Hyena 2014

Bob Drake's latest might be my favorite yet. After the unusually stripped-down Bob's Drive In, Bob decided to rebound and make an "overproduced" album and oh boy is this thing ludicrously dense. Bob's way too good of a producer to let the concept get away from him, though, and the result is these are songs that have a huge depth in the arrangements. Especially impressive considering it's, as with all of his albums, basically a one-man project.

R.E.M. mark the point when post-punk turned into alternative rock. When their first single, "Radio Free Europe", was released in 1981, it sparked a back-to-the-garage movement in the American underground. While there were a number of hardcore and punk bands in the U.S. during the early '80s, R.E.M. brought guitar pop back into the underground lexicon. Combining ringing guitar hooks with mumbled, cryptic lyrics and a D.I.Y. aesthetic borrowed from post-punk, the band simultaneously sounded traditional and modern. Throughout the '80s, they worked relentlessly, releasing records every year and touring constantly, playing both theaters and backwoods dives. Along the way, they inspired countless bands, from the legions of jangle pop groups in the mid-'80s to scores of alternative pop groups in the '90s, who admired their slow climb to stardom.

“Sarah is a triple threat: a great composer, arranger and performer,” Ubisoft music supervisor Simon Landry told Billboard. “This allowed her to develop a unique signature that combines authentic elements from the game’s time period with contemporary music scoring.” That approach meshes well with the game - a mash-up of historical fiction with the latest in visual storytelling and interactive techniques.