Best-known for such '90s-era hits as "Breakin' My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes)" and "U Send Me Swingin'," Minneapolis-bred Mint Condition returns with a studio follow-up to its last outing—2006's tasty performance set "Live From the 9:30 Club." It's a treatise on life in the digital age with a principal lesson: The issues predating our computerized world—love, trust, family concerns—still remain. Mint Condition couches its perspectives in catchy R&B, hip-hop, funk and jazz rhythms and meaningful lyrics that resonate after the CD stops playing. A case in point is "Baby Boy Baby Girl," an ode to fatherhood fashioned around an infectious downbeat and Anthony Hamilton's down-home vocals. At a time when self-contained bands are a rarity, Mint Condition shows it still has the goods. —Gail Mitchell