Nellie McKay

While critics have always toasted her restless creativity, the music industry has struggled with understanding Nellie McKay from the start. Aside from being a sly jab at a Norah Jones album, Get Away from Me spread 60 minutes of music over two discs to replicate the long-lost feeling of flipping a record over. This made her the first female artist to debut with a double album, a feat she repeated on Pretty Little Head, another mind-blowing blend of hip-hop-inspired bravado and classically trained compositions caught somewhere between Tin Pan Alley and a modern-day off-Broadway musical. As if all that genre-jumping wasn't confusing (and rewarding) enough, McKay's also released an iTunes-exclusive soundtrack to a Jennifer Aniston movie (Rumor Has It) and her tightest effort yet — the 30 minutes of rapid-fire rhymes, playful piano, and pure attitude that is Obligatory Villagers, which features a bonus track…in Japanese.