Hidden Pictures showcases a retro sound that emphasizes crafty hooks and boy-girl harmonies. Comparisons to bands like Belle and Sebastian and She & Him are inevitable with coed vocals at the forefront, but the band’s vinyl vault also pays heed to tunesmiths like Big Star and the Kinks as well as modern masters like Wilco and the Shins. The Kansas City band’s debut LP Synchronized Sleeping features a dozen “damn near perfect pop songs” with wide-ranging dynamics. Written by Richard Gintowt and approved by singer and glockenspielist Michelle Gaumé Sanders, the album’s wry lyrics humorously riff on the perils of love and friendship. Gintowt solicited contributions from more than a dozen of his favorite musicians, bringing strings, horns, bells, and pedal steel into the fold. Now that it’s cooked, the band plans to tour and spend an exorbitant amount of money mailing compact discs in polyethylene bubble sleeves to curmudgeonly music critics who will use them as pillows. "Choosing Sides, Lawrence quintet Hidden Pictures’ recent EP, delivers some damn near perfect pop... It’s difficult to remember the last time a local indie-pop band was this impressive. For that matter, it’s difficult to remember the last time a national pop act crammed so much singalong goodness into 10 minutes or so." - J Howell, inkkc.com "Hidden Pictures shows hints of potential greatness with its three-song Choosing Sides EP. Constituting a miniature tour de force, these three songs are loaded with vigorous, memorable hooks and instrumental flourishes worthy of a much bigger-budget album." - Jason Harper, The Pitch Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.