Augustana

The growing number of television series that employ mid-tempo rock songs and plaintive ballads to pump up the emotion in major scenes has resulted in a proliferation of bands eager to provide the same — and San Diego's Augustana, which appears on this date with Wild Sweet Orange, couldn't be more typical of the breed. Like 2006's "Boston," a single that became a download smash with a little help from Scrubs, the songs on Can't Love, Can't Hurt, the group's new disc (produced by Mike Flynn, whose work with the Fray helped land the Denver group on Grey's Anatomy), are soundtrack-ready. Still, the stereotypically robust hooks and swelling strings on tracks such as "Hey Now" and "Twenty Years" seem just a little too perfect for that moment when star-crossed TV lovers stare longingly at each other across the courtroom or the operating chamber. Augustana's tracks are so ready for prime time that all the real life's been sucked out of them.