Pasadena Air Force

555 starts off with "Their Sleeping Endeavors," a slow, piano-based song, complete with moody, reverb-soaked guitars and lots of starts and stops. It's a remnant of the Radiohead disease that infected many Houston bands a few years ago -- for a while, you couldn't turn around without running into other patients in St. Yorke's Hospital such as Secret Sunday and Coterie. For the most part *MTP* has recovered, so the comparison is less obvious, but there is still the occasional lyric like "I'm just a guy, chewing on a wire" that's torn from Yorke's songbook. Here's where variety works in their favor again. As the EP progresses, the songs become less derivative so that when you finally get to "Main Theme from 'Smoking Gun,' " a song that laments a cheating partner instead of nonspecific angst, all you hear is *mytwilightpilot*.

555 will be released in August by New York's Feel Records, a label owned and run by Brady Brock, a former Houston resident and longtime friend of the band. Here's a little secret the band won't tell you, but I will: Jackson and Brock were both in a band called the Grimple Twins a few years ago. But remember, just don't tell them you read it here.