Halloween, Alaska

The members of electronica-tinged indie-rock group Halloween, Alaska are all involved with other notable projects, most notably drummer Dave King’s longtime stints in The Bad Plus and Happy Apple. For its third disc, Champagne Downtown, the Minnesota-based, comma-friendly group enlisted Grammy-winning producer and engineer Tchad Blake to help draw out the group’s sound, which is disarmingly quiet and spare but filled with subtle textures. Its most recent, All Night The Calls Came In, was recorded in just a week, in a departure from the meticulous and methodical construction of the group’s past albums. Singer-keyboardist James Diers still adds melancholy vocal hooks, but there’s a hazed-over catchiness to All Night, with many of the new songs laced with the ’80s nostalgia that has colored its previous work.

Updated 08/30/2011