Second Stage

At first listen, it's hard to tell if Great Plains, the third album from Chicago-based band Head of Femur, is wildly ambitious in its eccentric, incredibly catchy sound, or is simply a good, old-fashioned pop and rock record. The songs sound new and energetic while taking enough cues from the past to sound like a tribute album. The result is a record that is recognizable, but fresh and surprisingly accessible, despite offering plenty of surprises.

The Movie, the debut album from New York-based band Clare & the Reasons, is quirky, to say the least. The record is an 11-track foray into theatrical, space-themed chamber pop that falls somewhere between the score of a Broadway musical and a collection of sweet and playful nursery rhymes.

Everyone Is Crying Out to Me, Beware, the second album from Ukrainian-born singer-songwriter Alina Simone, is utterly haunting. With bare-bones arrangements and Simone's powerful, poignant vocals at the forefront, the record burns through a collection of songs by Siberian punk-folk singer, Yanka Dyagileva, with cathartic fervor. Though the lyrics are in Russian, the emotions are raw and easily felt.

John Meeks has been playing and recording for 15 years, but his new Three Song Demo is the pre-release EP to his first full-length album, due out this Fall. It isn't as if Meeks has spent more than a decade trying to come up with some complex musical formula. In fact, what is so compelling about Meeks' music is his simple, straightforward approach. The three acoustic, country-twinged songs are free of artifice, aren't overly produced or orchestrated, and sound effortless.

Stars Like Fleas' music is disjointed, meandering, chaotic, and wonderfully unique. The group's second full-length release, The Ken Burns Effect, is a gorgeous jaunt through experimental orchestral pop that is as engaging as it is utterly confusing. The record seems at times aimless and at other times perfectly composed, if insanely so. With a wealth of instruments (at the album's recording the group was a 12-piece collective) that clash as often as they harmonize and tracks that drift from beautiful symphonies to discordant pandemonium on a whim, the album stands as a work of mad genius. Stars Like Fleas have created a sound that, though certainly not easily digestible, is extremely rich.

It's important to note how much good music is coming from our northern neighbors these days. City and Colour is the solo project of Ontario-native Dallas Green, founding member of the Canadian band Alexisonfire. Bring Me Your Love is Green's second full-length release under the City and Colour moniker, and the record's acoustic singer-songwriter work balances beautifully simple music with powerful vocals and heavy, confessional lyrics.

Sarah Sharp's soft spoken singing style and quiet instrumentations offer a living room, fireside closeness that keeps her away from the lounge-singer stereotypes of similarly jazz-influenced performers. With her new six-song EP, Fight or Flight, the singer-songwriter from Austin, Tex has created a lounge-pop sound that is intimate and pleasant without seeming trite.

Tampa Bay-based alt-country group Have Gun, Will Travel began as the solo project of lead singer and songwriter Matthew Burke, and released its 2006 self-titled debut as such. Since then, HGWT has become a full band, and the group's sophomore release, Casting Shadows Tall as Trees, is steeped in the country twinges of lap steel, harmonica, banjo, strings, and acoustic guitars. Music aside, though, the record's true strength is its artful tributes to classic westerns, tying the album stylistically and thematically to the wild-west in all its gun-blazing glory.

Californian garage rock revivalists the Shys titled their second full length record You'll Never Understand This Band the Way That I Do, and from the way it sounds, you can't help but wonder if the band in question is the White Stripes. Between the album's heavy, blues-inspired guitars, minimalist drumming, and lead singer Kyle Krone's distinctive howl, the record could easily be packaged in red and white. But while Detroit's duo can at times err on the side of experimentalism, the Shys have taken the crunchy guitars and heavy, fuzz-filled solos, and added more traditionally poppy group choruses and catchy melodies to come out with gritty rock that is immediately accessible.

From the outset, Cut and Run, the debut album from Brooklyn-based band The Silver State, is a down-on-your-luck, slow burning rock record. The album's first track, "Did What I Did," opens with the lyrics "When I'm Gone You Can Burn My Body," set to heavy piano chords and bass drum thumps — an styled arrangement that immediately calls to mind the dark lamentations of Bonnie "Prince" Billy. But while most of the record follows in a similar sparse, mournful vein, it is in the album's digressions that the band truly shines.

The Bloodsugars's sound is either a descendent of the best aspects of '80s synth rockers or the offspring of trance and power pop. The Brookyln-based foursome takes radio-ready melodies and power chord guitar rock and blends them with dance floor beats, keyboards, and synths. The group's debut EP, BQEP, rides on the neon glow of its six tightly wound pop songs riddled with hooks.

Apollo Sunshine blends '60s psychedelic folk with the arena rock hugeness of the '70s and the lo-fi noise pop aesthetics of '90s groups like My Bloody Valentine or the Olivia Tremor Control. The cover art for the Boston, Mass.-based trio's third record, Shall Noise Upon, depicts a Jackson Pollock-like, color-splattered globe surrounded by constellations of religious and spiritual icons from every corner of the earth. The image suggests the record somehow takes the disparate cultures of a large world and unifies them into a single, genre-breaking, stargazing album. It may seem like an impossibly lofty goal, but the songs deliver.

Blind Pilot is the musical project of Portland, Ore. natives Ryan Dobrowski and Israel Nebeker. The two recorded their debut album, 3 Rounds and a Sound, after completing a tour that took them from Vancouver all the way to San Francisco — by bike. Nebeker says the group now plays as a nine-piece collective, but you would never know it from listening to 3 Rounds. The group offers a minimalist folk sound built on Nebeker's simple acoustic guitar and Dobrowski's sparse drumming.

Martin Dosh is a percussionist from Minneapolis, Minn., but his solo work is far from simple drum work. With Wolves and Wishes, Dosh's fourth full-length release on the Anticon label, Dosh has composed a series of richly orchestrated, mostly instrumental electronica tracks with a cinematic grandeur. With collaborative help from such well-known artists as Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Andrew Bird, the record finds a nice balance between Dosh's trippy synth, keyboard and drum work, and the album's guitars, violins, clarinets and saxophones.