After years of sustained excellence, Richard Hawley has been welcomed to the ranks of Britain's most beloved guitarists and singer-songwriters. But even before he reached the UK charts on his own, he'd already made himself famous as a sought-after accompanyist, producer, session player and concert sideman. Hawley's instrumental style is wholly his own - spiky, melodic, humorous, occasionally abrasive, often erudite, and always entertaining - and it's earned him invitations to collaborate with some of the biggest names in British pop. He's has worked with musicians as diverse as Jarvis Cocker, Nancy Sinatra, A Girl Named Eddy and Gwen Stefani, and contributed to the soundtrack to Bahz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet. Chris Martin, Thom Yorke, Mike Mills, and Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys (Hawley will be adding his vocals to an upcoming Monkeys track) count themselves as big supporters; Jarvis Cocker has sung Hawley's praises to anybody who'll listen, and has encouraged his own fans to pick up on the Sheffield musician's sterling recordings.

Hawley's solo albums are compendiums of sharply-written tales, stories both humorous and heartbreaking, infectious melodies, spirited performances, and irresistible rhythms. The guitarist is a rockabilly enthusiast as well as an indie stalwart, and his songwriting draws from vintage sources and modern sounds alike. Much like Ted Leo, Hawley is a charismatic roughneck who manages to transcend genre; he projects a kind of timeless, no-nonsense, working-class musical sensibility. Coles Corner, his 2004 release, was nominated for the Mercury Prize, and "Born Under A Bad Sign", its lead single, became an underground smash.

"Everything we've accomplished has been through hard work and touring, sweating in a van, being out on the floor talking to kids after the shows," says Clint Baker, singer/guitarist/songwriter for Aware/Columbia Records band Riddlin' Kids, as the group prepares to release its sophomore album, Stop the World.

The product of more than two straight years of non-stop roadwork, Stop the World reflects that whirlwind of activity on feverish rockers like the first single and title track, which admits: "I'm walking on broken eggshells/Trying to make some sense of this/Trying to save face with false appearances."

Renowned across the Midwest for their incendiary stage show, the RNs continue to tour the nation relentlessly; at this writing, they're preparing for a local Kansas City concert with Casket Salesmen and the Architects before leaving for a month-long swing through the Rockies and California. A video that didn't show off Roman Numerals onstage would've been misleading - but a clip that simply presented performance footage of the band wouldn't have captured the weird, futuristic feel of the music. Directors Bob Moczydlowsky (also the group's manager, and a key man on the KC scene) and Bill McShane have risen to the challenge with an arresting clip for "The Rule Of V" that juxtaposes images of the RNs in action with still shots of a night-time Japanese cityscape.

To add to the disquieting noir feel of the video, the directors have run the footage through a processor that throws thin black lines on the screen. The effect makes it look like we're watching Roman Numerals on an old-style computer terminal, or perhaps through very narrow Venetian blinds. As the camera swoops and dives around the stage, the band seems almost too bright - explosions of color against a black background, pouring through the horizontal streaks. The clip de-naturalizes the group, making the bandmembers appear like characters in anime, or live-action versions of characters torn from the pages of Neuromancer: ghosts in the machine, stalking the cyber-alleys of a pixellated Tokyo.

Rookie of the Year began as a solo project for the winning Ryan Dunson, and his warm, melodic, and empathetic songwriting remains the band's calling-card. But the former Farewell To Fashion frontman is alone no longer: he's relocated to Fayetteville, and assembled a band of talented musicians whose sensibilities suit his expressive balladry. The Goodnight Moon is their latest effort, and it has won them accolades from hipsters and critics alike.

The growing popularity of the album has also made the band a sought-after live attraction. Rookie of the Year have shared bills with Cute Is What We Aim For, The Rocket Summer, This Day & Age, and many other like-minded pop-rock bands; this June, the North Carolina quintet opened for Gym Class Heroes, and wowed their sold-out crowd. Dunson and ROTY have earned a reputation for generous, dynamic concert performances, and they've kept to the road for the better part of 2007. This autumn, they're touring America with Secondhand Serenade and Permanent ME, and surely won't slow down during what promises to be a hectic 2008.

"Tell me the secrets of the endless road", writes Ryan Bingham on "Ghost of Travelin' Jones" - and by the end of the song, you'll swear he knows them. He squats on a highway divider on the cover of Mescalito, and hangs down his old straw cowboy hat; time and again, he returns to stories of the asphalt ribbon. His backing band is called The Road, too, and when you open his CD booklet, there they are in the middle of it, giving the camera their best tough-hombre look. His travels take him to the dry hills of New Mexico and roadside bars and honky-tonks in the Llano Estacado; he rides a rig in El Paso, cruises through the West Texas plains, and dreams of free and easy living in South Louisiana. When he sings of breaking rocks "under the god-damned sun", his cracked voice communicates some hard experience. His songs are wind-weathered and starkly beautiful, and his guitar-playing is tough, straightforward, and eloquent. Bingham is a desert poet, and a country-rock visionary, and he's the latest contributor to the Lost Highway catalog of startling, fresh American music.

The pull of wide-open spaces (and wide-open sounds) is apparent in the radiant clip for "Southside Of Heaven", the lead single from Mescalito. The iconography that Bingham animates so effectively on the album is here: bone-dry landscape, old automobiles and roadside houses, honky-tonks, distant mountains, and endless and dusty highways. The Texas songwriter sings of a wind that "blows like a desert snow", and the video makes that desolation palpable with washed-out colors, broad and empty vistas, and slow cross-fades. The entire clip looks a bit like a classic Western, and not one with a conventionally happy ending, either. Guitar in hand, Bingham whispers of the hard-earned place that gave birth to his soul - and as the camera pans back, we recognize that we're looking right at it...