La Vella

Braid frontman Bob Nanna hadn't recorded an album with his solo side project the City on Film since 2006's In Formal Introduction, but an unexpected job layoff left the songwriter inspired to pick the project back up, just a year after a strong comeback from his long-loved emo outfit Braid. The 11 songs of La Vella were all sculpted by Nanna from stories, anecdotes, and other written material submitted by fans and interpreted into ranging power pop workouts like lead single "You Wild Thing (An Illuminous Life)." ~ Fred Thomas