"Atlantic City"

by the Hold Steady
(War Child Music)

The Brooklyn quintet finally just step up and do it—not simply covering their most obvious inspiration, Bruce Springsteen, at his behest for charity (it's on the War Child: Heroes album), but doing it with an arrangement that sounds precisely like the E Street Band in their mid-'70s prime. Not a facsimile thereof or a fond borrowing: a damn-near carbon copy, although Craig Finn will never sing as pretty as even the gnarled old Boss. If anything is surprising about this, it's that Springsteen himself hasn't officially released a version like this before—the one on Live in New York City, with the E Street Band, is more like an amplified version of the hissy demo of the song that first saw light on Nebraska (1982), while the Sessions Band version on Live in Dublin resembles a hard-charging jig. This, then, is something of a fan's dream—the fan in question, of course, being Craig Finn.

"I Was Young When I Left Home"

by Antony and Bryce Dessner
(4AD)

Another charity comp, Dark Was the Night (the Red Hot Organization's KEXP-indie benefit) features this inspired cover of a traditional prodigal-son folk song (Bob Dylan's version, recorded in 1961, is on the No Direction Home soundtrack). Antony is a graceful enough singer working under his own name, but hearing him over Bryce Dessner's delicately fingerpicked guitar here is a revelation: Not only is thehint of unresolved pain underscoring every-thing he sings matched perfectly with the song's subject, the arrangement makes it all the easier to hear how much Odetta is in his voice.

"Iamundernodisguise"

by School of Seven Bells
(Ghostly International)

"So Bored"

by Wavves
(Young Turks)

Weirdly, "The Lake," a 2004 Antony and the Johnsons single, entered the UK Independent Label Singles chart on February 22 at number 7. Two other top-10 entries from that week are a little more timely. The Brooklyn dream-pop trio School of Seven Bells (number 3) wear for me over the course of their debut full-length, Alpinisms, but on its own, the album's lead track is startlingly calm, like some kind of weird Scandinavian soul music from the early '70s—rhythms placid, but with an oddly urgent emotional pull from the way the voices sing the run-on title phrase. Similarly, Wavves (number 6) put their hookiest foot forward, and if that hook happens to be buried in gurgling static, even better: Isn't making you work for it a little half the point of indie rock? recommended