Kacey Johansing has a voice strong enough to sell a million records without even trying; her lissome, jazzy vibrato radiates warmth and comfort. Entrusted to another person, such talent could easy fall prey to more straightforwardly poppy proscriptions, but thankfully Johansing doesn’t intend to be the next Norah Jones. Instead, the San Francisco based songwriter lends her vocal vim to introspective alt-folk compositions which spotlight the stunning clarity and emotion of her singing.

On June 15th, Johansing made her debut with a collection of eleven songs entitled Many Seasons. Released by Porto Franco Records, the album was three years in the making and establishes the twenty-five year old not as a promising talent, but as an artist who has already arrived. “Angel Island,” the record’s mellow, five-minute long third track, has Johansing crooning over a base of plaintive percussion and evanescent electric guitar. Where most songs draw their emotional heft from swells of instrumentation, “Angel Island” is powered by Johansing’s subtle vocal modulations. The whole thing is a resplendent reverie; it sweeps you off your feet and–ever so gently–sets you back down in reality when it whispers itself to a close.

The most immediately striking thing about “Zorbing,” a track from the young Oxford, England band Stornoway, is the strange barbershop quartet/gospel choir/sea chantey backing vocals that drop in from out of nowhere at the end of the first verse. In an era when indie bands are tossing industrial-size kitchen sinks into their arrangements, it takes ingenuity to be able to coax a “well, I wasn’t expecting that” reaction from listeners.

After that, the soaring melody of the verses and vocalist Brian Briggs’ clear, pure tenor kick in. When the trumpet swoops in towards the end, it’s clear that “Zorbing” is a fine new entry in the U.K. tradition of well-scrubbed folk-pop stretching back through James, The Housemartins and Del Amitri to early-1980s practitioners like Aztec Camera, Haircut 100, and The Bluebells. Roddy Frame, Edwyn Collins, or Nick Heyward would not be embarrassed to have the song in their catalogs.

In these days of fractured musical fandom, Stornoway’s hopes of reaching a larger audience are likely limited, which is a shame. 4AD completists will snatch them up, then wonder why they don’t really sound much like anything else on 4AD (which is releasing their debut LP, Beachcomber’s Windowsill, on August 8th), and fans of alt-folk in general will likely find them enjoyable. But in another era, they might have been huge–they’re talented, photogenic (the entire band is a preview of what the offspring of Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson will grow up to look like once they couple starts squeezing out young ‘uns), and immensely likeable. And with “Zorbing” they’ve written a song as good as “Love Plus One,” “Oblivious,” or any number of other clean-cut U.K. pop hits which are now considered classics.

At its core “Skinny Cow Blues” is a teenage pick up song that could have been plucked from Richard Linklater’s classic Dazed and Confused. You can almost hear Matthew McConaughey’s character saying, “You’ve got a nice last name / ask me to say it again / in the car.”

Instead it was written by David Dewese and Jerry James, two guys who call Texas and Nashville home, and for “Skinny Cow Blues,” geography is destiny. With pacing that is reminiscent of Pavement’s twangy “Gold Soundz,” the song uses piano and layered background vocals to soften the scratchy distortion of the lead vocals. The artful balance of acoustic melody and fuzzed-out electric guitar lines build tension as “Skinny Cow Blues” reaches its coda.

Dewese and James christened themselves The Foxymorons back in the mid-1990s when the two friends started making music together. The duo’s fourth long player, Bible Stories, will be released August 24th by Philadelphia label Heatstroke Records.

“We can change our minds / decide to tell them everything,” sings Film School front man Greg Bertens on “Heart Full of Pentagons,” the band’s first single from Fission, their fourth full-length release. Film School has certainly reserved the right to change their minds. Instead of self-releasing Fission as they’d planned, the band made a last minute decision to sign to Hi-Speed Soul Records, who will release the record on August 31, 2010.

“Heart Full of Pentagons” also marks a bit of a departure for the band. Bassist Lorelei Plotczyk’s vocals begin the song, which adds an uncharacteristically feminine touch for Film School and puts it squarely in Postal Service territory from the first note. But it’s the dreamy keyboard melody that sets “Heart Full of Pentagons” apart from the band’s earlier, more distorted offerings.

The band doesn’t remain in the light and fluffy upper registers for long, however; a wall of reverb-laden guitar soon descends, bringing the song back to more recognizable shoegaze roots. If you cut it, “Heart Full of Pentagons” bleeds pure ’80s, but it’s the interplay between the light electro-pop and the heavier guitar that makes the song a legitimate offspring, rather than a hackneyed imitator.