Switchfoot

It took Switchfoot five albums to crack Billboard's Top 10, with the #3 debut of Nothing Is Sound. Surprising? Um, yeah. After all, the San Diego-based band sold more than two million copies of their previous album, The Beautiful Letdown, and had a slew of fan favorites under their guitar straps by 2005. That includes the crunchy power chords and sky-scraping harmonies of "Meant to Live," the shimmering balladry of "I Dare You to Move," the steady beats and uneasy string section of "This Is Your Life," and the quirky, ear-grabbing pop of "New Way to Be Human."

Our Next Steps covers the entire scope of Switchfoot's career as well, from a couple of startling solo cuts to inescapable standouts from the group's latest full-length.

A true U.K. vet (U2/the Cure producer Tim Palmer) stepped behind the boards for Switchfoot's sixth effort, a leap-forward of an album called Oh! Gravity.. Unafraid to take risks from beginning to end, the band seized every song by its hooks and verses, including the crashing, stop/start chords of "Dirty Second Hands" and the piano-led glam-rock leanings of "Amateur Lovers." Not that Switchfoot didn't push their sound in the past — whether we're talkin' the hazy, hushed melodies of "You," the grinding guitars of "Company Car," the punchy percussion of "You Already Take Me There," or the shifty synths and deftly tweaked vocals of "The Beautiful Letdown."

OK, so the story's a little familiar: two brothers form a band, bouncing the natural pop tendencies of one member (Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman in this case) off a bed of tightly wound bass lines, volatile drum beats, and riffs that reach for the rafters. The songs rarely remain the same in Switchfoot's catalog, though. Living up to the tides-are-changing/change-is-crucial premise of their surfer-term name, the band has kept critics and fans guessing over the course of six solid albums and Foreman's own solo EPs. Our career-spanning Essentials playlist keeps up with their every step: the encore-ready choruses of "We Are One Tonight," the neck-yanking groove of "Stars," the melancholic shuffle of "Learning to Breathe," the yearning strings of "Faust, Midas, and Myself," and many, many more.