Have you never been mellow? Though 1970s pop confections like Bread might rightfully be deemed eternally unhip — it’s widely considered the musical equivalent of a high school yearbook inscription — the lighter touch of Nixon-era Top 40 has a surprisingly strong appeal. Pop diva Norah Jones even coined a name for artwise musicians playing to the concept when, in a typically self-deprecating aside, she called her brand of song “mock soft-c— rock” — an inversion of the priapic principle advanced by arena legends like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin 35 years ago.

So it’s quirky to note that Chicago, which boasts a bleeding-edge independent music scene notorious for its genre scrambles, free-jazz fusions and “post-rock” experimentation, may be the capital of the budding New Mellow. One of the season’s easiest-going releases is the self-titled new album by the Autumn Defense (Broadmoor). The group, fronted by Wilco sidemen and multi-instrumentalists John Stirrat and Pat Sansone, has recorded a seductive collection of strummy, breezy love songs. “Canyon Arrow,” the opening track, is a meticulously arranged mélange of acoustic guitars, glockenspiel, vibes, congas, cello, and, of course, flute, all held together by New York bassist Brad Jones’s fluid and supple tones. “Every day / And every night I’m dreaming of you,” Mr. Sansone coos to his lover, amid airy trills and the spry rhythms of coffeehouse guitar. “Show me the light / Show me the light that is right above you.” They’ll follow the flight of the sparrow all around the world and back again. Okay, as they say, it’s not exactly rocket science, but the band captures a certain kind of pop moment as perfectly as can be imagined: The song feels like an afternoon cruising up the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible with the top down, scarves flying in the wind, the hills twisting under a brilliant sun … circa 1968.

It’s not as if Messrs. Stirrat and Sansone are given over purely to nostalgia. As the record plays through, it’s more apparent that the musicians simply love to work with the template vintage soft-rock offers them, and can indulge in the sheer pleasure of dabbling in a palette of soothing sonic textures. The wimp factor is thoroughly endorsed here, though: Even the mildest-mannered among us can cope with only so much flute.

“Everybody” (Thrill Jockey), the forthcoming May release by Chicago natives the Sea and Cake, would fit seamlessly into the iTunes menu alongside the Autumn Defense. The venerable art-rock quartet, whose members pursue a wide array of tangents and side projects, reconvenes every few years to make a new record. The band has long cultivated a smooth, low-wattage style that sponges up influences from jazz, Brazilian, and African music without ever seeming baldly derivative. The members’ instrumental virtuosity allows the group to generate sophisticated layers of sounds on its songs, which can stack up into fairly ordinary indie fare (the jangly ditty “Crossing Line”) or build to intoxicating evocations of, say, West African guitar rhythm (the hip-swinging “Exact to Me”). Like a latter-day incarnation of Steely Dan, the group suffuses its thoughtful, concise tunes with a jazz sensibility that packs a lot into three or four minutes. Its members, including wizardly percussionist John McEntire of Tortoise and vocalist Sam Prekop, make it cool to be a record nerd. They aspire to pop miniatures that are breathless and sublime.

Not every pedigreed Chicago hipster wants to give his audience a neck massage. The singer-songwriter Jim Elkington, the prime mover behind the Zincs, isn’t given to self-conscious refinement. Instead, he spends time cooking up an often surreal literary flow in songs that unfold like odd little short stories. Mr. Elkington’s third album, “Black Pompadour,” is his most cohesive. It’s the product of collaborating with a full working band, and digging into the bright, chiming charms of the Smiths — a group fronted by the rock ‘n’ roll uberwimp, Morrissey.

The title alludes to the British expatriate’s teenage fascination with the style wars of “Absolute Beginners”-era England. ” I had a flat top trying to coax it into a pomp but it never happened,” he said. “Morrissey and [Smiths guitarist] Johnny Marr had them. I was really into jangling guitar bands and wearing ’50s haircuts. We all smoked Woodbines, these filterless thin cigars, which were very popular in the Second World War. I wanted to hark back to that energy that bands had in the mid-’80s in England, but make it sound like a newer thing. Pop is eating itself.”

The Zincs’s smart, pub-friendly rock brims with sharply modulated energy, carried by Mr. Elkington’s unique sensibility. He loves to drop clever lyric concoctions, with unlikely schemes, rhyming “trout-greased crowd” with “Caesarian smiles” (“The Mogul’s Wives”), and tossing out cryptic references to “the mumbler with the marcel wave” (“Hamstring and Juvenile”) and “tip-toes among the cathodes” (“Coward’s Corral”). The singer’s dusky baritone renders his delivery more sotto-voce than he’d probably like, but it also gives him a stealth allure. Lean in close and the news Mr. Elkington has to share is anything but mellow: If you don’t watch out, he’ll spike your drink.