Matthew Sweet, “She Walks The Night”

Power-pop stalwart Matthew Sweet comes off a duets album of cherished covers and a production credit for the reformed Bangles with this return to form. The bittersweet undertows that lie beneath Sweet’s soaring waves of melody recall key influences such as Big Star, Badfinger, Tom Petty, The Byrds and America, but he’d threaded them all into his own signature style well before his 1991 breakthrough album Girlfriend. On "She Walks The Night,” Sweet paints layers of blissful psychedelic guitars around the song’s moonstruck heroine and illustrates why his album is called Modern Art. -- Nick Dedina

"She Walks The Night" Matthew Sweet