This Los Angeles-based quartet are the roots-rock rookies of the year thanks to their note-perfect take on the warm, folksy Laurel Canyon sound. Cuts like "Love Is All I Am" feature lush four-part harmonies while strummy jams like "Bedside Manner" sound like Harvest-era Neil Young. In fact, Dawes cut the record with Jonathan Wilson, who hosts jam sessions at his L.A. home with Conor Oberst, Benmont Tench and the Black Crowes' Chris Robinson. "We'd go to those sessions quite a bit and sing and play all night," says frontman Taylor Goldsmith.

Like many artists before him, Cory Chisel first connected with the power of song – and the spellbinding possibilities of live performance – through the music he heard in church. The gospel’s rich vernacular of loss and redemption also informed his innate poetic sense and lyrical range. “For most of my life,” he says, “my dad was a Baptist minister, so I learned a lot about being a showman, and I learned a lot about music. Many of the hymns from church still are the most beautiful songs I know. I'm thankful for growing up where stories and the pursuit of happiness were on everybody's mind. I think I’m still trying to achieve the same euphoria I felt at a very young age, when I would be completely taken over by these rhythms and these sounds and these stories.”

For the last 15 years, LA-based drummer Jason Boesel has been planted firmly behind the kit, keeping time for the likes of Rilo Kiley, Bright Eyes, The Elected, and more recently, Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band. Boesel was inspired to pick up the guitar and write his own record after his friends raved about the first song he ever wrote: ‘Hustler’s Son.’ Now, a few studio sessions later, Jason Boesel announces his solo debut for Team Love Records: ‘Hustler’s Son,’ out January 12, 2010.

Boesel headed into the studio in March of 2009 with a core group of collaborators: Mystic Valley Band member Nik Freitas, Blake Mills (Band of Horses), and producer Jonathan Wilson (Elvis Costello 'Momofuku' and Jenny Lewis 'Acid Tongue'). He eventually sought out the additional talents of Benmont Tench (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), Orenda Fink (O + S, Azure Ray), David Rawlings (Gillian Welch, Old Crow Medicine Show), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), and fellow Rilo Kiley member Blake Sennett.