Kevin Bronson on March 31st, 2009

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Mark this one down: The sophomore album by Echo Park ensemble the Faraway Places is due May 12. “Out of the Rain, the Thunder & the Lightning” is sneaky-catchy, with nods to ’70s power pop, soul and a few decades of pop left-fielders who make music that is somehow familiar but not too obvious. The teaser single from principal songwriters Chris Colthart and Donna Coppola is a straight-ahead, synth-added West Coast pop ditty.

||| Download: “The Sun Goes West”

||| Live: The band plays May 2 at Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown and May 11 at the Echo.

In the almost four years since they packed up the van(s) and departed Portland, the Parson Red Heads have carved out a minor legend in L.A. circles with their feelin’-fine retro-pop and feelin’-communal stage shows featuring, seemingly, two football teams’ worth of performers. Frontman Evan Way keeps the psych-folk coming; the band has a new three-song release, “Orangufang,” out April 28 (on Jax Art Records). It was recorded in Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards – could the first song on the release be a producer homage? You decide.

||| Download: “Raymond”

||| Live: The Redheads open for Robert Francis on Thursday at the Troubadour.