Anvil Chorus

Enigma isn’t exactly the smartest card in the deck for a fledgling band to play. Radiohead might make it look easy, but even that band didn’t mess with the weird stuff until its third album. In the real world of ground-level recording, wrapping a riddle inside a mystery inside a song is like throwing your demo straight into the A&R guy’s recycle bin. But Kansas City’s Anvil Chorus hasn’t heeded the warning, and it’s a good thing, too — the band’s self-titled, self-released EP is the kind of gritty, deeply layered and cathartic music that makes you wonder why bands twice their age can’t seem to do it quite as well. Singer and pianist Anna Cole’s sometimes soaring, sometimes purring vocals are rooted in Bjork and lightly sprinkled with a touch of Karen O. The other band members — guitarist Andrew Kirk, bassist Byron Huhmann and drummer Brad Wicklander — add enough fuzzed out, trippy art-rock to take what could’ve been a run-of-the-mill local rock outfit and turn it into something much bigger.