Now it’s time to check out the whole EP.

“Lynyrd Frynd” (nice touch) is a 7-song collection of seriously catchy synth-soul jams. They’re sleek and smart, a little arch but full of heart, and while that rhyme was unintentional, we totally stand by it. With a clap-clap beat and high-pitched synthesizer, opener “The Whole Thing” has a glossy feel that evokes beams of light sweeping through a dark, crowded space, while “The Last Gentleman” is some kind of retro-future indie-new jack swing tune with a treated bass line and deceptively busy layers of rhythm.

He slows things way down on the impassioned plea “Mrs. Friend,” and sings with anguish over a big beat and atmospheric synths on “The Year I Die.” Like “Serious Music,” it’s, um, serious music, and it’s yours free via his website.

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“These missions, these people, they are what my music is about,” Dukes says in press notes for his new album with the Blackstock Collection, “Thugs and China Dolls.”

It’s the latest entry in a career that has also included fronting the late-’80s Minneapolis band the Penelopes, and a stint in New York writing novels. Now he lives in Savannah, where Dukes recorded “Thugs and China Dolls” with alt-folk singer Jim White producing, and contributions from collaborators with Sufjan Stevens, the National and Of Montreal.

The result is a baroque-folk album built around acoustic instruments: banjo, mandolin, strings, horns, accordion and rich, beautiful vocal harmonies. Dukes sings in a distinctive voice at once tuneful and adenoidal, and his lyrics are smart and vivid.

With twin horn lines, a stop-start rhythm and male-female vocal interplay on the chorus, free song “Meet You At the Bus” feels like a gentler answer to the Replacements “Kiss Me On the Bus,” but don’t mistake gentle for naive: Dukes is as savvy as he is empathic.

Photo by Chia Chong

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Meet You At the Bus mp3

It’s a varied collection that spans the stormy psychedelic rocker “Faust,” the acoustic “Carry My Soul,” featuring ghostly female harmony vocals, and the hazy garage-pop number “Sunny Afternoon.” There’s a common denominator, though, which is that all of these songs are anchored to ridiculous grooves that never let up: whether the focus is fuzzed-out guitar or vocal interplay, Secret Colours plays deep in the pocket. Check out the songs below — they’re a trip.

Speaking of, guitarist Dave Stach got a little trippy in this Q&A with Chicago Innerview. The writer obviously led him into it, but his responses are great, particularly the stuff about Mogwai.

“EP3″ is the fourth release from Secret Colours, following a self-titled LP in summer 2010 and a pair of subsequent two-song efforts, “In the Absence” and “Follow the Drone.” The band expects to hit the road in 2012.

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The band is the project of Dave Hernandez, the erstwhile Shins bassist, who also fronted Albuquerque punks Scared of Chaka in the ’90s. Although the song has a grainy lo-fi aesthetic and a vintage-surf sound at odds with the Shins’ gleaming indie-pop sound, the loping bass line and fuzzed-over staccato guitar part won’t sound wholly unfamiliar to fans of, say, the Shins’ 2007 album “Wincing the Night Away” (especially the songs “Pam Berry,” “Phantom Limb” and “Turn On Me”). The song has a chaotic charm, though, and it’s plenty catchy.

Rounding out the Little Cuts lineup on “Plastic Disaster” were Cops bassist Andrew Church and Old Haunts drummer Curtis James, who has since left the band (Dave Weeks, also of the Cops, replaced him). “Plastic Disaster” came out in December as a 7-inch on Dirtnap Records, and Hernandez is busy writing songs for a full-length planned for sometime in 2012.

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Little Cuts “Plastic Disaster” by 230MP3

It’s as if no time has passed at all. Olson and Louris still harmonize as if their voices were made to go together. They handle the slower, mournful songs with the same easy grace as the upbeat material, summoning a golden, elegiac feel on the title track and layering bright harmonies over jangling guitar on “She Walks in So Many Ways,” the catchiest song on the album. (Listen here.)

The Jayhawks these days also features mid-’90s members Tim O’Reagan, Karen Grotberg and Marc Perlman, who help flesh out the band’s country-rock sound. There are twangy electric guitar licks over spare piano chords on “Pouring Rain at Dawn,” extra backing vocals on “Closer to Your Side” and an abundance of heart — and soul — throughout. “Mockingbird Time” is a welcome return by a band that has lost none of its vibrancy.

— Text by Eric R. Danton, photo courtesy of Rounder Records

Also, she drinks a lot.

It makes for a riveting mix of strongly felt emotions on these nine new songs that blend blaring rock ’n’ roll guitars with a barroom country sensibility that careers from the searing punkabilly opener “Bad Way to Go” to the wry “Steve Earle,” which imagines the country-folk troubadour as a bit of a musical stalker. She even has an alternate take on the biblical water-to-wine thing on the jumped-up, gritty shuffle “Jesus Was a Wino.”

