Lo-Fi

Raw, real, honest. Often cut in a converted garage — or an unconverted bedroom on a four-track cassette recorder — these simply constructed recordings contain all the weight, depth, and color of their higher-tech brethren . . . for pennies on the dollar. They Might Be Giants' seduced-by-the-dark-side doppelganger, Ween, deliver an ear-bending slice of X-rated cartoon-pop in the goofy hilarity of "Push Th' Little Daisies." The acoustic guitar that sparks Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" chimes with a folky simplicity that will no doubt inspire a spontaneous fit of '90s nostalgia among longtime lo-fi fanatics. And you gotta check out the full-throated, hip-cocked defiance of "Never Said," Liz Phair's tough-chick declaration of innocence from Exile In Guyville.

In Next Steps, we're gonna do a little shoegazing, a little roof-raising . . . and more.

Like a well-crafted mixtape handed down from your favorite record store clerk, our Next Steps playlist skips right to the good stuff with an emphasis on music that you may not have heard, but should . . . and soon. Happy-hour peaks and melancholic valleys include the bottle-breaking barrage of Pavement's "Summer Babe," the seam-ripping last gasp of Elliott Smith's "Needle In the Hay," and the everything-old-is-new-again psych revivalism of the Olivia Tremor Control's "Love Athena." But perhaps the emotional centerpiece of our second slice of lo-fi luminosity is Stephin Merritt's minimalist musings on affection in "The Book of Love," taken from the Magnetic Fields' defining, three-disc tour de force, 69 Love Songs.

In Deep Cuts, we get fuzzy, sweet, and just a teeny bit sour with some bands you may not know . . . but should.

The lo-fi end of the indie spectrum is out at the edge of a scene that's already out at the edge, so you can certainly expect some revelatory "who's that?" moments among these Deep Cuts. In "Christmas (California)," Cynthia Dall's sweet little schoolgirl vocal plays tug-of-war with a somewhat sinister riff about how she better get "something good" for Christmas or there's gonna be some unpleasant — possibly nuclear — consequences. Pussy Galore's "Sweet Little Hi-Fi" plants itself squarely at the corner of Cramps Boulevard and Ministry Avenue, a rockahelly-inflected noise-fest complete with Jerry Lee Lewis-style, corn-liquor-fueled vocal histrionics. And the Halo Benders (an ad-hoc three-release side project created by Built To Spill's Doug Martsch and the Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson) rumble out an archer-than-thou gobsmack in "Magic Carpet Ride" (no relation to the '60s Steppenwolf psychedelic smash).

The hiss of a thrift store tape machine, the simple mix available to a four-track, and the sometimes pained/sometimes ecstatic honesty of unfiltered emotion — such is the appeal of lo-fi indie rock, the guarded, cultish realm of record store regulars and kids in scuffed Chucks. Partly a reaction to the era's massively overproduced radio hits, partly the intersection of cheap, new technology with musicians who wanted control over every aspect of recording, lo-fi isn't one monolithic sound; it's dozens — and we've got points of entry for every flavor. From the perpetual-grey-cloud moodiness of Elliott Smith to the helium-on-steroids buffoonery of Ween to the needle-pinned-in-the-red-overmodulation of Portastatic, we've got the lowdown on lo-fi.