Fans of bands rooted in Beatlemania will find a lot to love in the clever grooves of the late Klas Qvist’s ‘Citizen K III.’

To almost quote the great Nick Lowe, the new album from Agony Street is Pure Pop for Always Now People.

Tomas Alfredson’s ‘Let the Right One In’ reimagines a modern vampire fable with great acting, endearing characters, and a contrapuntally hopeful score.

Su Andersson’s ‘Brave’ is an album that follows in the great assertive tradition of progressive folk, meeting the blue-jeaned coffee-house muster of old.

With Agony Street, the late Swedish multi-instrumentalist Klas Qvist created music that’s up-tempo, melodic, joyous and Sir James Paul McCartney infectious.

This self-titled LP from Gothenburg, Sweden-based Kyte was a solid debut by a very promising group. In fact, I called them the best new band of 2008.

Sometimes you want jazz that makes you think and other times you just want that jazz to party and get down. The Nils Landgren Funk Unit takes care of the latter end of the spectrum with their recent release ‘Funk Is My Religion.’

A melodic hybrid of Swedish folk/jazz-rock, Henrik Cederblom’s ‘Zobop’ serves as a much-needed musical life jacket.

These bands can all rock as hard as any other band from any other place, which shows that maybe the importance of location isn’t such a big deal anymore.

If there’s a template for the way to evolve gracefully, it might belong to Soilwork.