Another New Music Monday, and another new female-led band, this time the Minnesota-based trio Now, Now. Their latest album, entitled Threads, came out in March 2012, and is their second full-length album (they also have a few EPs). I’ve only heard Threads so far, but they have a good sound and there’s a lot of promise to their sound for bigger and better things to come. Not dissimilarly from last week’s band, Friends, Now, Now’s lead singer Cacie Dalager has a pretty cool voice and is a large part of what helps to set them apart. She’s sort of a cross between Cat Power’s Chan Marshall and the former lead singer of the Sundays, Harriet Wheeler. Their music is mostly quite interesting, although on a couple of songs they tread slightly near generic modern rock territory. That’s not an issue on most of the songs, though, including the song that most captured my attention, the nicely punctuated “Oh. Hi.” Dalager’s singing is clearly the centerpiece here, while the song’s instrumentation is at times reminiscent of Death Cab for Cutie, maybe not entirely surprising because they’re recording on the label of Chris Walla of Death Cab. I particularly like the sparser sections, and I’m always a sucker for well-utilized handclaps.

As long as they stay on this side of the awesome/generic divide, Now, Now ought to be as worth paying attention to later, later as they are now. Now.