Click to Listen to Nicole Atkins' "Vulture" and "Cry, Cry, Cry"

Nicole Atkins' second album is an exercise in what you might call brunch blues: Dreamy, vaguely melancholic, thoroughly pleasant. The New Jersey-born singer-songwriter has a forceful and unfussy singing style that brings welcome drama to sleepy Fifties throwbacks like "This Is for Love" and rises to a wail on more agitated, roots-rock-inflected numbers like "Vultures" and "You Come to Me." Atkins' lyrics describe insatiable wanderlust and the travails of mixing up with no-good dudes — she falls for one on "Cry Cry Cry" and offers others hyperspecific advice on "Hotel Plaster." "Don't shake the change out of your pockets in the boudoir," she instructs. Noted!

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“Ambling Alp”

The "Ambling Alp" was the nickname of the six-and-a-half-foot-tall Primo Carnera. Though the song is named after the Italian-born 1930s heavyweight champion, Yeasayer are actually paying tribute to boxing legend Joe Louis with this first-person psychedelic dance-rock tune. “I was always interested in writing a song that had boxing mythology in it,” Yeasayer’s Chris Keating said. “It’s pretty fascinating: There were so many amazing characters, and it was so closely entwined with 20th century history.” Yeaseyer also invokes German champ Max Schmeling and hints at the historical significance placed on the historic bouts between the Nazi-era boxer and the African-American Louis.