Arie’s self-described “acoustic soul” and echoes of Stevie Wonder with bigger crescendos and, every so often, hints of Turkish pop. The song sequence moves from personal relations (“Moved by You”) to universal ones (“Brother’s Keeper”) the music reinforces Ms. 2, Love & Politics.” The new album attests to love, self-affirmation, insecurities surmounted and troubles overcome: “What did not demolish me simply polished me,” she declares in “Soulbird Rise,” which ascends from folky solitude to a choir-backed anthem.

Positive thinking could hardly get more positive than it does on “SongVersation” (Motown), India Arie’s fifth studio album and her first since her contentious 2009 album, “Testimony: Vol. Sonically as well as verbally, they set aside hip-hop swagger to contemplate how the present reconfigures the past. The tracks, mostly in minor keys, are bass heavy, unhurried and unexpectedly thoughtful.

But where Daft Punk went on to build pop songs, Pretty Lights sticks to dance music. This time, instead of sampling old vinyl, he worked with musicians, singers and rappers in Brooklyn and New Orleans to emulate 1960s and 1970s soul grooves, then pressed vinyl discs of his own tracks to be sampled and collaged. Derek Vincent Smith, the D.J.-producer from Denver who records as Pretty Lights, has worked his way up the electronic dance music circuit with tracks steeped in the midtempo stomp and distorted undertow of hip-hop he releases all of his music for free download from his Web site, though for “A Color Map of the Sun,” he’s also selling CDs and LPs. Daft Punk decided to trade samples and programming for live musicians, revisiting vintage funk styles in the studio, and released its album “Random Access Memories” just weeks before Pretty Lights revealed a similar metamorphosis on its new album, “A Color Map of the Sun” (Pretty Lights Music).

India arie songs playlist