Dallas “high-energy alternative folk-pop” band Parallel Play sure remembers. In fact, the group has applied the concept to its debut album, “The Floor’s Made of Lava!” (Also, the band cites as influences Tom & Jerry, Hall & Oates and Dungeons & Dragons, and you’ve got to love that.)

Anyway, the album is a collection of, well, high-energy alternative folk pop songs, played with speedy verve on acoustic instruments including guitar, banjo and upright bass, and topped with prismatic rootsy vocal harmonies.

The songs are catchy, the music is fun and the band sounds like it’s enjoying the hell out of playing originals and a couple of well-chosen covers: the Cranberries’ “Linger” and Green Day’s “Pulling Teeth.”

Check out “Annul,” a Parallel Play original, and watch them cover the Gin Blossoms’ “Found Out About You.”

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Annul mp3

Recorded in the same studio where Nirvana made “Bleach,” the songs on “Josephine” are a little less chaotic than “Dig Your Grave,” which is not to say they don’t still crackle with restless energy. The EP features two version of the title track, the hazy, acoustic-ish “LP version” and “Portland Version,” which trades the Laurel Canyon folk sound for a pell-mell garage-rock thing that sounds like it could go off the rails at any moment.

But wait: LP version? That’s right: “Josephine” (and, for that matter, “Dig Your Grave”) are part of a forthcoming full-length album, ”Stoned & Alone,” due in digital form May 11 on Seayou Records.

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The Pharmacy — “Josephine” (Portland version)

Well, no. But Truckstop Darlin’ definitely plays in the same raw-boned, whiskey-soaked roots-rock style as the bands on that list, particularly the Truckers. After releasing a self-titled debut in 2010, the Portland, Ore., group returns June 5 with a new album, “Hope and the Heart it Breaks.” Now that’s an alt-country title.

To keep you docile until then, the band is giving away the single “I See You,” a big, stomping tune full of blustery electric and overdriven steel guitars that wash over John Phelan’s ground-glass voice. If you don’t know Truckstop Darlin’, it’s a powerful introduction, and if you do, well, enjoy the new song.

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I See You mp3

The album, “Slaughterhouse,” is the first album Segall has recorded with his touring band, which also consists of Mikal Cronin, Charlie Moothart and Emily Rose Epstein. (Segall is also a member of Sic Alps, the Perverts, Party Fowl, Epsilons and the Traditional Fools. Dude keeps busy.)

To celebrate the pending release of “Slaughterhouse,” June 26 on In The Red, Segall et al are letting you hear “Wave Goodbye,” a murky tune with sludgy, fuzztone guitars, trash-can drums and roomy, reverberating vocals. It’s a tantalizing hint of what’s to come.

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Ty Segall Band — “Wave Goodbye”

Fortunately, his stark, gutty music makes up for any naming affectations. Helfrich’s second album, “Malheur” (named for the county in eastern Oregon where he grew up), features 11 songs he wrote following the unexpected death of a friend he’d mostly fallen out of touch with, combined with the ambivalence toward his hometown. The songs on “Malheur,” he says in the press notes, ask the questions that arose as he sought to understand his reactions to his friend and eastern Oregon.

“I didn’t attempt to answer them,” he says. “In past songs I’ve written I’ve tried to resolve them with an answer of some kind. The nature of the questions asked in these songs is such that there are no simple answers, nothing neat in the way things are wrapped up.”

Musically, mbilly triangulates the dry, desolate air of Castanets and the riveting intensity of Jay Farrar at his bleakest. The title track from “Malheur” puts dark, arid guitar over a hypnotic beat as Helfrich sings in an anguished voice shaded with a touch of reverb. It’s powerful stuff. The album is due June 5, which would have been the day his friend turned 32.

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Malheur mp3

“Be My Bone” wraps a sunny vintage-pop melody inside a spiky tangle of guitar, drums, bass and a trilling organ part. It’s fast, effervescent and just unhinged enough to sound like the whole thing could go off the rails in an instant.

That’s a great sound, and it’s put No Monster Club on stage with the likes of Ariel Pink, Wavves, Sic Alps and Jeff the Brotherhood.

“Be My Bone” is the second song on “Dublin,” which you can order order here.

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Be My Bone mp3

A New Yorker by birth, Michael Levasseur grew up in a weird corner of South Carolina, lived in Athens, Ga., and ultimately moved to Portland, Ore. Stints in bands led eventually to a solo career that has featured three albums and, in 2011, the formation of a new band, Michael the Blind & the Els (so named because all the members’ names have “el” in them).

As bands do, they recorded an album, “Ares & Els,” due in June. Before that, though, you can hear the folk-rocky number “Another Circle of Fifths,” a solo song Levasseur revived for the new album. It’s an uptempo tune, mixing a distorted guitar sound with steady drums and sweeping strings, courtesy of the Magik*Magik Orchestra.

Levasseur gets comparisons sometimes to Elliott Smith, Leonard Cohen and Suzanne Vega, but he sounds to us like himself as he sings in urgent, breathy tones about persevering, with lyrics like this one: “I want to quit, but every time I’m at the end of my rope, well I find there’s another rope.”

“Another Circle of Fifths” is the lead track on “Ares & Els,” which comes out June 5 on the newly formed Alder Street Records.

Photo by Rachael Reneé Levasseur

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The group thrashes its way through “Take the Mirror,” the free song from the foursome’s forthcoming “Sorry.” Out May 29, it’s White Lung’s second full-length album. The band has also released four 7-inch records and the LP “It’s the Evil,” which came out in 2010.

“Take the Mirror” is fast, punishing and catchy, which is a deceptively tricky combination. Check it out, then ask yourself, how great would it be if White Lung toured with Screaming Females?

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Take the Mirror mp3

Amaker stumbled upon the song while rummaging through his new-wave LPs while entertaining at home one night after the band’s 2011 European tour, and something clicked.

“Nothing I had previously heard on this record seemed even slightly remarkable,” the baritone-voiced badass says in a press release. “But suddenly, I heard magic. I believe that this was one of those unique moments in space and time. I was meant to see and hear the beauty in this song.”

Now you can hear it, too: Spark & Shine has put out his version of “I Can’t Wait” as a single while they gear up for the release this fall of Amaker and the Rodeo’s new album, “Year of the Dragon.” (And how awesome is that?)

The Ocasek cover isn’t on new the album — “It exists only because I told myself to make it so,” says Amaker, who once told us 3 Facts — but maybe it can be the crutch that helps you hobble along until “Year of the Dragon” is available this fall.

Photo by Johnny Podhradsky

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Now, for the first time, the band — Jose A. Perez, at left above, and Esteban Ruiz — is releasing its music in the U.S. today with an EP, “Constellations,” on Slanty Shanty. (It’s also available free via Bandcamp or the embedded version below.)

The pair crafts a dreamy, atmospheric sound on a pair of free songs from the EP: “A Morning Walk” is full of drifting keyboard tones, soft beats and downcast vocals, while “I Was Sad So I Was Dancing” (and isn’t that always the way?) features a cascade of melancholy acoustic guitar. It’s a sound at odds with the Mediterranean feel of Spain, which the musicians acknowledge.

“I have always been inspired by visions of snowy fields,” Ruiz says in press notes for the EP. “Devoid of palm trees, pretty much the opposite of Spain.”

Wherever they’re from, and wherever they’re dreaming of being, the music is haunting.

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