When the band Cults plays a Daytrotter.com show at The Speakeasy on Sunday, guitarist/songwriter Brian Oblivion promises plenty of fresh material. "Well, obviously," he said in a phone interview last week. "That's kind of the running gag of the tour. 'This is a new song. We wrote it a month ago.' 'This is an old song. We wrote it four months ago.'"

To put it mildly, things have moved quickly for the duo of Oblivion and Madeline Follin -- which adds four members for live performance. As Oblivion said, "We've had to kind of put everything you do normally in a band on fast forward." After unexpectedly finding a national audience earlier this year, Cults is now touring with Maps & Atlases (through mid-August), and the pair is working on songs for a full-length that it hopes to release around the end of the year. The two core members are taking a year off from school to see where music takes them.

When Sean Ryan recorded his solo debut, Lonesome Driver Music, two years ago, his group the Dawn was around, but "I just wasn't ready to take the band I had into the studio," he said.

So he employed some noted local pros -- including drummer Marty Reyhons and guitarist Kerry Tucker, both from Einstein's Sister, and pedal-steel player Tom Pickett Jr. -- in the service of his songs, and the result was an excellent snapshot of a promising young writer and performer in good hands.

The Dawn has now finished its debut, and Ryan has clearly assembled a strong crew in the intervening period. Reyhons and Tucker still make contributions, but the self-titled record is anchored by a proper band: singer/songwriter/guitarist Ryan, Pickett, Jordan VanOpdorp on keyboards, Garrin Jost on bass, and Dave Soliz on drums. The band is an essential element, as Ryan's songs universally benefit from rigorous, full arrangements played with flair.

Mat Kearney's July 14 show at the Redstone Room will feature the singer/songwriter and his guitar. That's a departure for somebody with his adult-contemporary credentials: two major-label albums, music appearing in roughly 20 television shows, four Billboard top-20 Hot Adult hits, and tours with John Mayer, Sheryl Crow, Jason Mraz, and Train, among others.

"I love playing with a band and production, and I would love to be in arenas ... flying through the crowd with Garth Brooks wings on or something," he said in a recent phone interview. But "after all the lights and band and buses, it was time for me to get back in the van with some friends and see where the wind blew us, remove a lot of the pressure and a lot of the schedule and just be able to roll into town and play the songs we wanted and head on to the next town. ... I can stop for as long as I want, I can talk for as long as I want, I can play whatever I want. There's just a lot more freedom for me to connect with people."

The California-based band Dawes has parlayed its debut album, last fall's North Hills, into slots at this year's Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza festivals, and if you've heard the sensitive and often lovely record, you know that's probably not an easy transition.

The group's warm, nakedly emotional songs recall the 1960s and '70s -- aggressively, one could say, if aggression weren't so antithetical to them; they seem built for intimate venues. AbsolutePunk.net wrote that the album is "a collection of 11 near-flawless roots-rock offerings that drip with such a defined sense of soul, grit, and harmony [that] it feels nearly criminal to label this album contemporary." Rolling Stone named the album's "That Western Skyline" one of the 25 best songs of 2009.

Guitarist, lead vocalist, and songwriter Taylor Goldsmith is only in his mid-20s, but North Hills is full of musical maturity, patience, and confidence -- a willingness to let the work overshadow the performers.