Secret Dakota Ring, 'Cantarell'

The buzz: An engineering and robotics nut who graduated from Columbia University only to join one of pop culture's most digitally clever bands in 2005, OK Go guitarist Andy Ross is also the mastermind behind Secret Dakota Ring. Along with co-producers Travis Harrison, Josh Kaufman and Assaf Spector, Ross' side project released "Do Not Leave Baggage All the Way" to word-of-mouth buzz in 2005, and set about birthing this synthetic sequel of orchestral pop and folk.

The verdict: "Cantarell" is a playful exercise. The airy bounce of "I Don't Wanna Know About My City" gets lost like the sideways stomp of "Losing Eyeballs," while the melodramatic opener "They Got the Wrong Guy" is a strings-only experiment that skews weird and wrong. Ross sounds like a shoegazer who wants to spend too much time with the Beach Boys, but his guitars hang in the background, buttressing saccharine swaths like "Red Light" and "I Blew Myself Up Over You," and louder nuggets such as "Sell Us a Spaceship." And when he goes schoolboy on "The Fade to Black" and "I Blew Myself Up Over Losing You," it's textbook, but still works. 

Did you know? Ross is reportedly descended from Mayflower passenger John Howland, who fell off the boat on its way to America, yet lived.

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