With spring upon us (perhaps a little earlier than we would have liked) you’ll need some new tunes to go with the warmer weather, the longer days and the impending dread of the summer to come. Here are five titles we think will pair nicely with a cool drink and open windows.

Michael Nau – Mowing
This album hangs loosely and breathes like an old cotton t-shirt, all comfortable and tattered. Michael Nau is one of two members of the husband/wife indie folk duo, Cotton Jones. On this, his first release under his own name, Nau embraces all the soft subtleties of Cotton Jones, but with a few nods to earlier influences. In between straight forward indie folk tunes lie some pleasant pop tunes, reminiscent of 70s AM radio and Art Leboe “oldies but goodies.” Where the tunes may seam a bit disparate, they are held together by Nau’s melodies and shy, but earnest voice.

LNZNDRF – ST
This is as “road-trip ready” as it gets. Although not a fully instrumental album, it certainly handles like one. The driving repetition of drums and bass could go on forever and you would never notice. The guitars have a sort of doppler effect, passing and decaying like mountains and telephone poles. While the music does keep a slower pace and a darker tone, occasionally the songs will open up to some surprising catchy ideas. The general tone of this record does do a lot of shifting and can often leave you wondering what album you put on to begin with, but it doesn’t make it any less effective.

Heron Oblivion – ST
Heron Oblivion is a collaboration between some of the creative forces that were pivotal to the rise of much of the folk, psych and rock of the mid 2000s. Their collective resume includes bands such as Comets On Fire, Espers, Six Organs of Admittance, Howlin’ Rain and many other seminal psych and folks outfits of a decade considered to be a renaissance period of heavy weirdness. Heron Oblivion delivers with just as much excitement and bursting ideas as any release of that era.

Thao and the Get Down Stay Down – A Man Alive
There’s a unique kind of energy to Thao Nguyen’s music. It has an infectious lilt, mixed with heavy timbres. The lilt comes from spacious arrangements, giving each instrument it’s room to hold up the rhythm. Similar to the way Bob Marley or James Brown would arrange their tunes, each instrument serves to move a different part of the body. The heaviness comes from the fuzzed out bass lines and piercing guitar lines. All of this serves to build a rigid sonic form. Thao’s voice and lyrics give a fair amount of sway to this rigidity. She has that lazy demeanor that you find in other “slacker rock” singers like Courtney Barnett, Kurt Vile or Doug Martsch. Thao has remained one of the most consistent recording artists I enjoy, and her live show is one of the best I’ve seen. Be sure to catch her at Crescent Ballroom on April 27th.

Rob Crow’s Gloomy Place – You’re Doomed. Be Nice.
Rob Crow of Pinback makes his “return to music” with this album after announcing only about a year ago that he was retiring from the craft altogether. The album starts off with a choppy guitar riff which serves as a good indicator of how the album flows – there’s lots of rhythmically driven tunes on this one. Much of the album is pretty upbeat and Crow exhibits a lot of youthful energy on some of these songs. Near the halfway mark on the album things inevitably begin to sound more Pinback at points, but for any Crow fan, that’s obviously hardly a problem. This album represents some pretty varying styles on the spectrum of rock but Crow’s unique sound manages to tie things together pretty well.