In the increasingly cutthroat world of precocious pop, you ain't gonna last without some sort of overarching thematic challenge to keep the kids fascinated—take Sufjan Stevens and his gargantuan "record for each of the 50 states" imbroglio. Brooklyn trio Bishop Allen's plan to self-release an EP a month in 2006 is, thankfully, a slightly less time-consuming (and much less pretentious) endeavor—working in the ever popular catchy 'n' quirky pop idiom (think the Kinks with fewer kinks), the band has thus far paid homage to a catastrophic Brooklyn warehouse blaze ("The Same Fire," off June), birthed a frankly gorgeous ukulele ballad ("Butterfly Nets," May), and unleashed a complicated piano-with-strings march ("Flight 180," March). Available digitally or in plain ol' tangible CD form at bishopallen.com, the EPs (with accompanying folk-arty cover designs) are striving for an ephemeral postcard-from-an-old-friend feel, and if that delicate touch has resulted in a few discs getting broken in the mail, well, those problems should be all worked out by November.