By Erin Podolsky/Detroit Free Press

For long time followers of Death Cab for Cutie, the news was a pleasantly unexpected sock to the tender-hearted jaw, just as it was for singer Ben Gibbard. Two weeks ago, the Seattle quartet’s sixth full-length album, “Narrow Stairs,” entered the Billboard Top 200 at No. 1, putting the band in such company as Madonna, Mariah Carey and George Strait, just to name a few artists who held the top spot in the past few weeks. It’s a milestone that cements the fact that Death Cab isn’t a little indie band that could anymore - this is an indie band that can, did and does.

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By Brian McCollum /Detroit Free Press

The world may be startled, Alicia Keys acknowledges, but she’d love to link up with Jack and Meg White.

Keys says she’s a big fan of the Detroit-born duo whose gritty, high-wire rock starkly contrasts with her own cultivated soul-pop.

The singer-songwriter has several bands with whom she’d like to collaborate, including Linkin Park, U2, Green Day and Queens of the Stone Age — pairings “that are not quite of the same world, or so you think, but when you put them together it’s just really interesting.”

Topping her wish list, though, are the Stripes, who are on hiatus as Jack White tours with the Raconteurs.

“Well, I love the White Stripes because they’re very, very raw. It’s very cut and dried — it’s drums and it’s guitar, or it’s a little drums and piano, or it’s a little drums and bass,” says Keys. “It’s raw and it’s intense, and it’s still fun and it’s still edgy.

“I just think that combining that kind of style with mine — which has already got kind of a raw feel to it — and my voice … I just think we could do something really, really interesting that mixes rock and soul together — the blues and just emotion — in a way that would be really, really touching.”

It’s more than just a pipe dream, insists Keys. She says she has spoken to Jack White about the prospect.

“We’ve had some conversations, so when the time works out it definitely will happen,” she says. “And do I think people would get it or understand it? Definitely, I do. I think that people love interesting things like that. It’s exciting when you try something new and different, and it still has elements of them and elements of me, and you can hear how we mesh together. I think that’s fun.”

Weezer, “Weezer” (Geffen/Interscope)

By JOHN KOSIK/The Associated Press

Rest easy slacker geeks — Weezer have gotten it right once again.

Plowing through another set of snarky power pop, Weezer’s self-titled sixth studio disc is a bit audacious without skimping on what makes this band great — popping riffs, infectious choruses and an almost silly nostalgia for youth.

Frontman Rivers Cuomo relinquishes lead vocal and songwriting duties here and there, which may turn off some fans, but Weezer remain smarter than most acts and Cuomo and his mates still pen some of the best power pop ditties you’re likely to find.

Opening track “Troublemaker” is a kicking tongue-in-cheek knock on rock star misconceptions: “I’m gonna be a star and people will crane necks/to get a glimpse of me to see if I am having sex/and studying my moves to try and understand/why I am so unlike the singers in the other bands.”

Lead single “Pork and Beans” is already pleasing fans of previous hits, “Everybody Get Dangerous” tackles the risks of youth that we manage to survive and “Heart Songs” is Cuomo’s sweet ode to his myriad influences that references everyone from Gordon Lightfoot and Bruce Springsteen to Rob Bass (yes, really) and Kurt Cobain.

Other standouts include an homage to boyhood escape on “Dreamin’,” diverse, pulsating rockers in “Thought I Knew” and “Automatic,” and the gloomy synth freak-out of “Cold Dark World.”

With their most challenging disc since 1996’s “Pinkerton,” it would seem Cuomo and Weezer have grown up a bit — but thankfully not too much.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” may be the most ambitious song in the Weezer canon. Piano, acoustic and electric guitars, choir chants and Beach Boy-esque falsetto harmonies (among other elements) propel continual switches from punk, folk and metal over the course of six jaw-dropping minutes.

By Brian McCollum/Detroit Free Press

When she emerged on the music scene in summer 2001, it was clear Alicia Keys had all the makings for stardom.

Lovely, fashionable and gifted, she ably straddled the worlds of classic soul and modern pop, a classically trained pianist who gracefully infused her hook-laden songs with a cosmopolitan air.

Seven years and 11 Grammy Awards later, Keys resides securely in popular music’s upper tier. Her fall release, “As I Am,” spent four weeks atop Billboard’s album chart and became the fourth-bestselling record of 2007.

Keys has grown leaps and bounds since her early shows, where her sets were as notable for their limited material as for her sweet-hearted performances. Now she’s on her first full-fledged arena tour with a set list that’s certainly no longer lacking for hits.

“I’ve just come more into my own,” she says. “And really, with experience comes confidence, and a little bit more awareness of how I would like to do it, having learned from the past.”

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