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”

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

Communist Daughter is back July 10 with “Lions and Lambs,” a 6-track EP that a press release says is “a collection of deeply personal songs about addiction, regret and redemption.”

It’s no exaggeration to say “Lions and Lambs” has vaulted to the top of our list of the most anticipated releases of the summer.

Photo by Stephanie Colgan

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)

In other words, Turbonegro is back. The Norwegian dirtbag rockers return June 13 with “Sexual Harassment,” their first album since 2007′s “Retox” and first without former singer Hank von Helvete, who displayed a knack for over-the-top homoeroticism in his lyrics and his antics on stage.

New singer Tony Sylvester, known to his friends as the Duke of Nothing, seems to have picked up where the newly sober von Helvete left off, judging by first single “You Give Me Worms.” It’s a loud, scuzzy mix of hard rock and punk that, like all of Turbonegro’s best stuff (“Don’t Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker,” “Just Flesh” and so on), revels in a certain gutter-level debauchery. Welcome back, you reprobates.

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Turbonegro — “You Give Me Worms”

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

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”

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