Great albums that you may have missed.

Winter looms, the days grow short, the sky opens, and year-end lists begin to flutter down and cover the land. 'Tis the season in which pundits of all stripes roll out their Top 10s—an agonizing process for pop-music critics, who, in an age of digital downloading, must sift through vast amounts of music, and who tend by nature to be haplessly, nerdishly tormented about narrowing down their favorites. I'll spare you the tragicomic details of my own deliberations and simply say: Watch this space next week for my bests of 2006. In the meantime, here are some fine records that didn't quite make the cut, most of them doubtful to place near the top of any big polls: from rappers and balladeers and sound collagists, straight out of Nashville and France and the distant musical past, overlooked music worth catching up with before the year's out.

Matmos, The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast (Matador)

It sounds like an exercise in conceptual art tedium: 10 "audio portraits" of historically significant gays and lesbians—including Patricia Highsmith, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and (gulp) Ludwig Wittgenstein—featuring the sampled sounds of everything from semen striking against a hard surface to a vacuum cleaner inserted into the remains of a cow's vagina. But the San Francisco sound collagists Matmos (best known for their work with Björk, who guests here) are wonderful, whimsical Postmodern composers—their songs never fail to absorb, or amuse. Music nerds will savor the in-jokes in "Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan" a tribute to the pioneering DJ, but the music is its own reward: It's the most festively warped dance track I've heard all year, Hanna-Barbera at the Paradise Garage. As for the Wittgenstein homage: You don't need to know a thing about the Philosophische Untersuchungen to get utterly lost in its percussive clicks, spoken-word murmurings, and stormy blasts of noise. The CD album art is amazing, too.

Field Mob, Light Poles and Pine Trees (Geffen)

As their name suggests, Field Mob are country bumpkins—they're from Albany, Ga., the birthplace of Ray Charles—and sure enough, their witty, shamelessly salacious lyrics, delivered in thick drawls, carry a distinctly earthy, regional tang. On Light Poles and Pine Trees, Shawn Jay and Smoke are concerned almost entirely with sex. It's a totally unambitious album, but also unpretentious, skillful, and more fun than 99 percent of the year's hip-hop releases. "So What," in which they hurl PG-13 come-ons at R&B hottie Ciara, should have been a bigger hit; "Eat 'Em Up, Beat 'Em Up," the most explicit ode to cunnilingus ever recorded, could never be a hit in a million years.

Various Artists, That Devilin' Tune: A Jazz History, Volume 1 (1895-1927) (Music & Arts)

These nine CDs represent just one-quarter of a monumental four-volume compilation curated by music historian Allen Lowe, which seeks to recontextualize early jazz history, and with it the history of American pop music. (And, come to think of it, the history of America, period.) Lowe's bumptious, delightful, danceable mix of early pop, ragtime, jug band, and blues recordings presents a vastly expanded and more complicated picture of American musical roots, discovering hot rhythm and jazz-style improvisation in some unlikely places, like 19^th-century marching bands and the "coon song" performances of vaudevillians like Stella Mayhew and Len Spencer. An essential historical document; also, a party-starter.

KT Tunstall, Eye to the Telescope (Virgin)

Most people know KT Tunstall by way of Katherine McPhee: The Scottish singer-songwriter's "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" became a minor radio hit after the American Idol runner-up sang it—passably—on the big show. But Tunstall's debut was a smash in the U.K., and deservedly so. It's a near-perfect example of what so-called Adult Album Alternative—often the most deadly dull of genres—should be: sophisticated, crisply played, very pretty pop-rock songs about grown-up relationships, with surprising rhythmic oomph, and arcing melodies that practically beg to be called Beatlesesque. Aimee Mann dreams of making a record like Eye to the Telescope—for that matter, Elvis Costello hasn't made music this good in at least a decade.

Hector Lavoe, La Voz (Fania)