The Coffee Sergeants

This rootsy psychedelic band recalls the shimmering sounds of the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. The Coffee Sergeants' pastoral music has a real hint of lovely eccentricity, like an hallucinatory trip to an enchanted forest -- and that's not as hokey as it seems. With instrumentation that can include what sounds like a church organ, woodwinds, slide guitar, and the singer's warm and welcoming vocals -- think a friendlier, more approachable Michael Stipe -- it's hard not to be swayed by their musical vision. For all their whimsy, the songs have a quality that makes them immediately recognizable, like the pure Jangle Pop of "I Smile," a countrified story about a perplexing young woman who is, "An open book for me to find/A shadow cast across my mind."