Singer/songwriter/guitarist Jason Snell approaches music and art with an open, collaborative spirit. Sometimes, it’s to his own creative detriment.   

Frontdude Grayson Sanders is a classically trained musician and composer with a soft spot for “Stravinsky, Ravel, Bartok, Ligeti and Autechre,” influences that clearly color the band’s 2011 full-length debut, Laminate Pet Animal.   

Sometimes it only takes a well-placed reference to bump an artist up to the next level. French-born guitarist Stephane Wrembel was already enjoying an acclaimed career when director Woody Allen tapped him to score the theme of his 2011 Academy Award-winning film Midnight in Paris, which he performed live to the millions who tuned into the ceremony’s telecast.   

Robert Earl Keen has always straddled the line between Americana and Country Blues music. But, more than anything else, he is a singer/songwriter who has the ability to weave sonic tales that are vivid, interesting and fun.  

The Punknecks’ bio doesn’t mince words. Calling themselves “Punky Tonkers,” Jason Punkneck is from Nashville while Polly Punkneck is from Kansas. The duo, along with their drummer Nick Punkneck, are apparently known for “a rowdy show of drinking, drugging, Jesus, smokin’ pot and living between heaven and hell.”   

At age 14, Sean Scolnick started writing his first songs, penning Nirvana-inspired missives about authority, school and “stuff that a lot of 14-year-old kids probably write about.” Now in his early 30s, Scolnick doesn't employ those subjects as inspiration anymore. Listening to his story-heavy goulash of Folk and AltCountry reveals nary any traces of Cobain and Co. at all.   

Apparently, Chris Denney has only been writing songs for the past four years, but he’s clearly channeling a lifetime of pent up creative energy in the tunes he’s unleashing with his Nashville quintet, Denney & the Jets.  

Fever Fever is a Columbus four-piece (not to be confused with the U.K. Art Punk band with the same moniker) whose “Beautiful Dream” crystallizes the joy and confusion of fresh love in a tight, understated package.   

Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Swear and Shake coalesced just a couple of years ago, but from the sound of its debut full-length Maple Ridge, you’d swear (and shake) that this electric Folk marvel has been percolating over the course of a decade or more with a half dozen previous releases under their belts.   

 In the case of the effervescent seven-piece, The Duke of Uke & His Novelty Orchestra, their inclusion of “bacon” as an inspiration on their Facebook page — alongside the more conventional choices of Motown, Funk, Ragtime, Jazz, Rock and “Popssical” — is telling for multiple reasons.