It's fortunate that Annuals turned out to be such a fruitful undertaking for Adam Baker, because it's difficult to imagine him doing anything else. Baker leads the Raleigh band, currently touring with an excellent new album, and he admits he had few prospects outside of music.

"I don't know what else I would've done if something hadn't happened with this band because I had no options," he said in a recent interview. "Maybe some sort of park-ranger job? In what little spare time I have, I hike a lot and take pictures of animals. It's like hunting, just not killing, which is exciting to me. Apart from that, I'd probably be an aspiring producer and engineer. I feel like that's what I'm best at, and that would be my focused contribution to the world."

Annuals play a hometown show Wednesday night at Raleigh's Lincoln Theatre. For more, see the rest of the interview.