Seattle's Telekinesis is the one-man power pop project of, well, one man. His name is Michael Benjamin Lerner (though live, this is a band of four) and he writes and sings and plays pretty much all the instruments on his recordings (perhaps to prove to Dave Grohl that he's not the only dude from Seattle that can do that).

Lerner's hyper-melodic songwriting skills were strong enough to get him signed to Merge Records, and that kind-of-legendary label is releasing Telekinesis' debut in April of 2009 (Chris Walla of Death Cab produced it and is also a super-fan). There's a strong retro (somewhere in the late '60s/early '70s period), breezy, sunshine vibe thing going on (there's actually a whistle solo on one track) in these spotless guitar-driven songs, sung with vibrato-free earnestness. It's a sound The Shins borrowed from too, of course, so maybe Telekinesis will also one day be in a bad Zach Braff movie.

Telekinesis has recently played shows with Say Hi, Ra Ra Riot, and Cut off Your Hands, and they should consider touring with the similarly-sounding Mason Proper, too.

BUY TICKETS TO SEE TELEKINESIS AT THE ECHO!

Telekensis plays The Echo, on Thursday, March 13th.