Wintersleep is a big band in its native Canada, with Top 10 singles, Top 20 albums and a spot opening for Paul McCartney in Halifax. In America, though, they can’t seem to get a fair shake. It’s strange, since they have so many tricks of the American indie crowd down pat. Just listen to the opener, “Amerika,” on the band’s latest, The Great Detachment (Dine Alone Records). With those big guitars, handclaps, and all that space for singer Paul Murphy to let his voice flutter and soar, if you’re not thinking My Morning Jacket yet, then take a look at these lyrics: “What am I gonna do? I can’t survive in my America. What am I trying to find? Are you alive, my America?” Maybe it’s that similarity that keeps them from success. When they’re not sounding like MMJ, it’s all too easy to simply namecheck a few more indie lifers and call it a review.

At times, it seems like Wintersleep is all about hooks and over-the-top sincerity. There are several songs here that could be big hits for artists with more market appeal. Listen to “Lifting Cure” and imagine Demi Lovato or hear “More Than” or “Spirit” and think of Fun or Imagine Dragons. The former could have a video in heavy rotation on late-90s MTV. This kind of candor in hook-based rock mostly disappeared with the likes the Gin Blossoms and Better than Ezra. Maybe it’s the combination of that sincerity and their inability to distance themselves from their work that keeps them from having an American breakthrough.

But more than anything, Wintersleep is a guitar band, so on songs like “Freak Out,” “Territory,” and “Santa Fe,” they abandon the pop stylings for straight-ahead rock songs with enough melody to make you appreciate how Murphy’s voice sets the band apart from its more nasally American counterparts. But The Great Detachment also lacks the determined passion that made some of the band’s earlier releases so compelling. This record is primarily the sound of a professional band having a good time applying their craft. That might be all it takes to climb the charts in Canada, but it’s unlikely to win them any new fans around these parts.