Kyle Craft grew up in a tiny Louisiana town on the banks of the Mississippi, where he spent most of his time catching alligators and rattlesnakes instead of playing football or picking up the guitar.

He's not the product of a musical family, and bands never came through town. It was only a chance trip to K-Mart that gave him his first album, a David Bowie hits compilation that helped inspire him eventually to channel his innate feral energy into songwriting and rock and roll.

That self-made talent drives every note of Dolls of Highland, Craft's exhilarating, fearless solo debut.

"This album is the dark corner of a bar," he says. "It's that feeling at the end of the night when you're confronted with 'Now what?'"