Last year, Silverada took the cover of the Chronicle as the hard-driving country quintet shed the Mike & the Moonpies moniker they’d ridden for nearly two decades and reloaded for the next phase of the band. Their ethos remained the same, though, with a grinding mindset and crowd-winning combination of rocked-out live shows and sincere ballads that has carved their mark on the independent country scene. Newly released EP Texas 42 strips down some catalog deep cuts into an acoustic campfire feel. The Tender Things load in first with their swaggering brand of Southern-rock fried Texas honky-tonk. – Doug Freeman