.Your Daily Lick: Leopold and His Fiction

The bluesy, raucous rock ‘n’ roll of bands from the MC5 to the White Stripes (frontman Daniel James hails from Detroit, after all) trades punches with subtler, more transcendent alt-country that Ryan Adams could love. Above it all, a pervasive indie-rock spirit — not of irony, but self-aware detachment — ends up modernizing the mix for the better.