Hood

Hood's slightly frosty folk/indie/electronic hybrid sounds a touch brighter on this newest release. It's as if the wan Leeds-based outfit has been skipping rope and pumping iron since its last album, 2001's Cold House. Although the tracks still hover midair in an icy, rural space, there is a new clarity in the production and a directness to the rhythms that feels fresh. Take a listen to "The Lost You," which starts out with a drumbeat that could have come from the Neptunes school of brightly lit beats and then loops around a vocal sample from '70s baroque, art-prog poster boy Robert Wyatt before melting into some rustic, sprawling guitar pop crunch. The track should be stuffed and mounted. It's incredible. Hood is still playing with the same formulas that have proven so successful in the past (dub-style production tricks; whispery guitar melodies; crisp, heavy drums; and a wide array of baroque pop touches), but the group's tendency to try and restructure the basic elements of a pop song seems to have given it an endless choice of avenues to build upon.