Second Stage

Lucy Bland's debut, full-length release, Down to Sea Level, is a soul-warming balm for the endlessly rainy days of their hometown Seattle, Wash. Delicate, electronic beeps and pops mingle with melodic strings and singer Cat Biell's cozy vocals. It's the sonic equivalent of lazing in a gently swaying hammock, under a cloudless day at the beach.

When artists from different bands collaborate on a new project, they usually (or at least hopefully) come up with a completely different and surprising sound — something outside their comfort zone. In the case of the newly formed collective The Accidental, the results aren't terribly surprising; but they are no less compelling. The group of musicians from several British experimental folk groups have a new album of, well, experimental folk. It's not new territory for the band, but it's a cozy, inspired collection.

For their self-titled, debut release, Tallahassee, Fla. band The Woods decided to package all the CDs in the pages of old books. With an initial "pressing" of just 40 discs, the group glued together the pages of used thrift-store books, cut a hole for the CDs and stamped the band's name on the cover with a typesetting machine. It's the same kind of inspired care they took with the music itself. The Woods is an enchanting collection of songs rooted in acoustic folk music, with pleasantly unpredictable turns toward more experimental soundscapes.

A fugue state is a kind of selective amnesia brought on by traumatic events. As the title for the new CD from Brokenkites, Fugue State is a digital world of glitchy electronica, populated by lonely, disillusioned and isolated people. "Fugue State has a medical definition as well as a musical one," says Brokenkites frontman James Willard. "I like the concept that music is directly related to mood or mental state."

The Lawrence, KS group Ghosty has shown tremendous growth since releasing its 2005 debut, Grow Up or Sleep In. The band's new follow-up, Answers, out now on Oxblood records, is richly produced and more polished with inspired song craft.

According to John Christopher Martin, the band The Peekers "started out as four friends just wanting to escape" and make music together. Now six members strong, the Shreveport, Louisiana-based group makes delightfully nostalgic and utterly charming pop music that combines their varying musical backgrounds and talents.

In addition to a lengthy and diverse list of musicians like The Kinks, Brian Eno, Nirvana, and The Sugarcubes, Sherri West and Taylor Clark of Tulsa, Oklahoma's The Lava Children cite "mythology, perverted fairy tales, nature, and kitty cats" as influences for their upbeat, funky, and varied sound.

Aaron Stout is a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, NY who makes ethereal, lo-fi psychedelic folk. His first full-length release is Queens Live In Caskets, a largely homemade album out on Monotreme Records. Stout says the name of the album is arbitrary, but hopefully conveys the spontaneous, stream of conscience nature of his work.

The music of Portland, Oregon-based, five-piece group Autopilot is for Lovers is anything but conventional. But vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Adrienne Hatkin admits that when she was a kid, she shied away from "anything that wasn't totally mainstream" and wouldn't touch her father's records. Now, Hatkin embraces eccentricities and looks to capture a sense of magical realism in her music.

Hailing from Long Beach, Calif. the aptly named five-piece, Greater California, makes music that is delightfully nostalgic, hopeful, and a bit retro. The instrumentation is bright but woozy with subtle traces of psychedelia, and the vocals are equally distant and dreamy and often refer to things in the past. The song "It's Great," in particular, sounds like it was meant to accompany some epic cinematic moment with a sullen protagonist who silently comes to a significant realization.

Impressed by her hair and her involvement with the Kraut Rock fan club, bassist Karl Briedrick confesses he initially met vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Maire-Claire Balabanian on Facebook in 2005 while the two were both students at NYU, and it wasn't long before the two started playing music together. While the duo's debut release, Summer Above, has more of an innocent vibe, their newest album, Some Sweet Relief is more textured and mysterious than its predecessor and begs to be unpacked.

They may only have a couple of official songs and a handful of demos to their name now, but The xx is a band to watch. Both casually cool and absolutely magnetic, this young London four-piece makes music that's simple and raw, but utterly captivating.

The son of a band director and percussionist, David Michael Stith grew up surrounded by music. But he only recently began to write his own songs and freely admits that he still has a hard time considering himself a musician. His songs are complex, quirky, and inventive.

With its slow, rhythmic beat, eerie vocals, and minimalist instrumentation, "Wtt," may not have the characteristics of the typical hit single. But this opening track confidently and effectively builds tension and exhibits the strange, magnetic allure of the Lubbock, Texas-based group The Diamond Center.

The Detroit, Michigan-based group The High Strung may have recorded hundreds of tracks together before actually releasing an album, but Ode to the Inverse of the Dude marks their fourth official studio release. The three guys who make up The High Strung grew up together in Michigan and have been best friends since they were kids. Frontman Josh Malerman recalls that he first met Drummer Derek Berk in middle school health class when the two were assigned to construct an anti-drug poster for a group project.

Jessica Emelia, an intern at a recording studio in Chicago by day and the driving force behind Absinthe & The Dirty Floors by night, set out to make "fun, poppy, indie rock/dance songs" for this year's RPM Challenge, but circumstances in her personal life intervened.

With Lennon, McCartney, and Brian Wilson cited among Peter Fedofsky's primary musical influences, it's no surprise that his second RPM Challenge album, Notes from the Shuttle is saturated with pleasant harmonies, buoyant melodies, and well-placed hand claps.

Putting together an entire album in twenty-eight days is difficult enough for a lone musician. Throw a couple more people into the mix, and things get even more complicated—especially for The Pros, a band with a constantly changing roster that technically split up in 2003.

Often quietly recording late at night in his bedroom to avoid waking his roommate, Mark Longolucco appropriately sought to make a quiet "collection of moments" instead of focusing on "a heap of verses, chords, and hooks." The album he came up with in one month, for the RPM Challenge, is called Intertwining Locks.

Though Paul Mariz did not win the song contest that initially prompted him to begin his solo project as The Calculus Affair, he did not let this early setback end his musical career. With three RPM Challenge albums under his belt now, Mariz may be a veteran of the annual challenge, but he admits that surprisingly, each year has been more difficult than the last.

From his early days obsessed with Metallica, to playing in a mambo band called Latin Pimps in college, to actually running away with the circus to play the guitar, Robert Gomez has had a colorful musical history.

With its moody progressions and strange, melancholic lyrics, You Can Have What You Want is certainly darker and more otherworldly than its 2007 predecessor. In the very opening lines, Jason Quever, the driving force behind Papercuts, refers to Earth as a "distant dream," which establishes a pervading ethereal mood that is a perfect match for Quever's hazy, melodic vocals and the distantly dreamy instrumentation

Considering the bands Women and True Womanhood contain only one female member combined, it should come as no surprise that Brooklyn duo Project Jenny, Project Jan is neither an all girl punk band nor a cute Brady Bunch-esque pop duo. Instead, Jeremy Haines and Sammy Rubin are the two talents behind the misleading artist name.

With an ear for piano melodies, addictive bass lines, and light percussion, the Austin, TX five-piece group Loxsly represents a hearkening back to a more traditional alternative rock sound a la bands Robbers On High Street or Summerbirds in the Cellar, but their third LP, Tomorrow's Fossils is not without surprises.