Album: Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Forty Fort (Hot Cup)

Bassist Moppa Elliot's NYC quartet offers a cute and comedic variant on the usual avant-garde, John Zorn-style deconstruction by playing catchy Blue Note bop and boogaloo-sounding themes.

They play them well, too, with trumpeter Peter Evans once again revealed as the star instrumentalist. But while MOPDTK are probably more fun live than on record (and whoever books them for their UK festival debut will have made quite a coup), on this fourth album you start to wish that they'd pack in the circus noises and just do "The Sidewinder".