"Guess I left the world behind," Eric Earley sings on the sixth Blitzen Trapper record. No doubt: The Portlandians play Nineties Americana rock like Wilco if they'd never upended the genre on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It's a simplistic but intoxicating roots fantasy - full of Dylan mysticism, spidery acoustic Dead jamming, tasty 1970s rock moves and evocations of high-plains drifters with itchy trigger fingers drinking from jam jars. Earley has Jeff Tweedy's bed-headed wonderment, and every steel guitar filament or harmonica blast is perfectly placed; modern references are so rare that when they roll out a funk tinged tune called "Astronaut," it's almost unnerving-like someone whipping out an iPhone in a Western.

Listen to "American Goldwing":

Related:
• Breaking Artist: Blitzen Trapper
• Photos: Bonaroo 2010

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"