Most folks don't like to talk about painful personal stuff, such as a failed relationship.

William Fitzsimmons -- who will be performing a Daytrotter show on Thursday, March 19, at RIBCO -- doesn't have much choice.

"I wrote a record on divorce, so I opened the door," he said in an interview this week.

You'd never guess that The Sparrow & the Crow, Fitzsimmons' album from last year that the Boston Herald called a "near masterpiece," is about divorce on first blush. It's unfailingly delicate, intimate, and gentle musically, with folk-y lead piano and acoustic guitar lightly accented with other instruments. And it starts with the words "I still love you" and "I still need you" and what sounds like a reaffirmation of marriage vows. It absolutely does not sound like divorce.

If you want a sense of how excited the music press is about the up-and-coming South African psychedelic rock band Blk Jks (pronounced "Black Jacks"), you only need to see the art-rock royalty that reviewers name-check.

The stuffy New York Times: "Far closer to TV on the Radio and the Mars Volta than they are to Ladysmith Black Mambazo."

The hipsters at Spin, dubbing Blk Jks a "hot new band" earlier this month: "The electro-funk experimentalism of TV on the Radio with the Afro-pop guitars of Vampire Weekend, and drop in hints of jazz, ethnic African music, and the prog-rock of contemporary acts like the Mars Volta."

If those descriptions pique your interest, Daytrotter.com is bringing Blk Jks to the Quad Cities, and fans of adventurous rock would be foolish to miss the band's performance at RIBCO on Tuesday, March 3. This is a buzz band poised to make seriously good noise.

The influences of the Brooklyn-based duo KaiserCartel include punk rock on the "his" side and The Cure and My Bloody Valentine on the "her" side.

But good luck finding much evidence in the sound of the group, which is playing at RIBCO on Thursday in a Daytrotter.com show. The band's music is largely acoustic pop, and Courtney Kaiser's voice has a character like Aimee Mann's but without the flat disillusionment. Whistles and xylophones add sunshine to some tracks, but there's also a magnetic sadness in many.

Kaiser and Benjamin Cartel - both of whom sing and play multiple instruments - insist that the influences can be heard, and their comments reflect a wise understanding of the efficiency and directness of their own songs.

The California-based Donkeys spent three years on their second album, Living on the Other Side, from start to release, and that combined with the quartet's warm, fluffy, unhurried music might create the impression that the band moves slowly. Some songs sound downright lazy.

"We're laid-back dudes," said keyboardist Anthony Lukens in a phone interview last week. "We try to make it sound like nothing's contrived or rushed. So I would probably take that as a compliment if something sounded, maybe, effortless would be a nicer way to say it. ... We're hardly lazy. ... We're definitely relaxed dudes. It takes us long time to get from Point A to Point B, because we're going to hang out and talk about it for a long time."