Crystal Skulls

Although Seattle pop quartet the Crystal Skulls have impeccable indie credentials — they record for the faultlessly hip indie Suicide Squeeze Records and singer Christian Wargo is a former member of both the Danielson Famile and Pedro the Lion — the root of their sound is a resolutely unfashionable strain of 1970s AM pop music, one that includes Steely Dan, Wings, Todd Rundgren, 10cc, and Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street." Wargo formed the Crystal Skulls in 2003 with bassist Yuuki Matthews, guitarist Ryan Phillips, and drummer Casey Foubert, all fellow veterans of the Seattle indie scene. (Matthews and Foubert were two-thirds of Seldom; Foubert was also a part-time member of Pedro the Lion.) Naming themselves after a fringe supernatural belief that 13 ancient crystal skulls were hidden around the globe by some form of higher consciousness, the Crystal Skulls released their first album, Blocked Numbers, in the spring of 2005. A slightly more contemporary-sounding follow-up, Outgoing Behavior, followed in the spring of 2006, garnering press comparisons to the likes of Jens Lekman and the Concretes.