Where do you go when you’re a heavy contender on the early indie/emo/hardcore scene that has spent years pummeling kids in sweaters and heavily patched up backpacks with your aggressive brand of rock? You throw in the towel or try to hide your rock roots and you let your freak flag fly by finally saying “Fuck it” and deciding to sound like AC/DC.

The third release from Oklahoma avant-garde pop band Starlight Mints delves even deeper into obscurity. Armed with an arsenal of musical instruments that far surpasses your run-of-the-mill indie pop band, listening to Drowaton becomes more of a musical journey than you may have bargained for.

Imaad Wasif has been making some of the most heartfelt, creative and emotionally intense music for over a decade, you might just not recognize his name. What you might remember was the sometimes two-piece, sometimes three-piece gloomy indie rock institution known as Lowercase that Wasif headed as vocalist, guitarist and songwriter, or more recently you may have seen him touring with his band alaska! or playing guitar for the New Folk Implosion.

Eloquence and sunshine swirls about in the latest from this cherubic Scottish outfit. Like water off a duck’s back, the miseries of the world are repelled by The Life Pursuit, a plucky foray into Burt Bacharach territory.

Following an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” motto,  The Sounds unleash another ovaries-out barrage of New Wave female furor. Front woman Maja Ivarsson can simultaneously seduce an audience while conjuring up a saucy feminist spirit.

Arrrrrrrr! Here be pirates! French Canadian pirates, that is. Pillaging, boozing and decrying prissiness is the name of the game for The Sainte Catherines. Part Rancid, part Madball, but mostly purveyors of proletariat punk (throaty vocalist Hugo Mudie is a janitor), the sextet makes up in electricity what they lack in manners.

I wanted to like this. As a huge fan of most things Will Oldham related (Brightback started out as Rainywood who did a spilt 7″ with Bonnie Prince Billy), I almost felt it my duty to like the follow-up to their debut album recorded in Kentucky with the Oldham family. Unfortunately, this record is just plain dull.

From the images on the cover of this disc, you really want to hate the Golden Gods. Half naked men wearing open fur coats, about to make sweet love to their instruments (literally) all just seems so excessively cliché. However, once you start to listen to the disc it is undeniable that this group has a lot of energy and they do rock and roll very well.

Before Bob Dylan and after Woody Guthrie, America had a favorite hobo-esque folk singer whose name was Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Jack befriended both contemporaries and has consistently been playing folk music for his entire life, but has gotten little attention outside of the traditional folk music scene.

A long time has passed since this media-touted super-group put out their last (and only record), but 2006 sees the coming together once again of Jim O’Rourke with Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche of Wilco.

The new EP from New York’s favorite pop outfit has a little something for everyone. The opening title track offers up a delightful indie pop song that burns its melody into your brain within about 5 seconds. This is juxtaposed nicely by the second track, “Arbuckle’s Swan Song” which has a smooth, almost 60’s crooner style about it. Where do we go from there?

Forming out of the ashes of the critically acclaimed Carrisa’s Weird, Band of Horses have had a buzz about them since they first posted songs on the internet almost a year ago. Then called just Horses, the band underwent a name change and hooked up with Sub Pop to finally release their debut full length in March. Band of Horses puts their own spin on the reverb laden vocal alt. country scene, and they do it well.