Whitney is named for a character invented by the band’s two founders, Max Kakacek and Julian Ehrlich. He’s a lonely man who nurses his wounds with too much drink. The band’s first single, “No Woman,” is a stunning, dreamy ode to loneliness. The chorus riffs on a delicate guitar lick, while faint strings, swollen with sadness, polish up the vocal’s earnestness. But the song concludes on a high note: brass horns hint at good things on Whitney’s horizon. Touring their second album, Whitney makes 15 stops in Europe before heading home to the States. —C.J.F.