Although Loveless writes good songs, the way she sings them is what makes “Indestructible Machine” so compelling. She has a powerful voice that rarely lets up, yet evokes the vulnerability lurking underneath her blustery exterior. She’s at her most impressive on the impossibly catchy “Learn to Say No,” a lacerating confession that finds her wondering in the second-person, “Why does it take so much work to keep you company?”

It’s worth whatever work it takes, even if she makes you cry.

— Text by Eric R. Danton, photo by the Ely Brothers

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Can’t Change Me mp3

Mize, a Louisville native, drew notice last year for her debut, “Before Lately,” a lovely, languid album that drew comparisons to Hope Sandoval and Sharon Van Etten (both of which make sense). She takes a different tack on the EP, “We Don’t Need,” performing six songs with considerable different sounds.

Opener “Wishing Well,” the free song, is Mize’s unique spin on a soul shouter, and her vocals — sweet with a hint of grit — push and pull at the framework of the song, which is held together by polyrhythmic percussion and nothing else. It’s a head-turner. She takes a moodier turn on the torchy “Call Me Beautiful,” and cranks up the volume with growling guitar and a hazy, keening organ on “Keep It.”

Although it’s just 22 minutes long, “We Don’t Need” seems limitless in the way it showcases the stunning range of Mize’s ability. The EP is out Nov. 6 on Roaring Colonel Records.

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Wishing Well mp3

He’s been badass for more than 25 years, cruising down the forgotten byways of vintage rockabilly, surf and old-school rock ’n’ roll, first with the Flat Duo Jets and more recently at the head of the Dex Romweber Duo.

Really, though, Romweber is an anachronism, as demonstrated on his latest, “Is That You In the Blue?” (Bloodshot). He exists in a time of his own making on a original songs that are impossible to distinguish from the obscure covers he’s so fond of.

He’s a versatile guitarist, equally capable of blazing, noisy power on opener “Jungle Drums” or the blistering surf instrumental “Gurdjieff Girl” and laying back in a deep pocket on the title track or the empty-barroom-at-midnight “I Remember Darling.”

Romweber shows similar dexterity on the mic, growling out his vocals on the acoustic murder ballad “Homicide” and crooning with noirish delight on “The Death of Me,” intercut with trebly knife-edge guitar leads.

His sister Sara on drums helps steer the songs with sturdy, steady beats, and friends from Southern Culture on the Skids, the Old Ceremony and Savage Knights contribute here and there.

The result is an album that outpaces the Duo’s 2009 debut “Ruins of Berlin.” That was a good album, and guest spots from the likes of Exene Cervenka, Cat Power and Neko Case helped elevate Romweber’s all-too-underground profile. “Ruins of Berlin” felt restrained, though, in a way that “Is That You in the Blue?” does not.

There’s no holding back this time as the Romwebers race full-throttle toward scrappy, raucous rock ’n’ roll bliss.

— Text by Eric R. Danton, photo courtesy of Bloodshot Records

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Jungle Drums mp3

The quartet recently released its debut EP, “Etiquette,” a five-song collection that shows considerable promise. The first three, in particular, are worth a listen: Opener “Apologetica” rides a sturdy beat overlaid with acoustic guitar and effervescent synthesizer, “Free Radical” mixes acoustic and electric guitars with horn-like keyboard bursts and “Selection” is swift and punchy, with a busy bassline and bright guitars.

Fourth song “Oh! Leanne” isn’t as richly fleshed out, despite the quiet, hooky intro that builds in volume to a curtain of synthesizer and bass; and the jangling guitar is muted a little by the bass and drums on closer “Pay No Mind,” which feels like a solid rough draft.

It’ll be interesting to hear what the Infinities do with a little more performing experience, which should be forthcoming: the band promises gigs around the Northeast this summer.

You can listen here to “Etiquette.”

Even the best discographies have standout entries, however, and Centro-matic’s new album is one of them. “Candidate Waltz” (Undertow Music Collective) is a robust album full of booming songs — indeed, it’s probably Centro-matic’s most muscular album so far, and certainly its most hi-fi, thanks in part to production by Scott Solter (Spoon, St. Vincent, John Vanderslice).

Brawny combinations of bass and drums power opener “Against the Line,” the punchy “Iso-Residue” and, at a slower pace, “Shadow, Follow Me.” The band adds a gritty guitar riff to the mix on “All the Talkers,” and turns up even louder with alternating layers of crumbly and clanging guitar and double-tracked harmony vocals on “Only In My Double Mind,” a standout song on a standout album.

Even the piano on “Solid States” is plenty meaty, but there’s more to “Candidate Waltz” than power. Johnson’s knack for yearning melodies is fully intact and then some, and his tousled voice winds its way through the thickets of sound with a certain rustic grace. It’s the finishing touch, really, on the latest demonstration of depth from a band that keeps digging deeper.

Text by Eric R. Danton, photo by Matt Pence