Photo by George Dubose
The Band: Junius
The Buzz: Breathtaking Boston metal band pulls off a perfect hybrid of Neurosis and the Smiths, striking a stunning balance of brutality and beauty. Their latest album, The Martyrdrom of a Catastrophist, is a concept record about catastrophe theorist Immanuel Velikovsky, exploring his insistence on a chaotic universe. Its songs are spellbinding and heartbreaking, gripping from the first note to the last. A hard rock dream come true.
Listen If: You dress in combat boots and all black and look like you could uproot an oak tree with your bare hands, but your secret favorite record is Disintegration.
Key Track: The heartbreaking “Letters from Saint Angelica,” where pleas to “Wake up! Wake up!” are delivered against guitars that crash like tidal waves.
The Band: Dam-Funk
The Buzz: The new sound of old electro: California producer makes glitchy, slippery beats that recall the golden age of hip-hop. Call it Commodore 64-core: minimal blip groove with designed for serious swiveling. It’s square and sexy.
Listen If: You could beat Pole Position blindfolded, and used that skill to impress the ladies (or gentlemen!).
Key Track: The laid-back “I Know Love is Here Tonight,” with its martini-glass clink and hand-clap percussion. You can almost see the guys in pink pastel polos grooving on the light-up dance floor.
The Band: Laura Veirs
The Buzz: Magnificent Portland songwriter delves into the mystic, crafting spare, entrancing pop songs as informed by folk music as they are indie rock. Her upcoming July Flame takes its title from a type of peach, and its content is just as sweet and irresistible.
Listen If: You rep hard for solo Tanya Donnelly, or prefer Cat Power’s early, odd work to her late-period polish.
Key Track: “July Flame,” where Veirs hypnotic, mysterious voice wends its way around stiff guitar, purring an endless string of curious riddles until the whole song crests in a crescendo of swirling violins and ghostly choirs.
The Band: Ringers
The Buzz: Certifiable proof punk is far from dead, this Boston band that sprung from the ashes of the band Sirens (they have a thing for one-word plurals apparently) give hope to anyone who loves ragged, hook-laden music delivered with a throat that sounds like it’s been floor-sanded for six years.
Listen If: You still have your beat-up leather jacket from when you were 15, even if it doesn’t fit quite the way it used to.
Key Track: The impossible-to-deny “Conswayla,” with a chorus that should be monopolizing rock radio right this minute.
The Band: Olof Arnalds
The Buzz: Lovely, transcendent Icelandic singer-songwriter writes the kind of music that populates the dreams of angels — fluttering folk songs as fragile as tiny china swans.
Listen If: You like your music as enveloping and comforting as a quilt on a winter night
Key Track: The irresistible “Vid og Vid,” which drifts down like feathers from a burst pillow, the kind of song that raises goosflesh on eardrums.
The Band: Gigi
The Buzz: NGigi takes the Wall of Sound approach to indie pop, gathering up underground mainstays like Rose Melberg and Karl Blau and handing them irresistible throwback-pop to shimmy and shoop their way through.
Listen If: You have a button on your jacket that says “Joe Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.”
Key Track: The grand and booming, “No, My Heart Will Go On,” the perfect floor-filler for your next sock hop.
The Band: Tempo No Tempo
The Buzz: A nervy, worked-up band from San Francisco, Tempo No Tempo have been kicking around for nearly four years now, getting steadily better while remaining stubbornly under the radar. Their latest EP should change all that: blending hurtling dance rhythms with jabbing, elbowing post-punk guitars, the group takes a literal approach to the notion of “panic at the disco.”
Listen If: Dancing stresses you out a little, and you want your music to reflect that anxiety.
Key Track: The terrifically severe “Kilometer,” where the clanging guitars feel like a starting bell, setting the song’s tense quiver in motion. Vocalist Tyler McCauley coos, “I could never wait for you,” and it’s true — no sooner does are the words out of his mouth than he vanishes, leaving us dead in the middle of a guitar solo that whips around as wildly as a cut power line.
The Band: Dragonette
The Buzz: Dragonette began as a duo called the Fuzz, consisting of guitarist Dan Kurtz and vocalist Martina Sorbara. Fortunately, that name didn’t last — after a few rounds of reinvention, the group turned into a day-glo dance-pop wonder. Their tastes are voracious — they may skew electronic, but the thumping “Gone Too Far” is built around a banjo loop, and Sorbara cites Rickie Lee Jones and Joan Armantrading as inspirations.
