Mazzy Star

As celestial as their name suggests, Mazzy Star drifts by the naked eye like a waking dream of woozy guitars and hushed, hypnotic vocals (sung from beneath a shimmering veil of sadness by Hope Sandoval). Shades of psychedelia and country-folk paint paisley patterns over guitarist David Roback's deceptively simple song structures. It all melts into a rainy-day sound that's as fragile as a glass menagerie on their cover of '60s psych hero Arthur Lee's "Five String Serenade" and as bewitching as the memory of a long-lost love on the duo's biggest hit, the haunted-heart ballad "Fade Into You." But if you thought Mazzy Star was a one-trick pony, drop in on the trashy guitar and garage-rock grit of "Ghost Highway" and stand corrected. Is there life beyond Mazzy? Find out in Next Steps.

Some things of beauty are too precious to last forever, and Mazzy Star seemed to fade into the stratosphere after three albums. But the gentle glow of Hope Sandoval's voice has illuminated all manner of other sonic settings over the years. Even before Mazzy Star fell by the wayside, Sandoval played an alt-rock Tammy Wynette to Jim Reid's George Jones on the Jesus and Mary Chain duet "Sometimes Always." After drifting away from her old band into a solo career, she stayed close to the Mazzy map with the dreamy twinkle and creamy murmur of songs like "Suzanne," backed by her group the Warm Inventions. The sleepy siren even showed big-beat techno titans the Chemical Brothers how to lay back and let the magic flow on the hazy, lazy "Asleep from Day."

In an era when the stomp and roar of grunge pretty much ruled the radio and took over MTV, the unassuming Southern California duo of David Roback and Hope Sandoval whispered a wistful alternative to "alternative" as dream-pop merchants Mazzy Star. Sandoval was the honey-voiced waif floating through the melancholy clouds gathered by Roback's guitar, and for a golden moment, they even made it work in the mainstream. Following the trail of Mazzy Star means not only scooping up the sweetest cuts from their three studio albums, but also working your way along the winding path of Sandoval's solo work and her extracurricular activities with everyone from Vetiver to the Jesus and Mary Chain. It adds up to a long, strange trip, but guess what — we've already been there, done that, and laid it all out at your fingertips. Sweet dreams.