plus: LFO [ tickets ], BR5-49, Bliss 66, more.

After priming its audience with the country-radio hit “I’m Already There,” Lonestar [ tickets ] will release its album of the same name this week. The title track is currently the No. 1 song on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart, and the No. 2 song on trade publication Radio & Records’ country-airplay chart.

“I’m Already There” (BNA) is the follow-up to last year’s “This Christmas Time” and 1999’s “Lonely Grill.” The latter album featured the No. 1 hits “Amazed,” "Tell Her," "What About Now" and "Smile,” and has been certified triple-platinum.

The group recently kicked off a tour in support of “I’m Already There.” Dates are scheduled through mid-September.

Tricky [ tickets ] returns this week with “Blowback” (Hollywood), an album that, by his own admission, is a conscious effort at more commercially accessible and listener-friendly fare than anything he has released since his 1995 solo debut, “Maxinquaye.”

“I know people have been waiting for me to make this album,” he said in a press release, “but I was like, ‘F--k off, I’m not giving people what they want.’ All my other albums since ‘Maxinquaye’ were saying ‘F--k you.’ I was making records deliberately so they wouldn’t get on the radio.”

The change in mindset for the new album was apparently medical, according to the press release, which explained that Tricky was diagnosed a little over a year ago with a rare disease, the treatment for which involved him excluding certain foods from his diet that were “destroying his immune system and affecting him psychologically.”

“I’ve got my energy back,” Tricky continued in the release, “and this album is about opening up and communicating with people again.”

A streaming version of “Blowback” can be heard at Tricky’s record-label website.

LFO--a.k.a. Lyte Funky Ones--offers up “Life Is Good” (J Records) this week, the follow-up to the boy-band’s 1999 self-titled debut. “LFO” featured the Florida-based trio’s breakthrough hit, “Summer Girls.”

The group will mark the release of its sophomore effort with an in-store appearance on Tuesday (6/26) at the Sam Goody store in the Woodbridge Center Mall in Woodbridge, N.J., from 2-6 p.m.

Click here to read about LFO's current tour.

BR5-49--a band that lost its standing as a major label act following last year's shake-up at Arista Nashville--returns to the big leagues with "This Is BR5-49," which it recorded for Sony Nashville's Lucky Dog imprint. Though it has a new label, the critically heralded band hasn't abandoned its modernized take on honky-tonk sounds.

BR5-49 is currently on the North American club circuit to support the release--an itinerary can be found on the band's official website--and will spend the second half of July touring Europe. More North American dates will follow in August.

Detroit-based hard-rock act Bliss 66 delivers its debut album this week, “Trip to the 13th” (Epic). The album’s first single, “Sooner or Later,” can be heard at the group’s official website.