sex, including "Mr. Farmer," "Rolling Machine," and "Up in Her Room." The Seeds scored their biggest hit with "Pushin' Too Hard" in 1967, but the band had already attracted a sizable following in their hometown of Los Angeles, and they would release a string of memorable singles through the end of the decade. Singles As & Bs 1965-1970 collects both sides of the 11 singles the Seeds released during their heyday, including variant B-sides for two releases, and as a bonus the set includes a rare, unedited take of "Pushin' Too Hard"…