Get Hot

Vancouver trio the Poison Dart can be loosely classified with the rest of the post-Decemberists wave of folk-rockers who have appeared in the Pacific Northwest over the last few years, alongside Norfolk & Western, Shelley Short, and just about everyone else on the Hush Records label. That doesn't tell the whole story, however, because along with the bits of folk and country evident on Get Hot, the Poison Dart prove themselves to be a solid indie pop trio in the mature tradition, with flashes of everyone from the Olivia Tremor Control's D.I.Y. psychedelia ("Pamphleteers") to the less goofy side of Barenaked Ladies ("Fragments"). The star of the show is primary singer Megan McDonald, whose agreeably lived-in voice suggests what Lucinda Williams must have sounded like before all the cigarettes, but the multi-instrumentalist trio members share the spotlight to varying degrees. A charming, somewhat rustic, but never overbearingly "rootsy" debut, Get Hot is the sound of a band with a wide range of options to pursue and no particular need to settle on just one.