Anakin, ‘End Transmission’ – Free MP3 Download

Kansas has always had a knack for producing nostalgic bands whose fuzzy guitar tones, wet cymbals and long, open notes create warm atmospheres around each track. We're talking groups like the Get Up Kids, Theta, the Appleseed Cast and the Casket Lottery, and into this lineage come Anakin, who put their own twist on the tradition.

Anakin are a machine that runs on Ken Andrews records and science fiction fantasies and churns out classic power-trio jams like 'The Departure' and 'Disconnect,' both from the 2012 full-length 'Random Accessed Memories.' Structurally, they were meant for the radio, even if their timbre has a '90s stamp. If you could plot singer Brent Windler's clever vocal line on a graph, they way his melody rises, falls and resolves would tell a story in itself -- one separate from the one you'll find in his metaphors about building rockets.

"'End Transmission' was a track that Chris and I wrote a couple weeks before we started recording the album," drummer Brad Chancellor explains. "The initial idea was inspired by Chris's alarm clock ... Well, the initial intro [was], anyway. It was originally a keyboard line that we wrote guitars to, but then at the last minute, I was like, 'It would be hilarious if you tapped that out on guitar instead?' He did, and it stuck."

"I wrote the lyrics, notably the first line, originally aimed at a specific person in my life who I'd trusted, that I caught in a pretty serious lie," he added. "As I dove more into writing it, though, the song as a whole ended up turning into the idea that no matter how bad things may seem to get, you can always start over. You can always renew yourself and the people around you. Hit that reset button."