Sean Hayes

Long a fixture of the new San Francisco folk scene, Sean Hayes seems ambivalent about gaining attention outside his adopted city. His creative ambition seems equally modest, but the giddy joy the Carolina native evokes with his minimal acoustic instrumentation and sleepy vocal delivery is way more than the sum of its parts. His third album swells with loose, lighthearted personality and nigh-cynical wit, with Hayes crooning and cursing, his friends adding occasional trumpet, banjo or piano. Nobody this sharp and left-field should be compared to Jack Johnson, but sometimes even hipsters need to kick back.