When David Karsten Daniels sings about collecting dandelions in his ball hat, I think of little leagues. I still remember playing baseball when I was eight, especially that night I stood staring at my glove. It didn’t blink. I remember the first baseman shrieking by, sprinting into my territory and screaming something about waking up. I turned to see him fling the ball to the waiting second baseman, then trot past me with his disdain dripping like summer sweat. Some second grader had turned a triple off of a piddly blooper, and I knew my brother was right: I was only going to get close to Canseco and McGwire in my dreams.

Built over a perfect color-show and guitar-and-drum bounce, "American Pastime's" image gets me. Not everyone was a right-field klutz. Still, when he belts “I’m not cut out for the major leagues,” the metaphor becomes a long-distance shot: he needs commiseration for his imperfect game. Misery loves company, even if it comes with minor-league ambitions.

This song is great because of one great moment: singer Amanda Garrett's delirious delivery of "We belong to no one," three minutes in. It's a complete free fall, and by the time the ground has reformed beneath it 30 seconds later, the rest is thin air. If you are Daylight's for the Birds, it's the kind of moment that gives you the song's title, and the kind that makes you place that song at the beginning of your debut record. Garrett is addressing a "you" in this song, but we might as well assume she's talking to herself (or, you know, no one) until this moment, when she cuts through the guitar squall to belt that one line directly at whomever broke her heart. It's a shame to label this "dream pop," because it's most effective when the dream is broken.

[Photo by Aliya Naumoff]

Upon hearing this, Steven Patrick Morrissey promptly hung himself, buried his own corpse, and rolled over in his grave. Johnny Marr shrugged and high-fived Isaac Brock. And four New York lads in Man United jerseys exchanged smug smiles, knowing they had just successfully gang-humped their idols, and man was it good.

But seriously, in a Smiths-free vacuum-- hell, in a Voxtrot-free vacuum-- the Isles' "Flying Under Cheap Kite" is perfectly serviceable mixtape fodder, pleasant and amicable and good-humored, a welcome guest in parlors far and wide. Take it home to mum, she'll love it. And even in a world where the Smiths live on only in recorded form, half-reunions, and Moz, this could serve a purpose, the way your old college buddy's on-again off-again Smiths cover band (The Queen's Men? The Comatose Girlfriends?) serves a purpose for wistful gin-grinners and fanners of fading embers. But when you ape the aesthetic with immaculate precision and then hit us with couplets like, "There's no one knocking at my door/ I don't know what the doorknob's for", you're only spitting on the grave you just robbed.

With the Walkmen wasting away again in Louisiana-ville and the Strokes having nosedived from grace down to Earth, this latest posse of fine-feeling, fresh-faced youngsters creeps in to take its own stab at NYC's other contested crown. Vocalist Stefan Marolachakis even has a name pretty much as ridiculous as Leithauser or Casablancas, and a similar leering delivery. Here he enters with the apt taunt, "You can pout all you want/ Some of us won't fall for it," alongside cymbal-heavy percussion that suggests a pack of little leaguers shaking the chain-linked to razz the opposing team. Replace his "you" with an NYC band of your choice for a tasty beef soufflé.

And for a good three minutes the End of the World has us, holding "Last Cast" slightly aloft, taking it for a few well-timed dips and across a steady bridge, Marolachakis' elongated vowels gluing the whole thing together. Yet where the above acts boast five, the End are only three, and their basic guitar-bass-drums template gets stretched thin here-- there's really no reason "Last Cast" needs to stagger well past the four-minute mark, and all that constant fence-rattling grows tiresome. The result: a fine but by no means monumental candidate for the back half of the next Yes New York comp.

Beirut's Zach Condon co-opts locations, wears them like hats. So Lon Gisland's single space renders one of the most boring islands on earth into something exotic for him, and it finalizes his move from his hometown in New Mexico to Brooklyn; it's the first time he's named something after a place where he really lives. "Elephant Gun" begins with the same little ukulele chords from "Postcards From Italy" and it has a similar marching beat, with similar instrumental breakdowns placed strategically throughout the fuller, more present accordion and drums. But Condon's voice and instrument are almost the same now: His trumpet's vibrations are extensions of the natural ripples in his voice, while his voice's quick pitch changes are smooth and controlled, making him sound more mature than he looks. Otherwise, there aren't many clues to his growth on the EP. Condon declared a disinterest in lyrics in his Pitchfork interview; he only thinks about sounds. It's promising, then, to hear him learning to use the sounds of words to build lyrics that, if not smart, still slide. "We drink to die, we drink tonight," with its assonance and dipthonged [I] vowel, complement his lithe voice. "If I was young, I'd flee this town," he sings. He's getting older by the second.

Until now every brief but tantalizing mp3 the Blondes have released siphoned from the source of least resistance. Whether copping stiff upper lipped post-punk ("Autonomy Boy"), beefed up girl group ("Once and Never Again"), or glossy new wave ("Giddy Stratospheres"), nailing the genre's only been a matter of clearing out enough space in the garage. "You Could Have Both" scoffs at that notion, however, reaching for the kind of clean production that Dad's tool chest just can't provide.

Like Frank Black refining early Pixies' simian stomp into the cultivated Bossanova, the Blondes put on airs but the proletarian imperfections still shine through. While the interlocking bass and surf guitar lines scream Kim Deal/Joey Santiago tag team, these guys can't hide the Britannia in them. Staying true to lead singer Kate Jackson's self-proclaimed "glamorous punk" image, "Both" stays more loyal to Pulp's or British Sea Power's Pixies interpretation than the touchstone itself. No longer spinning yarns in a tinny soundscape, Jackson unfurls her narrative buttressed by howling synths and a dizzying chorus. Perhaps they're deliberately rolling out the red carpet before the debut album drops, but it's their gala and so far the hors d'oeuvres taste good.

