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Juana Molina – Un Dia (One Day) – Domino Records

Twenty years ago in Argentina, way before the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, there was a comic news program called La Noticia Rebelde, or Rebel News. One young actress featured on the show was Juana Molina, a rising star on television. But Juana dropped acting a few years later – for her country’s dismay – to pursue music. Now she is one of the most innovative singer-songwriters to come from Argentina who experiments with pop, electronica, beats and loops. Her music sounds really deep and dreamy, but somewhere in the underline you can hear her old sense of humor. -- picked by Gisele Regatao

Elbow - “The Seldom Seen Kid” (Geffen)

Our next CD pick of the week comes from Elbow, a band from Manchester, England, that won this year’s prestigious Mercury Prize for their album “The Seldom Seen Kid.” The Mercury honors great – and sometimes under-the-radar -- albums from British and Irish artists, and this year’s short list of nominees was impressive. On it were vets like Radiohead and Robert Plant and next-big-things like Adele and Laura Marling. But Elbow topped them with an expansive Britpop album that positively torpedoes that new Coldplay. Here’s “Grounds for Divorce” from The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow. – picked by Joel Meyer

Rachel Unthank and the Winterset: The Bairns

Our final CD pick this week is one of the Mercury Prize also-rans. And it’s amazing they were even nominated. Rachel Unthank & The Wintersets are young musicians playing very old music from Northumbria, a region of England rich in folklore and folk music. Rachel, her sister Becky, and their band have released an album called The Bairns, on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records. Some of the songs are very short and very spare, a reminder of how they originally sounded. But most are arranged in strange and beautiful ways, as on this song called “I Wish.” -- picked by John Schaefer