Origins follows Echo Park duo VOICEsVOICEs’ art-gallery-recorded Outside Sounds EP and picks up where the first left off. The six-song record is a sleepwalking journey into the unconscious like a meditative self-examination under a hypnotic paradigm bending hallucinogenic. While Origins may not be the soundtrack of your next road trip (warning: may induce catatonia), Nico Turner and Jenean Farris are certainly onto something here. Taking experimental, progressive, and psychedelic rock way beyond a logical direction, VOICEsVOICEs capture ghosts and the undead and dreams and put a sound to their thoughts. This record is like a séance, with a synthesizer. At the same time, Origins has a nascent sexuality. It is raw and it melts into you. Where all the emo kids played XX:xx in 2009 to get lucky, this year they’ll be playing VOICEsVOICEs’ Origins to score.

Singer/songwriter AM isn't a stranger to having left his musical mark right under your nose; his last LP Troubled Times had every track licensed to all sorts of projects on television and film, an impressive feat not done since Moby's mega-hit Play. With that kind of cred, AM has already proven a strong viability with most any audience, but without the necessary weight that comes in being a well-recognized mainstay. That's about to change with his latest LP Future Sons & Daughters, a fully developed snapshot of AM in the context of, not just the single, but the lost art of the album. Produced by Charles Newman (The Magnetic Fields), this lush and multi-faceted pop work is a testament to AM's love of retro radio, analog warmth and laser-precise melodies. Nods range from '60s Detroit to '70s Philly, but intends to be current with a modern palette in production.  Highlight track "Fortunate Family Tree" revives roots melody awash with steady organs, loose snares and hallucinatingly wavey lead guitar lines, all signs that this is a worthy trip to a past sound, sans the cringing generally associated in homage attempts. This is pop music for the refined ear, or, rather, the ear that remembers what pop music was really always supposed to be. -Hugo Gomez

The blissful electropop of Globes On Remote is meant to be absorbed while cruising the SoCal coast in a convertible with the top down, or sweating out your anxieties in a heated dance-off. The Woo Hoo Hoo mixes the guilty pleasures of '80s synth-pop and early '90s dance music with Beatles-esque harmonies and infectious vocals alternately reminiscent of Guster (“Space Camp”), Prince (“West Coast Kids”), and Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips (“Dance Of The Gravitrons”). That’s not to say that the band’s music is entirely derivative—the warming familiarity of the bouncing synths, crunchy guitars, and sunny lines like “Let’s all go ride bicycles” are countered by textured electronic layers and nuances that make for plenty of heady headphone discoveries on repeated listens. The Woo Hoo Hoo is a perfectly packaged pop debut album that showcases a new band with nowhere to go but up. -Hannis Brown