There's something utterly familiar, yet totally inexplicable, about Pretend Hits. Thirty seconds into the record, you might swear you've heard it all before: the stoner indie rock, the bedroom electronica, the white b-boy shuffle. The difference between the beguiling synthesis of the Busy Signals and the striving hipster buzz of Beck isn't the music, per se. Both artists de- and reconstruct the elements of pop and hip-hop, electro and movie soundtracks, in the search for the perfect set of turntables and a microphone. The Busy Signals, however, don't bear the cumbersome burden of corporate fame and generational expectation. Pretend Hits thus dodges the need to address the fickleness of public taste, and displays a calm center and unified sound that lends the most disparate of its elements a homey, back porch feel.

Howard W. Hamilton III is the unlikely moniker of this one-man-band/producer, and he resides in the similarly unlikely locale of St. Paul, Minnesota. An improbable combination, but ultimately inspirational in a way that speaks to both the quality of this album and its feeling of lived-in comfort. You can sense the guiding hand of an inventive, quirky individual fitting the musical pieces of Pretend Hits together in a way that's surprising but never random. (A few tracks were also recorded in Denver with production by Apples in Stereo honcho Robert Schneider.) From the shambling acoustic vibe of "The New You", which opens the album with the cheery refrain "Everything new is old again, and everything old has been retired", to the straight-up underground hip-hop of "Fresh Like Clear Gel" -- one of a couple of songs featuring the MC talents of North Carolina rapper Phonté -- Hamilton never lets the eclecticism of individual elements overwhelm his signature sound.

Humor plays an important part in that sound, as Hamilton displays an easygoing intelligence and a quick musical and lyrical wit, while avoiding the joke-band dustbin. Even tracks like the lighthearted "We Still Give a Fuck" (which features the title line cut-and-scratched over a funky, layered backdrop, and is one of the many instances in which Hamilton makes gentle fun of hip-hop tropes) succeed on their own musically complex merits. What Pretend Hits represents is DIY culture at its finest: we can all make music, and we can even pretend that, in a better universe, the music we make would be the stuff of the pop charts.