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Erika Wennerstrom has a voice -- deep, throaty, loose -- that could make even the most uninhibited vocalist feel uptight and contained by comparison: Each note she sings feels deeply animated, as if it's got its own heartbeat and fully formed pair of fists.

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Outlaw legend Willie Nelson's 1977 album To Lefty From Willie was an attempt by a superstar to exalt a forgotten honky-tonk hero -- Lefty Frizzell. But here, when Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck and his band pay homage to Nelson, it feels like a greenhorn hitching on to the pothead patron saint's biodiesel wagon as a credibility grab.

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Operating like two halves of one brain, this Warped Tour fantasy group -- Saves the Day's Chris Conley and David Soloway plus Say Anything's Max Bemis and Coby Linder -- flood their debut album with opposites: dark/ light, quiet/loud, mid-period Replacements and obscure, angular '90s emo.

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In the five-plus years since the recording of their second album, Pawn Shoppe Heart, the Von Bondies have replaced two key members, lost their deal with Warner Bros., and seen frontman Jason Stollsteimer beaten to a pulp publicly by scene rival Jack White. By all rights, they should be packing it in, so their third album's vitality is a welcome shock.

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Multi-instrumentalists Eric Ronick and Than Luu met while playing with different bands (they toiled individually for Panic at the Disco, Ambulance LTD, M. Ward, Boredoms, etc.) and recorded this debut on breaks from their paying gigs.

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Hints of TV on the Radio's atmospherics sneak into Iran's first disc in five years -- no surprise, since Kyp Malone is their guitarist and Dave Sitek coproduced -- but frontman Aaron Aites counters the otherworldly ambience with straightforward strains of classic indie rock (think Sebadoh and Pavement).