While naming your band after an obscure Radiohead B-side is guaranteed to curry you favor with a small percentage of listeners, it is unlikely to bring the masses knocking at your doorstep. What is likely to send the masses Maquiladora's way, however, is the trio's gift for using a pile of antiquated equipment to create an otherworldly sonic splendor; their music is the sound of satellites grounding out somewhere in the Mojave while Sparklehorse and Gram Parsons jam complacently in the foreground. The tales Maquiladora weave throughout Ritual of the Hearts are utterly quixotic -- stories of ghosts and men, and of the strange interaction between the two entities. The tattered ambience of "Sound of Rain" is absolutely ethereal -- a lone acoustic guitar winding its way around eerie synth flourishes and dueling vocal harmonies. The forlorn barroom lament "Heaven" is absolutely heartbreaking, while the interstellar country ballad "Chinese Girl" is the most gorgeous Grandaddy song Jason Lytle never wrote. While you may detect elements of the aforementioned bands in Maquiladora's work, their songs transcend mere tribute, gradually revealing themselves to be wholly unforgettable and hopelessly fragile anthems for a fractured future age. Rarely has indecision and confusion sounded as exquisitely grandiloquent as this.