Why buy a single release when an LP can deliver the same songs, more music per dollar, and a more convenient format? To deal with that question, record companies have increasingly been injecting the flip (or “B”) sides of singles with an added incentive to purchase: material that is not available on the artists’ LPs.

One result is Attack of the Killer B’s, a compilation with new-wave leanings that turns out to be as much fun as its title. Among the highlights: Marshall Crenshaw’s Beatlesque “You’re My Favorite Waste of Time”; “Love Goes to Building on Fire,” a 1977 Talking Heads tune that ranks with anything the group committed to an album back then; and Roxy Music’s “Always Unknowing,” a dreamy tidbit from the sessions that produced the recent Avalon.