This week's band to watch is The M's and their Real Close Ones long-player, out today on Polyvinyl. The Chicago-based quartet's retro psych is garnering lots of attention, and this release is most likely the gate-crasher. Also out this week are Fleet Foxes' self-titled record and Shearwater's Rook (Matador), please check back with us later in the week for reviews. ...

Liverpool's music history is dense and storied, chronicled by Beatles fanatics, Merseybeat followers, new wave scholars and Brit-punk alumni. The long reach of this little Wales/England border town's influence on popular music remains unmeasurable, and perhaps no band proves this point more than Clinic. Across their rich catalog, the quartet has borrowed from the archives of their homeland's discography readily, crafting an intricate web that utilizes its own patterns and flourishes with precision and calculated attentiveness. Their sound has always been haunting, dark and teeming with rough edges, but a joyful noise is always present: they excel at the fine art of repetition and detail. Collecting the parts they love, they have redistributed and reorganized their sound in finely tuned, subtle increments over time, polishing the same framework on each album they release. Across these albums, they've proven their devotion to the theory that the whole is greater than the sum of their parts. ...