Jenny Lewis/Rilo Kiley

Rilo Kiley’s name is high on the shockingly short list of artists who have gone from underground icon to major-label breakthrough band without sacrificing their identity on the altar of success. From the beginning, they made the most of singer Jenny Lewis’s dewdrop-on-a-rose voice and quirky lyrics on songs like “Science Vs. Romance,” with Blake Sennett’s guitar providing perfect dollops of jangle and twang (twangle, anyone?). Stylistically restless, Rilo Kiley roamed freely into any musical neighborhood that suited them — they didn’t call their 2004 album More Adventurous for nothing — and that record’s slow-baked, ’50s R&B-style ballad “I Never” stands as proof. When the move to the majors came, the band embraced their Big Moment with gusto on their sexy, sassy, funk-flecked hookfest of a single, “The Moneymaker.” Follow Jenny Lewis’s journey beyond the Rilo realm in Next Steps.

When you’ve got a singer like Jenny Lewis, who oozes star quality from her every pore, solo projects are practically a given. In between busy times with Rilo Kiley, Lewis squeezed in plenty of extracurricular activities. With able assistance from the Watson Twins, she cut her first solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat, whose title track put a humble country/folk setting to a tale worthy of Edward Gorey. On a cover of the Traveling Wilburys hit “Handle With Care,” Lewis assembled a one-off indie-folk supergroup, with M. Ward and Conor Oberst playing Tom Petty and Roy Orbison to her George Harrison. Later, Lewis followed her heart and her muse into a duo with her songwriter boyfriend Johnathan Rice as Jenny & Johnny — listen to the lovebirds crooning the harmony-laden, alt-country-tinged “Switchblade” like a modern-day Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.

The songs of Rilo Kiley — a name that came to guitarist Blake Sennett in a crazy dream – are sparkling pop confections on the surface, but they’ve got a subversive quality at the center, and that crucial combination endeared them to both the underground cognoscenti and the alt-rock mainstream. Jenny Lewis laid honey-dripping vocals and left-of-center lyrics atop Sennett’s gorgeous guitarscapes — and it didn’t hurt that the photogenic young singer had a habit of showing off her stems in short shorts, making her something of an alt-pop sex symbol. After 2007’s major-label breakthrough, Under the Blacklight, Lewis leaned more towards solo projects, but we’ve gathered the greatest moments from both Rilo Kiley’s run and Lewis’s other outings all under one roof, where the ultimate Rilo/Jenny experience is just a click away.