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."

A very rockin' band from Austin, Texas! In their own words: The Incredible Adam Tyner on the drums Ladies and Gentlemen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dig the Guitar Crimes! Mr. Randy Plants Thomas!!!!!! Ladies and Gentlemen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On Bass Guitar.... Lookout Ladies! ...It's Loaded.... It's time to eat Crow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ladies and gentlemen, let the stadium know, it's time for the show, we bring you the FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHO WANTS TO F$%# THE BAND!!!! C'MON!!!!!!

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.

"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...

You know about the Top 40 hits, the high-profile entertainment news stories, the MTV reality program, the legion of adoring fans, the certified-gold discs, and the worldwide fame. But before Ryan Cabrera was a commercially successful pop idol, he was a well-respected young indie artist making music in Dallas. His first band was a popular attraction on the Texas club circuit, and Elm Street, his debut album, was funded out of his own pocket. It's arguable that the singer-songwriter has always been more comfortable under the stagelights than he has been at the television studios and movie sets. Even when the irresistible "On The Way Down", "Forty Kinds Of Sadness" and "True" were riding high on the Billboard charts, many sharp pop culture observers were able to discern that Cabrera was much more than just a good-looking face and a winsome voice. When John Rzeznik was brought in to co-produce the bestselling Take It All Away, it was more than just a fortuitous arrangement - Cabrera has always aimed to create the sort of timeless, emotionally-resonant pop music that the Goo Goo Dolls have always made.

Now, on his fourth full-length - and his principled return to independently-released music - Ryan Cabrera has realized that vision. The Moon Under Water is a pop album, but it's a multifaceted one: elements of classic rock, dance-rock and R&B, adult contemporary, confessional singer-songwriter music and traditional folk have all been tucked into these songs. Cabrera is singing better than ever, too, and given the freedom to follow his impulses, his performances here are generous, vital, and crackling with live energy. "Say", the lead single, is, among other things, a declaration of the artist's independence: its direct, warm, and immediate sound will be familiar to Cabrera's many fans, but he's imbued the track with a newfound rawness that's positively electrifying. Here's a song of escape and redefinition, and an accusation hurled at those who resist change. When Cabrera sings about catching a late train and finding a new beautiful town, it's a celebration of his fruitful decision to go his own way. "Don't think", he says, as he catches himself worrying about the future, "just play".

Ryan Cabrera's performance skills have never been in question - few pop singers of any age are as videogenic as he is. (Those accustomed to his prior reality-TV "look" may be taken aback by his long curls, but he's never seemed as comfortable in his own skin as he does in the "Say" clip.) Cabrera is one of those special artists who commands the attention of the camera, and dominates every frame he graces. That said, in the "Say" video, he gives plenty of screen time to his crack backing group. He leads the band through a spirited set in a hip New York City bar, and the enthusiastic audience reception - folks are, by the end of the clip, jumping up and down as they might at a punk show - feels genuine. But following your own muse comes at a cost, and Cabrera must deal with the usual indie hazards: hipster arrogance, scenesters, bouncers disapproving of his guerrilla marketing attempts. The message here is clear: Ryan Cabrera is back to the underground and the lifestyle - and sound - that suits him best.

Any lingering doubts about whether Ryan Cabrera is truly a rocker can be put to rest now. "Enemies," the new single from the accomplished The Moon Under Water that Metro Mix notes "...is big and stadium ready," is a bracing listen: this is heartfelt, powerful and passionately-performed modern rock, closer to All-American Rejects or Paramore than anything scaling the soft side of the pop charts. What's more, like every move Cabrera makes these days, it's resolutely independent, self-released and self-made. The singer tells his story of romantic betrayal and cheating hearts - lovers who secretly "want to get caught" - with the authority of lived experience. Everything here has the ring of truth.

And that's exactly the sort of album The Moon Under Water is: confessional, honest, straightforward and crammed with sharply-observed songs about the milieu the singer has inhabited for the past few years. Some have called it an album of L.A. stories, and that it could be - but it could also be about your town, or my town or any town that's touched by the entertainment industry and the culture of vanity it engenders. His hometown daily paper, The Dallas Morning News, notes how it is "an album that is all his own, alterna-gritty and real," and the Cleveland Free Times remarks, "His debut album made him a pop star, but The Moon Under Water could make Cabrera a respected musician." Metro Mix continues "... it must be noted that the guy has a naturally clear voice, less pitch-corrected and polished than most modern-day pop-rockers," while Philly.com declares "there are few recent pop artists who connect with an audience the way singer/songwriter Ryan Cabrera does." Cabrera certainly hasn't turned his back on entertainment: his new songs are tuneful, harmonically rich, beautifully-produced and a hell of a lot of fun. They're all worthy successors to the chart-toppers he had at the beginning of this decade. But there's no disguising the dark undercurrents in his recent writing and we're guessing that Cabrera himself has no intention of concealing the turmoil that animates his latest release.

"Say," the first single from The Moon Under Water, was upbeat - a raucous party-track, all shouts and stinging six-string. It was wildly, unapologetically romantic, and its video reflected that spirit. "Enemies" is the flip-side of that: it's a late-night number born of interpersonal confusion and serious relationship trouble. It's also got a bracing verse and a soaring chorus, and Ryan Cabrera discharges his performance like his life is on the line - and perhaps, in a way, it is. Listen without prejudice and you're bound to come to the same conclusion we did - this is one of the finest radio-rock anthems of summer '08.

That desperation is all over Cabrera's face in the emotionally forthright clip for "Enemies." The singer-songwriter performs in a cage of light: he and his band are framed by the windows of skyscrapers at night. We know we're in a dark cityscape - and just like Los Angeles, this artificial metropolis feels expansive yet oddly claustrophobia-inducing. As the Cabrera band tears through "Enemies," footage of beautiful people in action are projected onto the screen - we see them kissing, fighting, losing track of each other and drifting around the urban ether. Cabrera's girl comes home to find him in bed with another woman. In the ugly aftermath it's hard to tell whether he's fighting with his girlfriend, his mistress or himself. We watch her expression change from one of anger to one of disgust to one of defeat - like everybody else, she's overwhelmed by the confusion of the streets, the roar of the hot lights and the dizziness of speed.