Rock Music Report. The place for Rock and roll news.

Who: Heavy Swedish pop outfit fronted by manic 34-year-old singer Josephine Olausson, a fierce frontlady who has a fan in Karen O. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer likes the band so much it inspired her song “All is Love” on the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack.

Sounds Like: The band’s insanely catchy new disc Two Thousand and Ten Injuries combines the sound of early Nineties grrrl-punk acts bands like Huggy Bear and Bikini Kill with warm Sixties pop harmonies. “Kungen” borrows from the Turtles “Happy Together,” but drowns it in rich psychedelia. “Bigger Bolder” is buzzing garage-rock, boasting fuzzed out bass and Olausson’s Björk-like vocals. “I usually just tell people we play rock music, because it gets too complicated,” Olausson tells Rolling Stone.

Vital Stats:

• The band’s name derives from a late-night TV session. Olausson was flipping channels at home in the working-class city of Gothenburg when she saw classic Sixties spy program A Man From U.N.C.L.E. In the episode, she remembers secret agents infiltrated a Manson-like hippie sect when she spotted her future band’s name on the creepy entrance gate to the compound. “It looked perfect,” she says, but the band didn’t go for it at first — and Olausson seems to regret her choice. “People say ‘You’re in a Beatles cover band?’ ” she says. “I realize now it’s kind of a retarded name,” she says. “I think you only feel that way once a week.”

• The band has some tangled romantic relationships. Olausson used to date drummer Markus Görsch, but after they split she married to San Francisco indie artist Wyatt Cusick in 2006. Cusick co-produced their new disc, but Olausson swears things weren’t awkward with her former flame. “I think to outsiders it’s weird,” she says. “We never had a major falling out or anything. If anything, we’re more brutally honest with each other and criticize each other.”

• The band is full of klutzes, which inspired the album title Two Thousand and Ten Injuries. Olausson smashed her nose when she fell down a narrow staircase a year and a half ago in Switzerland, and she helped break Görsch’s nose while the two were playing their one and only game of catch. Bassist Johan Lindwall is just always sick. “It seems like things go wrong a lot. We’re a very fragile band.”

Get It Now: Watch the band’s clip for “Kungen” up top, and grab a free download of “Bigger, Bolder.”

Who: A Los Angeles-based art-folk quintet who broke out big at last year’s South by Southwest and are poised to make an even bigger splash when they rock a marathon nine gigs in three days this week at the fest. After SXSW, the group heads out on their first major headlining tour, with stops at Coachella in April. “We were just on our first headlining tour in Europe and we were nervous that no one would come out to see us,” says bassist Andy Hamm. “But there were a lot of people at all the shows and they were totally great.”

Sound: Sprawling, gorgeous indie pop that mixes Fleet Foxes’ penchant for multi-part harmonies with jittery, post-punk guitars and grooves. “Wide Eyes” is a reverb-dunked anthem that almost sounds like Simon and Garfunkel fronting a Britpop band. And the bouncy, sprawling rocker “Airplanes” is singer Kelcey Ayer’s tribute to his grandfather, a former airplane pilot who passed away before Ayer was born. “Everyone thinks that track is about some girl that Kelcey misses a lot but it’s definitely not the case,” says Hamm. “It’s about an old man.”

Vital Stats:

• Local Natives’ debut is titled Gorilla Manor after the house where all the bandmates lived and recorded in L.A. — imagine an indie-rock version of Entourage. “We wanted to pay homage to living together and writing together every day,” says Hamm. “But then the other side is that it’s still five dudes living together, having house parties or getting into arguments about who has to take the trash out.” So which Local Native is the sloppiest? “[Singer-guitarist] Taylor [Rice] is the dirtiest,” says Hamm. “Most of the time we’re like, ‘Taylor, you didn’t clean up your shit again!’ ”

• After doing a performance for Daytrotter, which is based in Rock Island, Illinois, Local Natives have made made fans out of folks in the heartland. While visiting rural Illinois, the band performed a series of shows in farmers’ barns, which they dubbed “barnstormings.” Turns out, they’re the perfect place to put on an indie-rock gig. “We played this one eight-sided barn that was all reverb-y — it was such a great experience,” says Hamm. “And all these folks came out from I don’t know where — but they reacted well I thought.”

•On Gorilla Manor, Local Natives offer up a killer version of the Talking Heads’ classic “Warning Sign,” expanding David Byrne’s jagged art-rock into a breathtaking anthem worthy of a church choir. “We were trying to take it to a new level,” says Hamm. “We wanted it to be something that had a Local Natives style to it, but we still wanted to be respectful to the Talking Heads.”

