Out of the musical maze that is Brooklyn’s synthpop scene rises Matt Koenig’s solo project Undercover Dream Lovers. The project’s intriguingly weird tracks have a knack for throwing together elements that would otherwise clash. With colorful bursts of synths and electronic textures, Undercover Dream Lover’s songs are equally fitting in an 80’s movie montage as in a futuristic space travel scene. “The Master” (streaming below) features undulating synths with distorted vocals that alternate between sounding close and distant, creating an interesting effect of fluctuating intersecting sonic waves. “When You Know It’s Alright” has piercing synths and spacey electronic bouts that burst in interspersed sections throughout the song, a track we could easily play over and over again as we drive down at night into whatever the future holds. Catch Undercover Dream Lover at Baby’s All Right for their EP release show on April 8.

Just a week after releasing its sophomore EP ‘Jackson’s Big Sky,’ steadily rising Brooklyn rock sextet Great Caesar now shares the achingly sublime music video (streaming below) for the track “Hey Mama." Showing the bandmembers singing the pining lyrics to the horn-blasted song in an abandoned warehouse that oozes an odd liquid, the crisp black-and-white clip conjures a creepy, almost Lynchian aura. Talking to Earmilk, Great Caesar frontman John-Michael Parker explains that the song does, in fact, tackle “disappointment and unfulfilled expectations, and the creeping anxiety of knowing you’ve done wrong by someone you love.” With his impassioned vocals and his bandmates’ wondrous playing, though, an undeniable warmth and hope for interpersonal reconciliation ultimately comes through. While Great Caesar doesn’t seem to have upcoming shows currently listed, keep posted on its Facebook page for future announcements. – Zach Weg 

Back in February Boston’s psych band Magic Shoppe released their second E.P. Interstellar Car Crash and it’s a trippy sonic masterpiece. The tracks are guitar centric pieces with distorted vocals floating in the background and cavernous reverb unabashedly pounding in your head. With beautifully languid melodies pulsing rhythmically throughout the E.P., Magic Shoppe succeeds at creating dynamic tunes that manage to maintain a sense of calm despite all that’s happening around them. The last track, “Interstella Car Crash” (streaming below), is the perfect example of that. Starting off with with an uniform tempo, vocals echoing in the distance the guitars sputter evenly before exploding into a spirited riff in the final minute. It’s like watching a star collapse into itself in slow motion and then witnessing it burst into a supernova of brilliant colors and sounds– a wondrous natural phenomena of galactic proportions that leaves us with our mouths agape, staring at the sky in awe.

How does quiet and cool come off as impassioned? One might ask lo-fi duo Old Fashioned Bleeding Hearts (a band we stumbled upon at Baby’s All Right in February), who offer up a cool blend of subdued, almost shy instrumentals, with hushed, yet incredibly heartfelt vocal harmonies, injected with very unabashed emotionality. Colton Tracy’s delicate guitar is almost completely self-aware, melding into Trevor Tattan’s drums patterns; the one being struck in the exact same timbre as the other. Delicate picking and calm strumming lovingly coats and caresses the light hits of snare drum, or the pitter of hi-hat, all creating a foundation on which the two vocalists can find footing, and soothe one another, and consequently, the audience. The instruments play as though they’re peeking out from behind a curtain, until they flourish into lushly strummed chords, and the stage is set for the main attraction of vocal tranquility. – JP Basileo