Los Angeles-based artist Leslie Stevens started her music career in a punk band before hooking up with her current group, The Badgers. For Stevens, the transition to country wasn’t difficult. Punk celebrates storytelling, three-chord song structure and lyrics delivered at face value. “That’s true of roots music, too,” she says. Leslie Stevens and The Badgers had the good fortune of teaming up with producer David Bianco (Tom Petty, Bob Dylan) to record their full-length debut, Roomful of Smoke, which originally came out in 2009. The band recently signed to Thirty Tigers and are re-releasing the record today. The album’s title, Roomful of Smoke, refers to fallout from the raging forest fires that consumed parts of North Hollywood in 2008—not just the physical ash falling from the sky “like moths,” but more specifically how one thing morphs into another without warning. As Stevens puts it, “When you set out to make something you have to leave some of it up to fate.”

Auditory Viewing || Leslie & The Badgers perform Ballpark Lights from ISHOTHIM on Vimeo.

Many people first learned about Ray LaMontagne through his sweet little ode to one-half of Detroit’s mighty rock duo, The White Stripes. In 2008, he hit the airwaves confessing his crush on Meg White and came across not as a creepy stalker but as a perfect gentleman who thinks Meg’s pretty swell. He just wants to take a walk with her, hold her hand—maybe watch the sun go down. The song’s light and airy tone is complemented by LaMontagne’s rich, husky voice which sounds more serious than the lyrical content suggests. On his new album, God Willin’ and The Creek Don’t Rise, LaMontagne maintains his soulful outlook with an introspective work recorded live over a swift-paced five days in a barn outside his Massachusetts home. Unlike his previous release, Gossip in the Grain, the new LP is self-produced and very much a collaborative effort drawing on the talents of his longtime backing band, The Pariah Dogs. It might be a team project, but LaMontagne still stands out—whether the spotlight-shy folk artist likes it or not.

What’s the point of multiple pseudonyms? For an underground artist like Matthew Dear, adopting numerous names helps provide some distance between various musical endeavors.  As a techno producer and musician, he’s best known for his work as Jabberjaw whose output is “quirky” and “phosphorescent.” He also releases material under the names Audion and False, whose tracks are floor-pleasing and twisted, respectively. As Matthew Dear, the name printed on his birth certificate, he procures a haunting brand of avant-garde pop that on his latest and fourth release under the Dear handle at times draws heavily on his quirky techno sensibilities. Released on his own label Ghostly International, Black City is an eclectic, OK, somewhat of a mixed bag of tricks with nary a dud in the bunch. In the mood for a 9-and-a-half minute space-out jam? “Little People” has your number. Prefer something more low-key? Maybe something along the lines of a TV on the Radio meets Tricky remix? Check out “Soil to Seed” and “Monkey.” And, in keeping with his cutting edge work, downloads of Dear’s new album come with a Black City Totem, a sleek sculpture designed to approximate the tangible pleasures of vinyl or even CDs that Mp3 technology negates.

New Music Tuesday runs each week at 8:35 a.m., 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Be sure to tune in next week for more fresh picks. And don’t forget to salute your local independent record stores!