Get It Now: Watch the band’s video for “Airplanes” at the top of the post.

Who: Pastoral rockers from Denton, Texas, who first broke through with their 2006 track “Roscoe,” on which the group’s classic-rock-loving frontman Tim Smith sang about life in the 1800s. “I don’t do too well in the present,” he says. “Not that old times were better, but I’m more romantic about the past.”

Sounds Like: The band’s latest disc, The Courage of Others, has a sound influenced by 1960s British acts like Fairport Convention and Pentangle, with Jethro Tull-style flutes and references to maidens and merchant ships.

Vital Stats:

• Smith was a John Coltrane devotee until he reluctantly picked up Radiohead’s OK Computer while at the North Texas College of Music. “I didn’t want to listen to it, because of the name,” he says. “I thought, ‘What’s this, some kind of radio-pop music?’ ”

• Before Midlake embraced chiming guitars and meticulous harmonies, the group was a jazz-funk act. Smith ditched his sax when he joined up with the Texas group, which featured current bandmembers Eric Pulido and Eric Nichelson (guitar), McKenzie Smith (drums) and Paul Alexander (bass).

• Like fellow bearded strummers Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, Midlake recall CSNY and Fleetwood Mac. “You want your music to be ask great as those acts,” says Smith, “But I shouldn’t compare my work with everything that’s ever been done. I mean, you can only do so much before you die.”

Get It Now: Watch the band’s trailer for The Courage of Others up top.

Who: The Shins’ singer-guitarist James Mercer and producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Burton), who’ve taken time off from their usual gigs to team for a new self-titled disc of left-field psych-pop. (Read the RS review here.)

Sounds Like: Spooky psychedelia with a British Invasion flavor. Burton outfits Mercer’s beautiful melodies and with analog-synth swooshes, slo-mo kick drums and horn breaks. The mellow punch of “Vaporize” features zippy organ and rolling snare, and Mercer goes for a T-Pained falsetto on the catchy, electro-kicky “The Ghost Inside.”

Vital Stats:

• Recording sessions for Broken Bells resembled a budding bromance. Mercer moved into Burton’s L.A. bachelor pad, and they’d go to the movies, listen to records (Love, the Zombies), drink at dive bars and talk about relationships and life. “We definitely had separate rooms,” Burton tells RS.

• One of the main reasons the two musicians linked up was a search for fun. Mercer says he wondered, ” ‘Do I still have the curiosity and enthusiasm’ ” to be the sole songwriter and frontman for the Shins. Burton felt less like a collaborator than a hired gun on projects with Gorillaz and Beck. With Broken Bells, “I was free to express any idea I had,” the producer says.

• Both Mercer and Burton say they’re focusing on Broken Bells right now, but the status of their day jobs seems a little up in the air. “There’s been no discussion” of another Gnarls Barkley LP, Burton says, and Mercer notes, “I’ll probably, you know, find the time at some point” to make another Shins record.

Who: Nigerian-German artist whose raspy voice, deft rapping and soulful grooves helped her land a Euro club hit with “Heartbeat” last year. Her skills have made fans of Lenny Kravitz and the Roots, who backed her at a New York show.

Sounds Like: Nneka’s U.S. debut Concrete Jungle pits hip-hop beats and Afro-funk grooves against lyrics about racism, colonial powers and slavery. On the roots-reggae cut “Africans” she sings “We use the same hatreds to oppress our own brothers.” “Heartbeat” is a pulsing tribal-funk anthem that doubles as a plea for the world not to ignore Africa’s problems.

Vital Stats:

• Nneka, 29, grew up listening to her dad’s Fela Kuti records in Warri, Nigeria, where “there was a lot of corruption and poverty.” As a result, she’s always been drawn to social-conscience music rather than love songs. “I like songs with a message,” she says. “I’m conscious about making change in this world.”

• At 19, she moved to Hamburg, Germany, to study anthropology and started rapping at open-mike nights. “I wasn’t courageous enough to sing,” she said. “But the German mentality was different than what I was used to, and I felt isolated. Singing became my therapy.”

• This summer Nneka will hit the road with the revamped Lilith Fair alongside artists like Mary J. Blige, Sheryl Crow and Tegan and Sara. “I’m bringing the African vibe, man,” she says.

Get It Now: Check out Nneka’s video for “Heartbeat” up top and more from Concrete Jungle on her MySpace.