DUMMY Free Energy (Trouble in Mind) — The sophomore album from the Los Angeles–based band Dummy is imbued with the plain joy of creative discovery. The group has got a distinctive sound that puts them squarely in the company of other current practitioners of left-of-center pop-rock, but that doesn’t stop them from restlessly exploring how they can bend away from expectations, whether with a dollop of psychedelic tomfoolery or a sudden slap of a harder-edged rock sound. “Dip in the Lake” even takes the form of a warped piano sonata that could be used to play the worthy into Heaven. Nathan O’Dell and Emma Maatman trade off lead vocal duties across the album, which comes across less as strictly logical choices of who steps to the microphone and more as another way to keep the listener guessing. Fancified flights notwithstanding, what really impresses in the consistent clarity of their pop song chops. “Blue Dada” is like Eugenius meets Alvvays, and “Minus World” has a zipping, zingy vibrancy that any number of sunshiny acts would envy. Free Energy is the kind of album that inspires true believers. Tap the potential of the following tracks: “Soonish…” “Nullspace,” “Sudden Flutes,” and “Nine Clean Nails.”

SARAH KINSLEY Escaper (Verve Forecast / Decca) — Following a slew of attention-getting smaller releases made more or less on her own, California-born, Connecticut-raised, and New York–based singer-songwriter is impressively expansive on her full-length studio debut, Escaper. Working with producer John Congleton, who’s already signed his name this year to fine releases by Sleater-Kinney and Mannequin Pussy, Kinsley crafts songs that betray her more refined musical background (including music theory studies at Columbia University) and yet are flush with the exuberant energy of proudly off-kilter pop. It’s telling that album opener “Last Time We Never Meet Again” sounds a bit like Florence and the Machine with their more baroque tendencies tempered, though hardly eliminated. Elsewhere, Kinsley brushes up against Kate Bush epicness on “Barrel of Love” and is mirrors early Grimes, right down to the burbling electronic beat, on “There Was a Room.” Clear as the kinship with alt-pop’s most revered iconoclasts might be, Kinsley wouldn’t truly belong along their number if she didn’t simultaneously set herself apart as unique individual. Happily, she manages that just fine, building inventive, quicksilver shifts within the tracks. “My Name Is Dancing” is delivered as an elegant ballad but moving with a quickened, slightly anxious pace, and the piano-based “Beautiful Things” recalls the rainy day–friendly works of nineteen-seventies chanteuses, albeit with a clear injection of modernity to the sound. Kinsley announces herself as a performer to chase after. Lock yourself in with the following cuts: “Realms,” “Sublime,” “starling,” and the title cut.