Dawes

California quartet Dawes was formed out of the ashes of alt-rock group Simon Dawes, but it’s hard to imagine the younger outfit’s members ever had access to distortion pedals or occasion to raise their singing voices to yelping shouts. On 2009’s NorthHills, the impossibly sunny roots-rock group sounds straight out of another, much simpler era: Its naked sentiments are lovingly stitched into a tender quilt of patient piano chords, gentle and lush vocal harmonies, and floating acoustic-guitar chords. The band conjures a few Laurel Canyon ghosts on the 2011 album Nothing Is Wrong, going so far toward smoothing the rough edges of its past as to recruit Jackson Browne for backing vocal duty. More recently, they’ve performed at an Occupy protest with Browne, and appeared as themselves on ABC’s Parenthood.

Updated 05/29/2012