Listen If: Your favorite artists of the last few years were Lykke Li and Ladyhawke, and you’re looking to complete your holy trilogy of perfectly pouty pop.
Key Track: “Pick Up the Phone,” the kind of bright, charming pop song Cyndi Lauper would have killed for in the 80s. Few artists get the concept of the “bridge” right anymore, but the build to the chorus is tense and heavenly, so that when arrives, it’s as liberating as a great gospel song.
The Band: Sleigh Bells
The Buzz: Brooklyn duo of Derek Miller (ex-Poison the Well) and Alexis Krauss make awesomely impolite dance music, raising a stiff middle finger to fidelity and instead choosing to run all of their tracks in the red — overdriven, overamped, over distorted. In other words: perfect.
Listen If: You want your music to come with its own busted subwoofer.
Key Track: The irresistible “Crown on the Ground,” where Krauss coos out a clipped melody in jump rope cadence over blown-out blasts of synths that whallop like a bag of bricks. One things for sure, when Krauss says “Set, set that crown on the ground,” you’d better listen.
The Band: Bang Bang Eche
The Buzz: New Zealand outfit fronted by one T’Nealle Worsley makes raw, riotous, ice-cold synth rock sharp enough to cut stale bread.
Listen If: You’re a DJ at a German nightclub looking for new tracks to power a long night.
Key Track: The raucous “4 to the Floor,” which is whipped around by a hyperactive guitar and Worsley’s stern vocal recitation.
The Band: Pants Yell
The Buzz: Boston art school grads apply their acumen to indie pop, writing shy, retiring songs laced up with grizzled guitar — the kind of compositions the quiet kid in 4th grade was scribbling in his notebook as he sat forlorn at the back of the class.
Listen If: You were that kid.
Key Track: The buoyant “Magenta and Green,” where a bounding guitar line tugs the precious melody forward, making it the kind of heartwarming kindergarten sing-along that brightens any cloudy day.
The Band: Liturgy
The Buzz: Mighty Brooklyn black metallers conjure the devil as well as any of their Scandinavian counterparts, using hammering riffs to split the earth and unleash the demons.
Listen If: You love telling the story of how and why Varg killed Euronymous.
Key Track: The blinding “Pagan Dawn,” an unholy smear of guitars and wrenching, unearthly vocals.
The Band: Shrinebuilder
The Buzz: Shrinebuilder may be a relatively new band, but they’re hardly up-and-comers. Comprised of members of metal titans Scott Weinrich of St. Vitus, Al Cisneros of Sleep, the Melvins’ Dale Crover and Scott Kelly of Neurosis, the group binds together the best qualities of its significant legacy, making slow-moving metal that engulfs like a tar pit.
Listen If: You’ve ever waxed rhapsodic about Master of Reality — and especially if you have done so from the passenger seat of a Camaro.
Key Track: Seven-minute sludgefest “Pyramid of the Moon,” a heaving, hulking mass of riffs and groaned bocals that proves definitively that music doesn’t need to be fast to be punishing.
The Band: Florence and the Machine
The Buzz: Florence tore her way through a series of high-energy, high-euphoria New York shows last week, culminating with a hyperactive appearance on David Letterman. Don’t let those daggers fool you, though — Flo has more in common with the rich, supple pop of Annie Lennox and Tracy Thorn than the teeth-bared claws-out snarl of, say, Ida Maria. Appropriately, the album was recorded in an abandoned synagogue, giving it an extra-ethereal air.
Listen If: You go after both romance and heartbreak with the same blind, fervent passion.
Key Track: The eerie, elegaic “Are You Hurting the One You Love,” where Florence dials it down to a whisper, moaning out the hook over plinking, plaintive piano.
The Band: Fool’s Gold
The Buzz: Call it back in the highlife again: CA band nick the high, keening guitars of Afropop, lace them over percolating percussion and top them with vocals that sound like a Graceland B-reel. It would be easy to complain, but the whole thing is executed with such sincerity it’s tough to get too aggravated.
Listen If: You ain’t waiting till January for that Vampire Weekend record, or you wish Fear of Music went for it just a little more.
Key Track: “Surprise Hotel,” which sounds like something King Sunny Ade might have written if he took a summer course in hackey sack at UCLA.
