*** Dressy Bessy

PINK HEARTS YELLOW MOONS

(Kindercore)

For those not up on their '70s toy collectibles: Dressy Bessy was a doll designed to help kids learn dexterity skills by teaching them buttoning, lacing, and the like. On this Denver quartet's full-length debut, Dressy Bessy the band demonstrate a few dexterity skills of their own, though their brand of fluffy twee pop tends to raid the attic of '60s nostalgia: cheery, multi-tracked girl-group harmonies (courtesy of singer-guitarist Tammy Ealom), loopy melodies, and an abiding affection for pre-breakdown Brian Wilson. What's weird, though, is how '90s this stuff is beginning to sound, what with the proliferation of all those bright-eyed, bushy-tailed indie boys and girls like the Minders and Apples in Stereo -- the latter of whom share lead guitarist John Hill with Dressy Bessy. (Head Apple Robert Schneider also helped engineer and mix Pink Hearts.) Fortunately, amid all the la-la-las, the guitars of Hill and Ealom are just Fuzzy enough to add some oomph to the proceedings, and that keeps it all from getting too cute. Which is a good thing, because if this stuff got any cuter, it'd be a puppy.

-- Jonathan Perry