Pillar Point - "Curious of You". Scott Reitherman, of the splendid and underrated Throw Me The Statue, returns as Pillar Point. Pillar Point's a record all surging and rattling, skateboard and skyscraper, a river meeting the sea. "Curious of You" gestures to Cyndi Lauper and Phil Collins; it sizzles; it slides. It's about sleep and curiosity, wanting and having. It's a song of pairs, thises and thats, sounds in mirror repeat. Sometimes an echo's just fading reverb, sometimes it's a twin. Sometimes you're the same man, in dream, that you are when you're awake. [buy]

Eternal Summers - "Not For This One". Eternal Summers' Nicole Yun cedes the mic to drummer Daniel Cundiff. But she's still on guitar, still singing with her guitar, laying down a solo that's as wistful and wintry as his vocals, that's every bit as perfect, both of them hastened by the pace of the drums. Those drums: something in their neat pulse, in the shape of the snares' decay, recalls the hiss of cassette tape. It's the right match for the guitars' C86 jangle, like the sound of a garage pop band slipping just out of phase. [buy]

(photo by Goran Tomasevic)