The Fever
Red Bedroom
(Kemado)
They've got the fake names (Pony, Achilles), the au courant influences (New Order, XTC, '70s Stones), and even a jokey hipster cover (Sheila E's "Glamorous Life"). But the Fever are having so much fun being a cliché, only the truly jaded could deny that the sugar-shocked exuberance of their full-length debut is a total blast.
Jesse Sykes and
the Sweet Hereafter
Oh, My Girl
(Barsuk)
A sultry-voiced country diva from Seattle and a member of Ryan Adams' former band Whiskeytown craft an album of gorgeously slow-burning noir ballads. Sykes mourns the ghosts of lost love while Phil Wandscher's gray-day guitar sounds like it hasn't slept since the last episode of Twin Peaks.
Hangar 18
The Multi-Platinum Debut Album
(Definitive Jux)
One MC in this New York crew claims to test his rhymes on his first-grade pupils--they must be some confused, crunked-up little tykes. Syllable-slingers Windnbreeze and Alaska emo-rap themselves silly over refreshingly club-ready undieground jams. Not exactly "hot like Suzanne Somers in the Sudan summer," but close.
