Halloween, Alaska

Forget everything you know about '80s musical nostalgia. While some upstart bands are content to borrow clothes and keyboard lines from radio hitmakers of the Reagan era, the members of HALLOWEEN, ALASKA dig deeper to offer a distinctive set of modern mood-pop, steeped in tones and textures from throughout the last two decades, irony-free and full of heart.

The Blue Nile, Everything But the Girl, Tears for Fears and Peter Gabriel are among the catalog names proudly checked by this earnest Minneapolis quartet, but they're just as apt to cite LL Cool J, Mark Eitzel or filmmaker David Lynch as influences. The resulting sound is a seductive blend of rich synths, fragile loops, sparse guitar phrases, otherworldly bass noise and an unorthodox mix of acoustic and electronic drums. The band's self-titled debut disc features seven original songs plus a plugged-in, polyrhythmic cover of "State Trooper", the classic night-driver's lament from Bruce Springsteen's minimalist masterwork Nebraska.