Matt Pond PA

Consider Matt Pond PA to be the Honda Accord of the rock & roll superhighway: not flashy or sexy, but consistently dependable. The New York City quintet's latest record, Last Light, continues the movement away from mannered, cello-enhanced chamber-pop and toward bouncy, reflective indie-rock. While this takes away much of what made the band originally stand out, the seemingly bottomless cache of hooks and melodic breakdowns help preserve the magic of its earlier records. Pond's gently weathered voice is at the forefront on most of these tracks, such as the folksy, jaunty "Wild Girl" and the string-laden "Foreign Bedrooms." You know, the kind of stuff that sounds great coming from the tape deck of your reliable old Honda.