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While American hitmakers like Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift climbed the British charts in 2009, here in the U.S., we saw a serious influx of great music from the U.K. You wouldn't necessarily call these bands chart-toppers, either here or there, but they do add up to something resembling a British Invasion.

Since Weezer's debut in 1994, the band has released six more albums, gone through a re-organization, and earned a devoted following. Their new album is called Raditude. Last year, Rivers Cuomo, Weezer's lead singer, guitarist and principal songwriter, released two solo CDs of songs that didn't make it onto the band's albums.

The songs "And Then You're Gone" and "But Now I'm Back" began as one, with a little help from Franz Schubert. With some ingenious songwriting and a little help from NPR's Ari Shapiro, together the songs tell the tale of a love lost — and perhaps won again.

"Bottom of the River" has already become one of Arcuragi's most beloved live songs, and it's easy to hear why. An ode to embracing your misfortune and letting it wash over you, the track finds Arcuragi deciding to plop himself down atop the rocks of a running stream and commiserate with the fishes.

With its dance-happy, sing-along sensibilities, fun's brilliantly catchy "All the Pretty Girls" is the definition of pop, complete with rousing percussion, gorgeous strings and Nate Ruess' slick vocals. All the youthful angst in the world can't hide the song's dramatic arrangement.

Landlubbers beware: Peg-legged shipmates may invade your beer halls and cubicles soon. Sept. 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and Alestorm is at the ready.

Each layer of Nurses' "Man at Arms" — the toy piano, the acoustic guitar, the vocals and multilayered percussion — sounds like a natural companion to the rough sound around it. That ambient space becomes a primary instrument, in a sense, along with voices that seem more focused on pitch-bending tones than on filling the recording with rich, vivid words.

If you bring cheap libations, secured in steel and bathed in a tub of ice, the masses will come. For the metalhead, a kegger means it's time to get brew-tal.

For those who can't wait to hear songs from Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's follow-up to Once, the pair played six new songs before performing the first-ever Tiny Desk Concert encore.

Fight the Big Bull sounds like the brainchild of a young composer who grew up with rock on the radio, jazz canons in the conservatory and everything else at his disposal on the Internet. The orchestration of "Dying Will Be Easy" has the fullness and audacity of a Mingus or Ellington.