The Delta Spirit’s Matt Vasquez sings with an unabashed passion. On the barnstorming song “Trashcan,” from the band’s independently released 2007 album “Ode to Sunshine” — which receives a wide release today in a remastered edition from Rounder Records — Mr. Vasquez’s alternating gritty howl and soulful wail ride a crest of piano, guitars, and percussion, something akin to the Band on an adrenalized night. Mr. Vasquez’s vocal charisma, equal parts plainspoken troubadour and skyward-reaching believer, has earned the Sand Diego quintet its “Americana” tag. He’s also the most immediate reason why the group’s chugging sound clings to the ears days after listening.

Mr. Vasquez sings almost every song as if he’s in a church choir, an energy that drapes a layer of blues over the Delta Spirit’s fairly traditional folk rock. And it’s not a shtick — the Delta Spirit is earnest above all. Its music unintentionally mingles two trends percolating through indie rock right now. One is a return to more traditional folk — minus the “freak” qualifier that is associated with Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart. The other is the conspicuous absence of irony, which has been a revered ideal since the Arcade Fire cropped up a few years ago sporting an avid sincerity. The Delta Spirit combines both methods into a stirring batch of rock that evokes Wilco circa “Being There,” even though Mr. Vasquez isn’t as enamored with psychedelic pop songwriting.

The band is more interested in the emotions imbued in traditional American musical forms. As such, “Ode to Sunshine” runs from such foot-stomping electric fare as “Trashcan” and “Parade” (a song rooted in guitarist Sean Walker’s gnarled riff), to gently galloping bluesy affairs such as “People, Turn Around” and the title track, which closes the album. Elsewhere, the band delves into slinky, funky folk (“Streetwalker”) and piano-driven, closing-time ballads such as “Bleeding Bells,” a lament that feels lifted from some obscure 1960s Western.

Musically, the Delta Spirit cranks out an immediate rush, guided by Mr. Vasquez’s passionate holler, that will sweep up any interested party. Just don’t pay attention to what he’s saying. Lyrically, the group aims too much for the ambiguous profundity that mars a lot of contemporary sacred music. “If you’re feeling what I’m feeling c’mon / All you soul searching people c’mon” is as deep as “People C’mon” gets. There’s nothing wrong with belief in song — it’s only been around since people started singing — but uncertain coyness feels insincere when wrapped in the Delta Spirit’s music, which so reverentially conjures the emotional authenticity of the traditions that inspired it.

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Obi Best, aka Alex Lilly, doesn’t have such lyrical issues. Ms. Lilly, who spends most of her time as the backing vocalist for the Bird and the Bee, showcases a witty preciousness on “Capades,” her debut as Obi Best, which is released digitally today (before a physical release in the coming months). “Capades” is a gem of an off-kilter, bubble-gum, electro-pop album. As bubbly as Ladytron and as languid as CocoRosie, Ms. Lilly favors dreamy electronic backdrops for her soaring vocals, lacing the gentle wash of music with ribbons of fleeting noises, squishy beats, and other disorienting touches. The music is never alienating, but sometimes it sounds only slightly skewed from the unrelentingly saccharine. The result is something akin to a Japanese game show version of Willy Wonka’s wonderland.

Over this sugary goodness, Ms. Lilly runs through a carnival of love and other florid emotions. But as in her music, something is slightly amiss in the gooey romanticism. Album opener “Nothing Can Come Between Us” rides a blithely sing-song piano line, à la Burt Bacharach, as Ms. Lilly offers reasons why she and her lover should stay together: “You look good in makeup, me shaving cream / I don’t think we should break up.” As Ms. Lilly’s narrator continues to reassure her partner that “nothing can come between us,” what was overly cute becomes slightly too intense, as if we’re listening in on the giddiest stalker ever.

Throughout “Capades,” Ms. Lilly drops such lyrical curveballs into her starry-eyed musical formula, and they continue to be as deliciously surprising. “Who Loves You Now” moves at the pace of an astronaut running on the moon, with Ms. Lilly singing at an appropriately drifting pace about love’s consistency, before admitting, “I know there will be times to run / like a bird with its head cut off.” It’s not meant to be shocking — and, somehow, this remark doesn’t spoil the song’s overwhelmingly blissful mood — but it’s enough of a departure from the cloying sweetness surrounding it to temper the song’s more well-trodden emotions.

Even when a song feels as if it may have been beamed in from outer space — such as the planetary beatscape of “Green and White Stripes” — Ms. Lilly can transform it into something approaching a haunted lullaby. High keyboard tones vacillate over a softly rising and falling beat as Ms. Lilly sings a string of “la la las” that feels a little too reminiscent of the theme song to “Rosemary’s Baby.” Likewise, her lyrics orbit reason without quite getting there: “Truth, it brings no consequence, so you might as well stop making sense.”

Lines such as this may approach gibberish, but overall, Ms. Lilly successfully explores the mutability of meaning in a pop song. Just as a swell of strings or a low synthesizer rumble indicates how a moviegoer should react, certain sounds and moods telegraph emotions in pop music. Ms. Lilly has embraced those leitmotifs as Obi Best, only to turn them on their head. She adroitly makes the cliché feel novel and the weird feel inviting, all inside a genre — bubble-gum pop — that has rarely tried to be anything but a diversion.