Pop/Rock - Maybe its the end of the year and the time to drag out all the endless "best of" accolades that permeate the vacuum of December releases. Maybe it's the fact that Champaign, Illinois trio Headlights are releasing a special "Remix" album. But whatever the reason, it's time now to praise the glittering, inspired indie-pop gems that made the band's July release "Some Racing, Some Stopping" such a multi-play contender. As one critic gushed, "the songs...have hooks so catching that if they were a disease, well, I for one would be dying 1,000 deaths."

It wasn't always quite so light or such a "safe, warm, fluffy little world" as another critic opined. Having honed their craft on the standard crunching rock riffs of indie rock basics on their acclaimed debut "Kill Them With Kindness", the trio did a near 180 and approached "Racing" with a ear for classic pop melodies, jangling folk/pop shuffles and harmonies that would make Brian Wilson smile.

Exquisitely built, economically produced songs such as "Cherry Tulips" and "Market Girl" stripped back the concept to a bare-bones but shimmering spareness of voice and instrumental backing. Imaginative in its approach the album reestablished the band as confident purveyors of something old, new, borrowed and, well, blue.

Neither slight in execution or strategy, Headlights have found that sweet spot somewhere between classic referencial touchstones and a modern transcendent attitude. At the end it becomes less about links to cultural pop predecessor and more about the realization of a distinctive voice. Sublimely wistful and often breezy to the point of being lighter than air, the songs of "Some Racing" still resonate with a resolute confirmation of all that's well and, ultimately, true. Slightness of approach doesn't mean a candy-coated musical trifle. Headlights is all about relishing the organic simplicity of brilliantly understated form.

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