Peter and the Wolf's Red Hunter delivers heartfelt verses to no one in particular, "singing to the stars" with nothing but a guitar and an occasional female voice (Dana Falconberry) behind it all. The "silent movies" in question are his memories of "a girl [he] knew, who lived up on Seventh Avenue," something like an American Emily Kane, though Hunter doesn't need to shout to make his point, trusting the force of his softspoken nostalgia. There's humor here-- Hunter actually howls like a wolf at one point-- and Falconberry's harmonies remain mostly wordless, as if to play out the girl Hunter misses, and to underscore their distance. It's Hunter's gritty, untrained voice that makes the song though; when he sings "I truly believe we'll fall in love again someday," and "I can't stand it" together with Falconberry, we're stuck wanting to believe him, knowing the improbability, and wondering whether it would be that good for either of them anyway.

The Never are a young North Carolina band who, on their recent album Antarctica, worked the same grandiose indie rock seam as Death Cab for Cutie and the Decemberists. Musically, there's not a lot to this unreleased Antarctica­­ track, recorded live for Daytrotter. It's a stately jangle with popping percussion that opens up into an electrified, hand-holding chorus, swaying drunkenly in the Catfish Haven style of white boy soul. As is always the case with such bare-bones indie rock, the song's success hangs on how much melodic lucidity and emotional oomph the Tunnell brothers can pack into their bell-clear harmonies; it's on this score that "When You're Gone" succeeds. It's also an interesting counterpoint to the relentlessly idealistic Antarctica-- with lines like, "My apartment's just your parking lot/ You leave me when you're done," the Never begin to probe the fissures in their romantic idyll, and one gets a poignant sense of a youthful bubble on the verge of its inevitable explosion.

Ever since The Joshua Tree, way too many bands have tried matching the self-proclaiming transcendence that plenty of otherwise reasonable people find in U2 anthems. New Fat Cat signees the Twilight Sad do to every would-be "With or Without You" what Jimi Hendrix did to "The Star-Spangled Banner". Co-produced by German-born labelmate and "post-classical" composer Max Richter, the Glaswegian quartet's "And She Would Darken the Memory" obliterates its own romantic swoop in post-shoegaze explosions-- and that's fucking transcendent.

Others, notably the Walkmen, have taken a similarly destructive approach to unrelenting basslines and cascades of ringing guitars. But where those New Yorkers' "The Rat" was downtown sleazy, "And She Would Darken the Memory of Youth" is practically apocalyptic, its stoic drone convulsing in peals of red-line thunder near the closing seconds. "I'm putting up with your constant whine," James Graham sings, with poise and a thick burr. It's hard to tell who's the asshole here, but my vote's usually for any guy who calls himself Bono Vox.

Listen, you're gonna get over it, and then it'll all seem pretty silly. In the moment, though, unrequited love looms large. The debut single by Glasgow five-piece My Latest Novel-- whose album will be out via The Worker's Institute on Oct. 31-- explores overwrought emotional vastness like the sensitive acoustic types they are: with two-tone quiet/loud dynamics and lots of strings. Nope, they're not the Goo Goo Dolls. Singer Chris Deveney's restraint keeps six-minute "Sister Sneaker Sister Soul" closer to the anthemic vulnerability of fellow Glaswegians Snow Patrol or Arab Strap. He's not saying much new ("I only know her first name," Deveney sings over folkie arpeggios), but the campfire choir of ba-ba-bas behind him make the old story worth hearing again. Crashing guitars and billowy violins neatly simulate the hugeness of adolescent devotion. Hard to explain old crushes, but it's nice to feel the butterflies.

In the 1990s, American alternative-rock bands and their UK soundalikes tended to repeat one particular chord progression, add their own angst-ridden lyrics, and call it a hit: Green Day's "When I Come Around", Better Than Ezra's "Good", Bush's "Glycerine", my high school pop-punk trio's "Erik Song". Two-piece Frightened Rabbit are from Glasgow, and they're not much for angst, but their take on N-Trance's "Set You Free" offers a twangy, earnest, rave-rooted variation on that former buzz-clip formula.

It's a love song, see: "Wanna hold you, baby," singer Scott begins as fractured guitars sound out their familiar theme, his brother Grant pitter-pattering on the drums. Thing about love, turns out, is "only love can set you free," or so the chorus reminds us. Like the chords, all the plain-spoken words fall just where they should in a song you'd have once heard on the radio, but something is plainly missing. While you wouldn't change the station when "Set You Free" came on, neither would you tape it for your friends.

If Swan Lake's three men share three traits, they are: obliqueness, dramatic flair, and existential angst. Here Spencer Krug, who helped craft both Wolf Parade's thumping, wailing pow-wows and the raucous expressionism of Sunset Rubdown, takes the lead both as writer and singer. Yet it sounds like he's aping another Swan Laker, Destroyer's Dan Bejar. But rather than whistling glam-rock mythologies through his nose, however, Krug charts a quiet tour of romantic metaphors and resignation. The song has a fatalistic arc, building and building, from hushed folk minimalism to an autumnal, keening kitchen-sink catharsis: all rustling wind chimes and whistling synths and sputtering guitars. That these elements don't crash together in an artsy over-calculated Sturm und Drang of "literate" self-reference is a feat in itself. Instead they co-exist peacefully, half storybook village, half rustbelt hamlet.