Frightened Rabbit

Boldly seizing a moniker his mother hung on him when social anxiety held him back a year in nursery school, Scott Hutchinson leads a Northern Scotland quintet called Frightened Rabbit that plays earnest, self-searching paeans ringing with the sonorous indie-pop echoes of the Vaselines, Orange Juice and the Delgados. Signed to English indie FatCat, Frightened Rabbit released Sing the Greys in 2006. Though filled with dulcet jangle pop, Greys lacked the bite and emotional resonance of 2008's followup, The Midnight Organ Fight. As the wry title suggests, Organ is a breakup album fueled by the clever anguish of tracks like "The Modern Leper" and "Keep Yourself Warm." These days, Frightened Rabbit is supporting its third album, 2010's The Winter of Mixed Drinks, which was written in Crail, on the Scottish coast, while Hutchinson spent two months decompressing from a year and half of touring. The song "Swim Until You Can't See Land" serves as a fine touchstone for the album's spirit of self-discovery after so much time away from home.