On their first two albums, this Brooklyn-via-Phoenix indie-pop crew chiefly trafficked in playful psychedelia. Album three opens with a pair of curveballs, the horndog electro-disco fantasies "Sex on the Regular" and "Female Doctor." The lyrics are pure R. Kelly kitsch ("I'm your secret/You can take me out and play me like a saxophone"), but the tunes are as sneakily hummable as ever, and frontman Charlie Brand makes a surprisingly decent Romeo. Elsewhere, the Tigers get back to more familiar tricks, spinning blissed-out daydreams about post-war painters, romantic comedies and whatever else drifts into their rainbow-hued headspace – as pleasant a place as any to while away a spring day.

Listen to "Sex on the Regular":

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Photos: Random Notes

“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?'"