The Meaning of Life :: "Laura V"

Brooklyn's everything-is-happening-all-of-the-time dreamy post-punkers, the Meaning of Life soften the edges of the existential on "Laura V." In what could easily be the song structure of a Silversun Pickups song, the band kicks out the windows with break-beat drums and racing strum pattern. The vocal winnows its way through to your ears, ethereal and unremembered, coming on like a lucid and feverish dream. An acoustic guitar provides the texture, perhaps the grounding even, keeping the arrangement level in the background, making the unreal, real. The pick ups are lightning, the hooks gentle, a pleasing nihilism. What does it all mean? Likely nothing, likely everything.

Wolf Alice :: "She"

Britain's answer to Silversun Pickups, Wolf Alice release "She" from forthcoming debut EP, "Blush". Recalling the greatest moments of 1990s alternative radio, "She" rips along on fuzzy and chunky guitars, an empty breakdown that portends a screaming, crashing conclusion. Soaring above it all is vocalist Ellie Rowsell, a powerful slice of fecundity in the maw of electrical guitars, like a garage version of Ritzy from Joy Formidable. Rowsell represents the soul and power of the massive wall of "She", making this alleged woman at once dangerous and ineffable.

Happy Hollows :: "Galaxies"

One of the best bands coming out of LA over the past few years, Happy Hollows return in advance of their next record, Amethyst, with "Galaxies", backing the already riveting and retrofitted "Endless". The band's new sound features a more synthesizer-heavy backdrop coupled with strong baselines and the beautiful hurricane of singer Sarah Negahdari's vocals. Negahdari, most recently playing bass on tour with Silversun Pickups, charms at the top of the room on "Galaxies", leaning into the duet as a sea of swirling guitars spin around her. The Fleetwood Mac influence - and Negahdari confirmed this isn't just critical speculation - is less easy to spot on "Galaxies" than it is on "Endless", but the guitar acrobatics give a mild hint, discrete objects held aloft, a spinning infinity. If modern rock and alternative radio producers have an ounce of vision, "Endless" will be at radio by the end of the summer and Amethyst will be making its case for one the best independent rock records of 2013.

Big Deal :: "Dream Machines"

All unfiltered bombast on "Dream Machines", Big Deal drape themselves in a blighted, shouting fatalism. "Dream Machines", slamming with double-tap drums and a boy-girl duet sounds like Joy Formidable (and it's worth noting that Big Deal are the heirs to this throne) covering a Stars joint, dream-pop holding a long kiss goodnight with shoegaze. One of the biggest songs of the year, it's a world of moral victories and letdowns, as singer Alice Costelloe leads from above with lines like, "Nothing here is built to last / what you wanted and what you chose / you can't have both." Instead of a shrugging conclusion, there lies triumph in the big, crunchy chord progression and Costelloe's duet with partner Kacey Underwood. Finding both union and beauty in the noise, singing to one another, "What's mine is yours is yours is mine," before concluding, "We'll grow our hair / cut our ties." As the arrangement surges around them, we presume these two are planning to leave everything but each other.

Wolf Alice :: "Bros"

"Forget everyone," intones Wolf Alice singer, Ellie Rowsell, in the midst of the propulsive opening movement of recent single, "Bros". It's an easy request from this London quartet, as exploding post-punk guitars ricochet off one another in a super-heated arrangement that removes any idle thoughts of anything or anyone else. "Bros" manages to sound a lot like a dreamy version of Silversun Pickups, "Lazy Eye" - admittedly, this comparison could start and stop with the drum pattern - mixed with Rowsell's spot-on Chrissy Hynde impression. And it is this, the Pretenders comparison, that sticks the most in the song's bridge, where a fragile and fecund Rowsell asks, "Are you wild like me?/Raised by wolves and other beasts." Both singer and arrangement smolder with hints of violence and attraction. This lyric about a dangerous and unremembered world, Wolf Alice is a band with which to forget everything.

Field Mouse :: "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"

It's that bass line - leading, breathless and frustrated - that marks the boundaries of the latest Field Mouse single, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday". Lost somewhere between dream pop and shoegaze, vocalist Rachel Browne finds little slices of menace and fecundity in an arrangement that ends up sounding a little like Silversun Pickups and little like early Emily Haines. Browne is the self-same singer who cracked sarcastic barbs from the stage of Glasslands this past summer about being super stoned - which she surely wasn't - with the sort of dry wit and vague hostility that passes for both smarts and flirtation in the female denizens of New York City. "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" rings full of bombast, but Browne and her bandmates are as playful as they are serious, riding a turbulent low-end into the next phase of a very bright young career.

The Happy Hollows :: "Endless"

Like Fleetwood Mac roughed up and taken downtown, the Happy Hollows and mercurial lead singer Sarah Negahdari return with lead single, "Endless" from a new EP forthcoming this fall. "Endless" elevates behind Negahdari's effortless vocal control, pitching through octave size tweaks in the song's first lyrics and finally slipping into a dull roar, a moan that serves as the chorus, the melody slipping through steps, modular and like the title, endless. The guitars are of the winsome post-punk variety giving "Endless" this sort edgy Stevie Nicks quality, a buzzing, neon take on "Everywhere" transported to Silverlake and left to fend for itself. While Negahdari, one of the most charming women in indie rock, goes on tour with Silversun Pickups as their replacement bassist, consider "Endless" a very welcome return for her main band and the forecast of great things to come.