R. Ring w/ Night Animals

Kelley Deal of The Breeders fuses her charmingly lazy Brit-pop vocals with the simple power chord progressions of Ampline guitarist Mike Montgomery to mold the bipolar indie-punk tracks of the duo's project R. Ring. After Deal indulged in a knitting obsession while recovering from a bout with heroin, she welcomed an unlikely opportunity to segue back into performing music: While working in a studio on a Guided By Voices tribute album, she battled for creative liberty over the songs with studio owner Montgomery; from this friction developed a friendly producer/artist relationship that eventually resulted in the band earlier this year. The pair's clashing right brains have somehow created eccentric gems like a skate-punk cover of Devo's “Mr. DNA,” which was featured in a video for 1031 Skateboards, and their own haunting, borderline psychedelic crooner “Hundred Dollar Heat.”