What began as a drunken side project for the Pixies' Kim Deal has now outlasted even that seminal indie rock band. Not that the Breeders, the group Deal cofounded with Throwing Muses' Tanya Donelly in 1988, have been working all that time. Its fourth album, Mountain Battles, arrives six years after the underrated commercial flop Title TK, which followed the 1993 hit Last Splash (best known for the crossover anthem "Cannonball"). Longtime fans, then, know that the most recent gap between albums doesn't necessarily signal a nostalgic cash-in a la the Pixies' reunion tour; plus, Mountain Battles mostly doesn't disappoint. Engineered in part by Steve Albini, who recorded Title TK, the album retains much of its predecessor's lo-fi scraggliness with solid songs and hazy atmospherics. Though the melodic power-pop crunch of "Walk It Off" or "It's the Love" should please the "Cannonball" contingent, more often the songs have the slower, narcotic dreaminess of newer bands like Beach House, as on smoldering anthem "We're Gonna Rise," hands down the best thing on here. Like proto-punk hero Jonathan Richman on his recent albums, the Breeders also find room for a foreign language ballad, singing in Spanish on "Regalame Esta Noche." And "Here No More" is a backwoods folk sing-along worthy of O Brother, Where Art Thou? or Pacific Northwest indie rockers Blitzen Trapper. While nothing hits the gut quite like Last Splash, Mountain Battles has something for any fan of the many bands the Pixies -- or the Breeders -- have influenced.

-- Marc Hogan