With Lexy Benaim, the sinuses are the windows to the soul—he sings with his nose, in a reedy and brittle style that fits his bookish smarts and radiates wimpy vulnerability. His sextet’s debut album is full of ironic, scrawny odes to joy. The music is exuberantly quirky, fit for a Michael Cera romcom title sequence. Scored with ramshackle grandeur by scribbly guitars, fat horns, poignant keyboards and ragtag sing-alongs, Benaim’s lyrics narrate the anxieties and optimisms of New York City’s young, educated and underemployed. Protagonists “get free shit from bodegas,” sell prized possessions on eBay and slowly lose their edge: “I don’t even get your T-shirt’s pun,” one laments. But if rents have squeezed Benaim and his ilk to the city’s unglamorous margins, he makes the most of it, swimming at Coney Island here, savoring a “New Jersey sunset” there. “This will be a better year,” he promises. Until then: “Stay game, stay game, stay game.” Who says a slacker can’t be a motivational speaker, too?

Download “Strictly Game,” “Sunlight”