2008, Warner Bros.

Accelerate, the first studio album in four years from R.E.M., finds modern rock's most acclaimed band returning to the stripped down, guitar-driven power that first enraptured fans. Helmed by the band and, for the first time, Jacknife Lee (co-producer of U2's '05 Grammy® Album Of The Year How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, The Hives, and Snow Patrol), Accelerate puts the 2007 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame group once again firmly behind the wheel of alternative rock, a genre R.E.M. helped invent.