Toyko Police Club :: "Hot Tonight"

Sounding more and more like a 20-years-later Tom Petty, Tokyo Police Club return with second track, "Hot Tonight" from third album, Forcefield. "Hot Tonight" is a wide-open hi-fi jam, something that sounds a lot like the last Noah and the Whale record biting into a surge protector. And maybe the guitars are too treble, and maybe, in some sense, the pop isn't quite poppy enough for Heavy Rotation, but few bands in independent rock circles make songs with such ambition and singable hooks. TPC, on the verge of being a radio band, may well read back like a union of the Cars and Petty in twenty years time, purveyors of big, catchy jams for open roads, downtown nights and any other cliche that springs to mind.

The War On Drugs :: "Red Eyes"

The War On Drugs return with wide-open road song, "Red Eyes". Their signature acoustic guitar operating as the base of the layers, adding a subtle synth progression and drums that recall Tom Petty's most pastoral blur. The chorus proves transformative, taking this organized and discrete architecture and allowing it to spiral up and away, a measure of loosely directed chaos before the next verse reasserts order. "Red Eyes" is one of the better rock songs of 2013, an enticing foreshadow of coming LP, Lost In The Dream.

Wildlife Control :: "Analog or Digital"

The great musical watershed of the past three decades is no more directly phrased than by Wildlife Control on debut single, "Analog or Digital". The title, thankfully and consciously, lacks a question mark, though the interrogative is perhaps tacit. There is no such indecision in the music where the driving guitars rip like a Tom Petty arrangement that chased an amphetamine habit cross-country from behind the wheel of small, small vehicle. Or maybe it sounds like a Phoenix song with no esoteric side. All of it is the foundation for a song about favorite songs, headphones and girls who know records that other girls don't know. In essence, an overly romanced depiction of right now. The gift here, from the band's debut self-titled record due on July 31, lies in the resolution, "it doesn't matter if she's analog or digital," squaring the circle on the grandest and silliest of questions in the span of one refrain. It is a summer song, an instant favorite whether it ends up as zeros and ones in your pocket or a vinyl LP on the shelf of some girl who is as relevant as it also doesn't matter.

Listen :: Wildlife Control - "Analog or Digital"