Weekend Roundup.

Greg-Ieronimo-Bipolar Love. About once a week, I sift through the latest releases on CD Baby. It's a somewhat painstaking process that takes a couple of hours, and as the saying goes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. But coming across debuts as tight and power popping like Greg Ieronimo's debut EP, Bipolar Love, makes the whole enterprise worth it. Ieronimo's crunchy power pop comes in somewhere between Cheap Trick and vintage Weezer, as you'll hear once you click on "Roller Coaster Ride" below. The more jaunty yet rocking "Catch Me" has a hint of Jellyfish to it, as does the more acoustic guitar-based "Lucky Day". There's not a bad track among the seven featured here - "Home" recalls Foo Fighters in power pop mode, and "Goodbye Love" is a Beatlesque treat. One of the best debuts I've heard in months, if not years, Bipolar Love will be extremely tough to dislodge from my top of my 2014 year-end EP list.

CD Baby | iTunes



Damp-Damp. Damp is a guy named Ryan from Oregon (that's about all the biographical information I could glean) who makes some highly melodic indie pop on his debut album. Although it's primarily piano-based, Damp's music is more Shins or Ben Kweller than Ben Folds as demonstrated by opening duo of "Time" and "What's to Come from What Has Been", a pair of gorgeous tracks. Although these two tracks might lead you to believe he's a bit earnest and straightforward, there's plenty of playfulness on display here as well, from the almost-vaudeville piano of "Ye Ol' Bitch" to the baroque pop of "What's Wrong, Oh So Wrong" to the (actual) blues of "Cherry Pickin' Blues" to the catchy-yet-kazoo backed "I'm Thinking of You". This a an audacious, fun debut that also makes my panning for gold on CD Baby worth it.

CD Baby | iTunes | Official site (w/a few full-length tracks)