Listen to This: Karmin

Start with a generation of suburban white kids who grow up listening not just to rock and pop music, but also to hip hop. Mix a boy and a girl, each with a Berklee College of Music education. Shake. Repeat.

This is the approximate recipe for Karmin, an ascendant pop group with a formula that is at once pleasurably derivative and entirely of the moment. They smartly built a foundation of massive YouTube views with an album of re-imagined contemporary pop hits, and leveraged the ensuing viral word-of-mouth into a record deal with Epic. (Best entry point: this cover of What’s My Name, which is a simple improvement on the 2010 Rihanna/Drake chart-topper.)

Whether or not you like Karmin probably depends on how you feel about pop music in general. If anything peppier than Lithium is considered off-limits artistically, this may not be for you. But those who are open-minded on the subject of sugary confections will find a lot to like with Karmin. Their background as legitimately-trained musicians shows itself in gems like Walking on the Moon and Hello. It’s Top 40 music with a classically-trained pedigree.

Listen to This: Caitlin Rose

It’s hard to say whether ‘The Stand In’, Caitlin Rose’s 2013 full-length, is a country record, a pop record, or something else entirely. It seems to have culled its DNA from a variety of genres, and much of its appeal is in the subtle way it surprises you with versatility.

However you classify it, this is an exceptional record.

To be clear, ‘The Stand In’ sounds nothing like the pop-country records of the moment, personified by acts like Lady Antebellum and Carrie Underwood. Instead, it veers more toward torchy standards, toward R&B, toward genuine singer-songwriter rock music. And just when you think you’ve got her pegged, Rose peels off course into new terrain. There’s a soulful wisdom to her voice. Listen with your eyes closed and you’d never guess that she’s still a few years shy of 30.

Whatever the ingredients, what results is an album full of confident, sophisticated melodies and clever lyrics throughout. It is well-produced. Each song sounds a little different than the last, with each managing to be catchy without pandering. I don’t know if it was my absolute favorite record of 2013, but it may be the one I listened to the most. That’s pretty high praise, no?

‘The Stand In’ manages to sound familiar while still defying easy categorization . . . and that’s one of the things I like best about it.

Highly recommended.

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Other links:

Official Caitlin Rose Website

Listen to This: The Maine

Arizona rockers The Maine dropped their fourth record this week. It’s called Forever Halloween, and it’s worth checking out — especially this video for the single ‘Love and Drugs.’

Visually, the video is a marvel of simplicity. In a time of overstimulation, it’s common practice to dazzle viewers with big effects or hyperactive smash cuts. But this one succeeds by doing just the opposite. The voyeuristic nature of watching a girl put on headphones and collapse into bed is weirdly compelling all by itself. Add in the stark, eye-catching set design that doubles as a billboard on which to project the clever lyrics, and almost immediately it’s hard to look away.

Listen to This: Divine Fits

George Carlin once said — and I’m paraphrasing here — that he was a visionary, a man ahead of his time… but only about an hour-and-a-half hour ahead.

It’s a good joke, and one that’s wrapped around a kernel of truth.

Indie rocker Britt Daniel, best known as the front man for Spoon, has always seemed to carry a similar torch. Invariably I rush to purchase every new Spoon album, the anticipation of receiving fresh music from a favorite band building to a crescendo, only to feel underwhelmed. Sure, it sounds okay, but nothing really moves me.

I listen all the way through a few times, then put it aside. Oh well. They can’t all be winners.

But I’ll always drift back to it a few months later, and lo and behold: it’s a masterpiece! It’s always a masterpiece, or nearly so. Something has shifted in the time since its release, and I can never know for sure if what shifted was me, the entire musical landscape, or both. Perhaps their music just requires patience: time for the seeds to take root and develop into something digestible.

Listen to This: The Morning Benders

Berkeley lads The Morning Benders announced a name change this week — they’re now called Pop Etc. — but nevermind all that. Seek out their first three records. Thank us later.

The masterpiece is 2010’s Big Echo, which opens with the anthemic gem ‘Excuses’ and proceeds to shape-shift its way through 10 more exquisite, well-crafted melodies. Ranging from the hooky mid-tempo indie vibe of ‘Promises’ to the punchy ‘Cold War’ to the stuttering rock of ‘All Day Day Light’, it’s a brilliant rock composition that defies easy categorization. Just when you think you have them figured out, they take a hard left turn just to show that you don’t.

Official Website

Official Facebook Page

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Listen to This: Gigolo Aunts

For most of America — or at least those parts with a variable climate and, you know, four seasons — the middle of August represents the homestretch of summer. Temperatures flicker. Schools reconvene. Patio barbecue opportunities begin to wane.

And so too do the playlists begin to turn over. The DNA of a midsummer anthem might include balls-out rock and roll, or sun-baked pleasure pop, or guilty-pleasure party track.

But when the mercury dips back into the 80s and fall can be seen at a distance, the mood mellows — not yet to the laconic singer-songwriter days of autumn or the dreary synthetic chamber pop of winter, but one step removed from carefree summer singalongs. Mid-August calls for something a little more relaxed. Something light without being sleepy. Something that works on the beach, in the car, or with the tang of a cold Mexican beer.