Heart

When an album starts off with each member of the band announcing, "I am ____, and this is my heart," you should probably know straight off what you're getting into. Stars have come to rock the master of your cardiovascular system, and if you're not prepared to accommodate a healthy serving of lyrical earnestness, you should probably just Remove All from your Winamp and go play some street hockey, you manly man you. Stars is yet another Montreal act keeping the indie pop dream alive in '03. Less all over the map than the Voltron-like Broken Social Scene, and without the fetishist spice that off-kilters the otherwise straight-shooting pop of The Hidden Cameras, Stars could very easily be overlooked, or avoided like a couple prone to PDA. But as of yet we don't have immigration quotas on music from the Great White North, and "Heart" is a valuable pop record for those of us whose cardiac muscle hasn't stained completely black.