Extreme shredding is an art form. Kingston, Ontario’s PS I Love You first showcased its über-riffing abilities on 2010’s Meet Me at the Muster Station, a record dripping with effusive romance. (It included a love song called “Butterflies & Boners.”) Now, the band’s latest—the louder and angrier Death Dreams (Paper Bag)—traces the Canadian landscape through the van window; songs are named “Toronto,” “Saskatoon” and “Princess Tower,” after an apartment block in Kingston. From the aching “Future Dontcare” to the instrumental “Death Dreams II,” Death Dreams examines the coulda-woulda-shouldas of love, with epic guitar solos filling the empty space left by everything unsaid.  

Grimes, a.k.a. Montreal’s Claire Boucher, has been slouching toward greatness ever since she released her first album in 2010. Visions (Arbutus), her fourth full-length, is a romantic flush of dark synths and Boucher’s taunting, high-pitched vocals. Combining an entire iPod ...