The group’s debut EP, “Coming Up With the Sun,” feels like a natural evolution for Hencher, who tilts the noise-to-hooks ratio away from the static-laced chaos of Lovvers’ sound toward (slightly) higher-fidelity tunes that strike a highly listenable balance between muscular guitars and irrepressible melodies.

All four songs are perfect little bursts of summer rock ‘n’ roll, and just in time for summer: The EP is out this week on UK label Tough Love.

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Virals, “Coming Up With the Sun”

That’s a heady combination that’s well worth investigating. The band, a nine-piece Los Angeles crew, comes complete with a worldview, courtesy of leader Gabriel Hart.

“I wanted to start a band that blurred the lines of fantasy and reality, that collectively lived the lyrics, a band that would end up being a lifestyle all its own and turn the lives of the members into a goddamn musical, even if we were the only ones that knew it,” Hart says in press bio.

“Crying Girl” is an excellent step toward that goal. The 7-minute tune starts with simple chords on an organ and adds Hart’s vampy, reverb-soaked voice, then expands into a full-on cabaret-soul tune stacked high with guitars, bass, strings and a lot of wringing drama. T

The song is from Jail Weddings’ new EP, “Four Future Standards,” which follows the band’s 2010 debut, “Love is Lawless.”

Photo by Tina Brugnoletti

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Jail Weddings, “(There’s Nothing Worse in the World Than a) Crying Girl”

It gets more incongruous: Katie Kate grew up on a farm in upstate New York, earned a degree in classical piano from Cornish College of the Arts in 2009 and landed in Seattle, where, apparently, she’s been honing her lyrical flow and working up some lean electro beats. She’s good at both, but her understated lyrical delivery is where she really succeeds. Unlike, say, the brash braying of Lady Sovereign or the all-around over-the-topness of Kreayshawn, Katie Kate lays ways back, murmuring her rhymes with a calm self-confidence that can be flat-out riveting on “Flatland,” her debut.

Her free song, “Uh… No,” is stark, consisting mostly of shifting beats and her lyrical purr, which holds a touch of disdain. She dresses up her spare beats elsewhere, with a pinging synth that breaks wide open on “Bad Amazons” and machine-like whirring on “Bodyout Princess,” which is one of several songs she sings on. Katie Kate does that well, too, sounding ethereal and reflective on “Houses” and letting her voice ring out over busy electronics on “Hunting.”

Although there’s a novelty factor to Katie Kate’s unusual background — classically trained farmgirl rapper — her skill as a lyricist and musician quickly demonstrate she’s more than mere novelty.

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It’s a confident album, with horns that swagger around tight, trebly guitar licks, deep-pocket drums and Waterhouse’s stylized behind-the-beat vocals. Although they have a throwback charm, Waterhouse’s songs never come off as relics. On the contrary, opener “Say I Wanna Know” sounds like it’s always been there, waiting to take your breath away, while the insistent stabs of brass and Waterhouse’s laconic drawl on “I Can Only Give You Everything” out-muscle their primary influences.

The horns are a particular joy on this album: layers of blowsy saxophone weave around each other over plinky piano on “Is That Clear,” and the brass grunts through the verses of “Don’t You Forget It” before opening up with a little shimmy on the chorus.

Waterhouse and his band dial in a great classic sound imbued with a subtle modern touch, and at 31 minutes, “Time’s All Gone” is all gone too soon — which just means you can start again from the top.

— Eric R. Danton

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Nick Waterhouse, “Is That Clear”

Broncho plays full-throttle rock ‘n’ roll with sweaty abandon on its 10-song, 20-minute (!) 2011 debut, “Can’t Get Past the Lips,” which takes the sounds and attitudes of punk and underground rock from the past 35 years and makes them sound revelatory. “Try Me Out Sometime” is a particular standout, with skinned-knee guitar ringing out over lockstep bass and drums that barrel along at exhilarating speed.

“Record Store” takes a different tack, dialing in a loose garage-rock sound that dissolves into a chaotic wash of guitars in the middle, while “Psychiatrist” is 2 minutes of churning punk. Listen to the whole record via the embedded version below (several of the songs are available for free download, just click through), or buy yourself a copy on vinyl here before they’re gone.

Photo by Michael Cooper

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The Chattanooga band’s new EP, “Twin Lakes” (out Feb. 28), is just five tracks long, but they’re five thrilling tracks, spacious and bold with bursts of noise shattering glimmering, downhearted melodies on opener “Diego,”  grinding like the machines on a factory floor during third shift on “Versinthe” or roiling just beneath the surface on “Drug Crimes,” as reverb-soaked vocals drift through a hazy wash of synthesizers, guitar and bass.

“Lemonade” brings it all together in one lush package, full of tarnished guitar jangle, dreamy vocals and noise that builds into a huge, shuddering wall by the end of the tune.

Moonlight Bride has a handful of tour dates around the southeast between now and SXSW, where the band is slated to perform.

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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