To get a sense of the challenge, charm, and skill of the Baseball Project super-group - playing RIBCO on June 9 - start with Scott McCaughey's "Buckner's Bolero," a litany of all that conspired to make Bill Buckner one of the sport's great scapegoats.

"If Bobby Ojeda hadn't raged at Sullivan and Yawkey / And hadn't been traded to the Mets for Calvin Schiraldi," it begins. "If Oil Can Boyd hadn't been such a nutcase / And Jim Rice had twice taken an easy extra base."

Here it's evident that McCaughey knows the game in general, knows Game Six of the 1986 World Series in particular, and is fearless in attempting rhythms and rhymes with proper names and baseball lingo in song. Of Red Sox Manager John McNamara, he sings: "If he'd hit Baylor for Buckner and yanked the first baseman / For his by-the-book late-inning defensive replacement / That ball would've been snagged if it'd ever been hit / And Mookie's last name would now be ''86.'"

But that amounts to little more than clever wordplay. Where McCaughey really shines is in taking the long view, approaching existential issues of baseball immortality: "If even one man doesn't do one thing he does / We'd all know Bill Buckner for what he was: / A pretty tough out for the Dodgers, Red Sox, and Cubs." But he finally concludes that the ground ball hit by Mookie Wilson that went through his legs might be the best thing that happened to his song's subject: "And your 22 years playing ball might be forgotten / Maybe Bill Buckner was lucky his luck was so rotten."

Ben Schneider is a visual artist who studied painting, and his music - as Lord Huron - reflects that. It's not merely the covers for his two EPs - warmly evocative, slightly foggy images that showcase the natural beauty of figures, water, landscape, and light together. The ethereal, tropical songs themselves have their origins in the visual.

Schneider and his four-piece backing band will be coming to RIBCO on May 4, and in a phone interview this week, he described the translation from the visual to the aural.

"When I'm writing songs, I usually try to tell a story ... ," he said. "A lot of times, the way I'll start is by getting an image in mind and then try to translate that image ... sonically. ... I just kind of try to make a soundtrack for that image. It's almost like making a little film in your head, and then making music that will go with it."

If you listen to the self-titled second album by Whitey Morgan & the 78's and think the band makes outlaw country sound easy, Morgan probably wouldn't object.

When he described finding his sound, Morgan - the stage name of Eric Allen - said, "It was difficult until I realized that ... limitations can be a beautiful thing."

He said his band - which will perform at RIBCO on January 21 - initially tried to sound like country from the middle part of the 20th Century, but they didn't have the chops to pull it off. It was only when they embraced the relative simplicity of the outlaw-country movement - personified by artists such as Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings - that things started to click.

I jokingly suggested that the problem was that he was too ambitious, and Morgan didn't take offense and didn't think I was kidding; he agreed.

If you want a sense of what Mini Mansions sounds like, interviews and reviews often reference the Beatles' experimental side and the late singer/songwriter Elliott Smith. But you're advised not to raise the comparisons with Michael Shuman, the Queens of the Stone Age bassist who formed Mini Mansions in early 2009.

Shuman has previously been up-front about the influences of and his love for the Beatles and Smith, but when I asked him about Mini Mansions' new self-titled album compared to the Beatles, he responded curtly: "I don't think it sounds anything like them." A lot of writers have repeated the comparison, he said, but "I just think it was the wrong bandwagon."

A trio that primarily employs keyboards, bass, drums, and voices, Mini Mansions - performing at RIBCO on December 11 - plays pop music that immediately grabs you but is also streaked with oddity and darkness. The Beatles comparison is frankly inevitable because of the vocal style and harmonies, and the spirit of Smith is undeniable as well. (For the record, outside of a closing scream and vocal flourish in "Monk," there's barely a hint of Queens of the Stone Age.)