The Dylan Paul Band

You gotta hand it to anybody — especially a white teenager from Lawrence — who has the nerve to even try to channel Stevie Wonder. But because he sounds so earnest, it's hard to tell whether it's nerve that gives pianist and singer-songwriter (and actor) Dylan Paul the ability to frame his obvious Stevie influence in slick, glossy R&B. Paul employs the vibrato and vocal acrobatics that are all too familiar from decades of watching fresh-faced young men turn R&B into a sugary mush that makes teenage girls go bananas. But Paul's music ripples with unselfconscious charm. He also seems, and sounds, very much his own man — he writes musicals, for example — as opposed to the young Frankenstein monsters so often given life and exploited by calculating producers.