The latest band to emerge from San Francisco's new school of psychedelic-rock revivalists, Sleepy Sun found its genesis among a crew of UC Santa Cruz students who first came together in the bluesy garage-rock outfit Mania in 2005. Singer Bret Constantino, guitarists Matt Holliman and Evan Reiss, bassist Hubert Guy, and drummer Brian Tice started building a solid following with their high-energy update on a sound that echoed elements of the Yardbirds, the Doors and John Spencer's Blues Explosion, but gradually the players began to drift in a more experimental psychedelia that eventually demanded a name change.

When Sleepy Sun made its debut performance at a Santa Cruz music festival in late 2007, the group had undergone a quantum leap in its musical development. While hints of the blues remained in Constantino's occasional harp blowing and the dueling guitar interplay between Holliman and Reiss, the songs had grown into hazy epics that encompassed everything from delicate country-folk to soulful, gospel-tinged solemnity to crushing riff architecture that recalled Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

After the key addition of co-vocalist Rachel Fannan (of Santa Cruz indietronic act Birds Fled from Me), the group recorded it's stunning debut album Embrace in Vancouver, Canada, with the help of noted producer Colin Stewart (Black Mountain, Destroyer). Sleepy Sun would later move on to San Francisco to join an already burgeoning neo-psych revival alongside such noted bands as Comets on Fire (who also have roots in Santa Cruz), Wooden Shjips and Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound.

With Embrace serving as a striking calling card, the sextet was soon making waves at festivals here (Noise Pop) and abroad (South by Southwest and All Tomorrow's Parties in the UK). The group's follow-up effort Fever released in early summer of 2010 received wide praise for further developing the unit's gift for creating dreamy psychedelic epics like the sprawling album closer "Sandstorm Woman." The group underwent some turmoil in the fall of that year when Fannan made a sudden acrimonious departure from the band, a dramatic change that left some wondering how it would affect the unique vocal dynamic of the Sleepy Sun sound.

The band answered those questions last year with the release of its third album (and first for The End Records) entitled Spine Hits. Stepping away from the signature Sabbath/Zeppelin informed riffage that marked earlier efforts, Sleepy Sun mix pop concision with deeply psychedelic exploration on the new songs. Recorded at Joshua Tree studio Rancho de la Luna with co-producers Dave Catching (Queens of the Stone Age and Earthlings?) and Ethan Allen, Spine Hits moves easily from the rustic psych ruminations of "Siouxsie Blaqq" to the droning, Neil Young meets Spiritualized Hammond organ wash of "Still Breathing" to crunching rockers like "Stivey Pond" and "Creature." The band plays this (((folkYEAH!))) show at the Chapel SF with DJ Brett Wilde, psychedelic folkie Meg Baird and power trio Feral Ohms, the latest project led by Comets on Fire/Howlin' Rain guitar hero Ethan Miller.

Sleepy Sun
Wednesday, May 1, 9 p.m. $15
The Chapel