LOVE IT: Sondre Lerche, Self-Titled.

Sondre Lerche always looks like he's up to something. He has a mischievous twinkle in his eye that says he has several aces up his sleeve, and he's just waiting for the right time to use them. It seems he's played a few of those cards in the studio for his new self-titled album.

In the past, Sondre has proven that he sure can turn a pop hook - and although I'm not yet mindlessly humming any of his new tunes, his melodies and time signature changes are always more explorative and interesting than a lot of others' floating around. His sweet tooth for weirdly-worded-but-clearly-earnest lyrics and genre mashing makes him one of the most underrated cogs in the music machine.

His boyish, Chet Bakery voice sounds much more comfortable inside a slow strummer, but the sing-a-longness of his upbeat work is so distracting that you hardly notice. FYI, if you don't absolutely love his score for the film Dan In Real Life, there's something wrong with you.

LOVE IT: Death Cab For Cutie, Codes and Keys.

For a long time, I've been a complacent admirer of Death Cab's work, but after hearing this seventh album, my admiration has exploded into full-on passion.

Many songs meld into each other, so it's best to listen to it as one piece - pianos, synthesizers, organs, harmonies, and chest-thumping drums building upon each other to sweep you up in a sonic hug. Death Cab for Cutie has often been the go-to band for beautiful but intense guitar-driven melancholia (Narrow Stairs examines a bottomless pit of self-loathing and bitterness), but ladies and gentlemen, the fog has lifted.

The band's musicians are in new places mentally — lyricist and lead singer Ben Gibbard, especially — and the less tragic mood throughout Codes and Keys is proof that those new mental places are happier. Really exciting stuff.

LOVE IT: The Civil Wars, Barton Hollow.

The first time I heard The Civil Wars' breakout single "Poison & Wine," I about passed out from its all-around perfectness. Piano chords hesitantly keep up with a timidly thumping guitar, and two voices move in and around each other, seething with frustration but unable to untangle themselves.

This is a pair of musicians who knows that music can do what no other form of expression can. Like reading a book without illustrations, music is a meet-halfway experience. You have to close your eyes and hear in between the lines, weaving in your own backstory to smoosh together your own indescribable interpretation of the song as the energy swells and the lyrics unexpectedly wham you in the face.

It's this kind of tangible energy bubbling underneath visible emotions that drives the duo's debut album, Barton Hollow. Track by track, note by note, they build stories of regret, longing, and relationship claustrophobia that feel as dully constant as a car's engine buzzing through your body as you try to pay attention to the road. Melodies are often upbeat and sing-alongable, but always there's an undercurrent of what-ifs and should-have-beens. I keep hitting replay on "The Violet Hour," a hushed, pulsating instrumental conversation, a real masterpiece of simplicity.

The Civil Wars' genre is hard to nail down, which is great. The album melts the lines between John Paul White's Alabama front-porch folkrock with Joy Williams' big city background in Christian pop ballads, his buttery Eddie Veddery tenor growl and her Downy-soft soprano seemingly born to compliment each other.
I'll admit it -- I mistakenly decided they were mismatched when I looked at the Barton Hollow cover art. I chuckled that Dana Delaney had started a band with Johnny Depp's character from "The Tourist." Fifteen seconds in to track one, and I was put in my place. That's the magic The Civil Wars make. On paper, no one would put these two together. Just goes to show that opposites attract and can blend into something unbelievably awesome.

Barton Hollow was released February 1 by Sensibility Music. To get a listen to what a live show with The Civil Wars is like (a guy and girl joking around and singing their hearts out with a guitar), download their recording from Eddie's Attic in Georgia for free here.