Telekinesis: Telekinesis!

Michael Benjamin Lerner, the singer-songwriter who does business as Telekinesis, is the kind of young power-pop formalist worth hoping for: one whose nagging hooks actually sink in and stay put. His debut, produced by fellow Seattleite Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie, projects an offhanded air, yet each song is precisely put together, and the whole thing speeds by in just over half an hour. Sometimes literally, as when “Foreign Room” revs from slow-solo-acoustic into a buzzy guitar stomp at the one-minute mark, or the rave-ups between verses on “Tokyo,” a fantasia about the city as it exists in his dreams: “They’re all I know,” he admits, before rhapsodizing about “Neon colored lights flashing through my brain / cruising through the city on a bullet train.” When Lerner sashays into a chorus of “Turn it up! Turn it up!” during “Coast Of Carolina,” chances are that those who love Big Star or the Posies will want to do as he suggests.