I have a crush on Jenny Lewis's voice. I feel dumb about this: no one past the age of 19 should daydream about hanging out with someone for the intelligence of her phrasing, for the way she skips from rueful to yearning in a single line. But I'm powerless to resist. Lewis, the singer-guitarist in the Los Angeles band Rilo Kiley, is what Liz Phair was 10 years ago: real girl as rock star, by turns sincere and wiseass, great at swearing, every indie boy's fantasy girlfriend. When she sings, "And the talking leads to touching / And the touching leads to sex / And then there is no mystery left," she alchemically turns her frustration into thrills, and mine too.

It doesn't hurt that Lewis and boyfriend-bandmate Blake Sennett have written maybe eight amazing songs, or that Rilo Kiley know how to liven up melodic indie pop/rock with subtle variation and sparkly hooks. Sennett builds little guitar symphonies around Lewis's voice the way Chris Stein did around Debbie Harry's. But producer Mike Mogis gives the album a major-label sheen that's justified by the band's ambition. More Adventurous, which follows three awesome albums, feels like a bid for the big time. Lewis belongs to the world now, not to me. But as long as she keeps turning my frustration into thrills, I can forgive her anything. More Adventurous will be released Aug. 17. Rilo Kiley play Fri/30, Bottom of the Hill, S.F. (415) 474-0365. (Gabriel Roth)

Veils
The Runaway Found (Rough Trade)

How many times and ways can the '80s be revisited before our welcome is completely worn out? The latest prodigal is the Veils' Finn Andrews, who arrives with epic guitars blazing, massive drums booming, on the opener, "The Wild Son," of his debut, The Runaway Found. The literal offspring of XTC's Barry Andrews and the spiritual sprat of arena psych-rockers like the Cult and glammy decadents like Suede, Andrews is apparently attempting to make peace with the past by making music with a palpable past.

He ably shimmies between the kitchen sink-realism of "The Tide That Left and Never Came Back" and the big fat Brit wedding of '80s production values and '60s pop methodology on "Guiding Light." Those songs slot the Veils in among the new rockers the U.K. press is so fond of flogging. But then Andrews slides his tremulous, raspy warble beside the swooning, strings-laden "Lavinia," and the veils drop. Behind the rockish trappings, home is seemingly where the '60s-ish soul and folk dwell – all the better to highlight Andrews's vocals, an acquired taste as likely to polarize as Roland Gift's creamy wheeze. Runaway soon slips away from the manic pack: Andrews can't avoid the anxiety of influence, especially considering the loaded legacy of XTC; so to borrow the title of a Veils tune, he wears those vicious traditions, like a badge or shield, on his sleeve. The Veils' Finn Andrews plays Sun/1, Cafe du Nord, S.F. (415) 861-5016. (Kimberly Chun)