Postmarks/Brookville

Although the pop sounds crafted by the Postmarks and Brookville are decidedly different, they still complement each other nicely. Over the course of three albums (including this year's Memoirs at the End of the World), the former has refined its Phil Spector-influenced chamber-pop. Buoyed by Tim Yehezkely's lovely vocal shimmers, romantic string swoons and angelic trumpet blasts, its music is at times '60s girl group and at others the soundtrack to an exotic Cold-War-era spy movie. The music of Brookville – a band fronted by Ivy's Andy Chase — is just as packed with melancholy and romanticism. However, songs such as "Great Mistake" and "Tell Her You Love Her" draw more from early-'90s Britpop and tightly performed '80s session-pop; they rely on echo-laden guitar jangles and the whimsy of spot-on harmonies.