The Apples In Stereo

While they may be the first signing to Elijah Wood's new label, Apples In Stereo have been indie pop icons for more than a decade. As a founding member of the Elephant 6 collective (Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, Of Montreal), the Apples are like a lo-fi version of the Beach Boys — coating their chords and abundant hooks in the same amount of sugar it'd take to rebuild Willy Wonka's factory. Feel the saccharine hit your brain in such sunbeam songs as "Tidal Wave," "Go," and nearly every one of our Next Steps.

Fun Trick Noisemaker did more than gleefully announce Apples In Stereo's arrival on the college rock circuit; it billowed and broke like a massive chewing gum bubble, right in the faces of recovering Nirvana fans and the alternative rock faithful who spent the first half of the '90s frowning. Colorado's finest sonic candy peddlers have kept 'em smiling since then, too, whether it's through a fuzz-flecked jam like "Better Days" or an "I'm totally tripping, man" moment like "Benefits of Lying (With Your Friend)." The rush doesn't stop until our Deep Cuts are done either.

Apples In Stereo weren't sitting around idly during the five years that separated Velocity of Sound's gnarled, grimy pop and its triumphant, streamlined follow-up, New Magnetic Wonder. Frontman Robert Schneider, for one, returned to his ego-exorcising alias Marbles — bringing battery-powered beats and vocoder-tweaked vocals to a solo project that started as a simple four-track precursor to the Apples in the early '90s. No wonder why Yoko Ono asked the Apples to back her on a recent record, bringing the band's Beatles obsession full circle.

Robert Schneider's graduating class of fellow Elephant 6 founders (Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel; William Cullen Hart and Bill Doss of Olivia Tremor Control) was basically the indie rock equivalent of Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, and the Beatles sharing a high school cafeteria table. As the central figure of Apples In Stereo and his solo project, Marbles, Schneider has definitely played the part of mad genius/Beach Boy, too — delivering deceptively simple hooks and harmonies with a "how does he do it?" spin, whether it's on such lo-fi peaks as Fun Trick Noisemaker and Tone Soul Evolution or focused but freaky LPs like New Magnetic Wonder.