These L.A. guitar hypnotists tap into a tradition of desert-rock mysticism as old as the Doors. But they're introspective, female art rockers, not peyote-pumped shaman dudes. Gingerly funked-up bass lines and treble-trance guitars recall the xx and Yeah Yeah Yeahs at their most reticent. The real action on Warpaint's full-length debut happens in the tension between the music's ethereal boil and singer-guitarist Emily Kokal's lyrical evocations of all-too-human anxiousness — like the way the band builds a space jam out of a Cat Power-esque piano rumination called "Lissie's Heart Murmur." It takes a little work, but once you find your way in, this stuff casts a shadow hard to shake.

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“Tonight's the Night”

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."