Jesse McCartney is one of those artists that routinely is a pleasant surprise to trip across. Having his genesis as part of team pop group Dream Street, he was never really on my radar, yet every so often he’d pop out with an infectious pop single that’s impossible to ignore.

Well, he’s done it again.  As a prelude to an album scheduled to hit next year, this week he released ‘In Technicolor, Pt. 1,’ which consists of three tracks and a prelude.  All of the tracks are tight, bass-driven confections that really highlight the singer and raise the question of why he isn’t more known. Above is the lyric video for “Back Together,” but the best track, in my opinion anyway, is “Tie the Knot,” which has a nice midtempo vibe that propels the song nicely as McCartney invites his subject to take the next step.

At under $5, it’s certainly worth checking out.  It’s nice to see McCartney back in action, particularly with such a strong set of material.  I’ll be keeping an eye out for the full album.

Additional listening

While working on assembling this post, I discovered that McCartney was responsible for a major track by an artist only yesterday featured here on the blog, Leona Lewis.  He was a co-writer of her big hit “Bleeding Love.”

Here’s one of his earlier tracks that caught my ear, “Leavin’.”