The California-based Donkeys spent three years on their second album, Living on the Other Side, from start to release, and that combined with the quartet's warm, fluffy, unhurried music might create the impression that the band moves slowly. Some songs sound downright lazy.

"We're laid-back dudes," said keyboardist Anthony Lukens in a phone interview last week. "We try to make it sound like nothing's contrived or rushed. So I would probably take that as a compliment if something sounded, maybe, effortless would be a nicer way to say it. ... We're hardly lazy. ... We're definitely relaxed dudes. It takes us long time to get from Point A to Point B, because we're going to hang out and talk about it for a long time."

My 2008 album begins in Utah and ends in (or near) hell. Whether you think the distance between the starting point and the destination is a lot of territory or not much, we do get to travel pretty far afield. There's sunny California with the Botticellis, lovely inner-city Baltimore with DoMaJe, Iraq with the estimable Danny Elfman, and someplace sublimely absurd with Flight of the Conchords.

With the record industry in seasonal hibernation, I'm looking ahead to some of the events, tunes, and DVDs of the coming year.

Parlophone - the label home to everyone from the Beatles to Colplay in the UK - found the Swedish quintet Love Is All a touch hard to work with.

The label released the band's 2006 debut, Nine Times That Same Song, but dropped it after receiving rough mixes for the follow-up and getting resistance from the group about employing some outside producers to shape the recordings.

It was a union destined for failure, but Parlophone simply discovered what the members of Love Is All knew already: They are difficult.

"Everybody has so much say about everything," said lead singer Josephine Olausson in a phone interview last week. "It can get really frustrating."