This Brooklyn-via-Missouri band is engagingly (and sometimes confoundingly) mutable. Their 2007 debut Fort Nightly now sounds like a Latin-tinged version of Vampire Weekend's indie afro-pop. But Tito Puente had left the building by 2009's It's Frightening, a dark-angled indie-pop affair produced by Spoon's Britt Daniel. Their third album deepens the rockist intentions with a track called "Heavy Metal" and a sound that's like Spoon or Fountains of Wayne dipped in distracted keyboard/noise-guitar ooze – power pop dis-empowered. Stephen Patterson's lyrics don't amount to much beyond a forlorn, transitory moodiness but they fit the music's shadowy impermanence. When he sings "I'm not me" you can't help but (vaguely) wonder which not-him he'll be next. 

Listen To White Rabbit's "Heavy Metal":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Youth Knows No Pain”

“Like on 'Youth Knows No Pain' — we are the ones that should demonstrate, because we can take it,” Likke Li said. “We can pierce ourselves, take Ecstasy, dance all night and still go to work at our McDonald's jobs.” Despite the hedonistic sentiment in the song, the Swedish singer also admitted in hindsight her youth had repercussions. “I remember when I was 18-19 and feeling that I know it all,” Li said. “I always feel that I know it all. But that song is about realizing you don’t, and reflecting, ‘Boy, if I only knew what would follow.’”