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First, it is important to know that Android Lollipop uses the Material Design, which is a set of practices and design patterns ( colors, icons, typography, animations, layouts, etc). Therefore, if you follow these rules of Material Design, your app will have a great UI.
And yes, it is possible( and recommended ) to implement Material Design using Recycler Views and Card Views. Remembering that if you are going to implement Material Design on devices with API lower than Lollipop, you will need to use the support library suitable. Here is an example of how to implement the Lollipop UI.
https://tasafo.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/utilizando-material-design-em-android/