Not just a quartet, but a quartet of individual singers and songwriters who have already proven themselves--to much acclaim--on the live circuit, the Rescues are very good indeed.

The Los Angeles-based combo--whose recent album Let Loose The Horses is packed with gorgeous harmonies and top-flight songwriting--are the very personification of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. Comprised of Kyler England, Adrianne Gonzalez, Rob Giles and Gabriel Mann, the quartet joined forces in LA, where as solo artists they occasionally shared the stage several times and, following a suggestion, put their four heads together and see what they could come up with.

Following significant success in the TV soundtrack world--their music was heard on such shows like Private Practice, One Tree Hill and Grey's Anatomy--Let Loose The Horses fairly well now puts it all together: A terrific album that takes four distinct musicians, weaves them in and out and blends them together, and presents a

Cassidy Haley is a modern-day Renaissance man of sorts, a multi-faceted artist who's done everything from stiltwalking in avant garde circus acts to designing celebrities' leather fashions for his company Skin.Graft, from auditioning with a Death Cab For Cutie song on "American Idol" to recording original music and directing his own outlandish music videos.

Cassidy first came to many music fans' attention last year when his friend (and frequent Skin.Graft customer) Adam Lambert tweeted about his music--thus causing his self-issued EP, Little Boys & Dinosaurs, to catapult to number 3 on iTunes' electronic albums chart. And now, with the release of his first full-length album, The Fool--which veers away from the earlier dark techno vibe that Cassidy once described as sounding like "a drugged-out Justin Timberlake lost in the backstreets of Berlin on acid after being kidnapped by a pack of raving mad drag queens," and dabbles in some acoustic balladry as well--Cassidy is set to add "pop

Christopher Walken once immortally cried out for "more cowbell!" in a Blue Oyster Cult-themed Saturday Night Live skit, and Free Energy--aka Philadelphia's modern-day, indie-rock answer to the Sweathogs--have heeded the call on Stuck On Nothing, a bitchen, cowbell-laden slab of unabashedly Rick Springfieldian powerpop. The album, quite charmingly if not conveniently, is available on cassette, and features rainbow-bedecked cover art that '70s kidz certainly would've recreated in scented Papermate ink on the denim covers of their Trapper Keepers back in the day.

It's actually difficult to discern if Free Energy are being ironically retro on peppily Thin Lizzyish, AM-radio tunes like "Dream City," "Bad Stuff," "Young Hearts," "Bang Pop," and "C'mon Let's Dance"; but it sure is easy to imagine this gang of Chachi-wannabe longhairs finishing recording Stuck On Nothing in some all-analog, pinball-machine-equipped, That '70s Show-esque basement studio, then hopping into their metal-flaked,

The latest crop of NME-endorsedBritish buzz bands have created a racket with electric guitars and technokeyboards, but Mumford & Sons have generated just as loud a buzz with such lo-fi instrumentsas mandolin, accordion, banjo, dobro, double-bass...and hardly any drums.

Theinstrument-swapping London folk-rockers actually have more in common withlegendary Americana acts like Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Byrds, oreven with modern-day U.S. buzz band the Fleet Foxes, than with other newbie British acts...although the Sons' rustic, harmony-ladensound is most definitely their own. And it is a sound that may easily translate andconnect with listeners in America,thus giving M&S a better shot at Stateside success than most U.K.baby bands.

With their sweet, pastoral sound and English-gentlemen image, one might expect Mumford& Sons to be all serious and soft-spoken in their interviews. But oh, no. WhenYahoo! Music sat down with bandmates and longtime school chums Marcus Mumford, Winston