VoxTalk highlights three albums from a strong week of releases, recent tour developments and other music news.

New albums (released Aug. 28):

Divine Fits – A Thing Called Divine Fits

This indie rock supergroup includes Spoon’s Britt Daniel, New Bomb Turks’ Sam Brown, and Dan Boeckner, formerly of Wolf Parade. But Divine Fits sounds nothing like any of those bands. Borrowing synthesizers and dance beats straight outta ’83, the group reinvents new wave without rehashing it.

Alanis Morissette – Havoc and Bright Lights

Alanis Morissette is back with her first studio LP since 2008’s Flavors of Entanglement. Although Morissette’s no longer doing the angst chic thing, lead single “Guardian” still touts post-grunge chords and her signature vocal tics.

Swans – The Seer

According to frontman Michael Gira, The Seer is “the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in or imagined.” Twelve Swans albums, written off. Gira’s boldness might be an attempt to sell a few more records, but tracks like “Mother of the World”—a 9-minute barnburner from Hell—convince me that he’s right: The Seer is Swans’ magnum opus.

Tours:

• Deftones – Hard rock outfit Deftones announced its seventh studio album, Koi No Yokan (out November 15^th via Reprise Records) and a series of U.S. tour dates, including a stop at The Blue Note on Nov. 21.

• Smashing Pumpkins – Billy Corgan and co. will be touring behind their latest LP, Oceania.

• Baroness cancel remaining tour dates – After its members were hospitalized following a bus crash in the UK, metal act Baroness canceled a slew of dates. The remaining shows on the schedule have now been canceled.

Other tidbits:

• Adele’s 21 finally dropped out of the top 10 albums chart after 78 weeks.

• Swedish electronic “multimedia entity” iamamiwhoami released its debut album kin. It’s good.

• And listen to Jessie Ware if you haven’t yet. Pop-soul at its finest.

Vox pick of the week:

Divine Fits – “Shivers”

The way Britt Daniel nonchalantly tosses out the opening couplet (“I’ve been contemplating suicide/But it don’t suit my style”) is jarring; however, this Nick Cave cover injects the album with raw emotion, which the group’s other songs lack. Note Boeckner’s spastic guitar flailing at the end, and how it aligns with Daniel’s melody.