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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“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."