The Cast Of Cheers :: "Animals"

A sweet intersection of the friscilating guitar arpeggios of Foals and the slam-along shouts of We Were Promised Jetpacks comes the The Cast Of Cheers and their top-of-the-room single, "Animals". The melody dodges itself along a modulating and instantly memorable rise and fall, a mimic of the guitar and the pebbled bass line. Everything is set at angles, a sort of potential energy that continues to collapse into a chorus, simple and true, about the horrifying commonalities of human romance. Not surprisingly, the conclusion is, "we are animals," a shouted and triumphant revelation. The final fade out representing that moment before we break and pass a nasty and brutish salvation around like the State of Nature, ripping one another to shreds.

Lost Lander :: "Cold Feet"

A vaguely dissonant and withering vocal chord gives the distinct impression of early TV On The Radio, quickly includes a hooky, hopeful melody from Lost Lander on single "Cold Feet". It is a buzzy and spacious arrangement featuring the most lyrical bass guitar of 2012, an instrument very nearly speaking its own language and on its own accord, an insistent and monosyllabic tongue. The synths, loops and layers glitter, a credit to the production of Brent Knopf incorporating some of the twinkling architecture of bands like Clock Opera. The final analysis, we assume in response to the title and its implicit reticence, is vocalist Matt Sheehy repeating, "You gotta turn it off," one of those simple denials of the impossible creeping of doubt. It is surely beautiful, these hesitations, uncertain and strikingly fragile moments, a vocal chord held until its layers come apart at the lung capacity.

Listen :: Lost Lander - "Cold Feet"
Listen :: Lost Lander - "Afraid of Summer"

Henry Clay People :: "25 For The Rest Of Our Lives"

"We're never gonna settle down/we never settled for anything," scream the Henry Clay People in the middle and then again, louder, at the end of latest single, "25 For The Rest Of Our Lives." Lyrically, the song is one of those old never-grow-up, die-before-I-grow-old narratives, only here and now the age of the protagonists shifts. It long seemed that teenagers held the monopoly on counter-culture; you were 18 and refused to become your father, an old and losing battle. In an era of unprecedented unemployment for the American post-adolescent, an era where this demographic has been more than encouraged to never grow out of an infantilized, perma-teenage state, the teenager has become infinite. Henry Clay People, a band who do blue-collar confessional music for the mouths and tastes of upper-middle class kids, resolve to stay, well, the title says it. Those in search of greater generational clarity can turn toward the chunky guitar line and see more clearly both the malaise and reclamation project that is the specific challenge of babies born under Reagan.

Hallelujah The Hills :: "Get Me In A Room"

If bad times make great art, what do good times make? A loose bass line and no-nonsense drums melt into something milky in the swirling glass of Hallelujah The Hills' latest single, "Get Me In A Room", a song about songwriting referring obliquely to the real difficultly of singing the blues and the powers of disaffected youth. A thudding, menacing piano progression builds into a chant-along chorus, the kind that you want to sing louder than the volume of your stereo will go, louder than the number of friends you have in your immediate postal zip code. The salvation depicted here is, as the band reflects in the refrain, "TBA", the title lyric offering a solution in geography if not qualitative breakthrough, "just get me in a room." The unsaid and ineffable, something that must eat at all rock and roll musicians: am I dark enough to make the music I need to make and how dark would things need to get for me to make it? And then you mutter something about when you stare deeply into the abyss, the abyss stares into you; everyone you know read Nietzsche freshman year.

Listen :: Hallelujah The Hills - "Get Me In A Room"

Work Drugs :: "Lisbon Teeth"

Philadelphia's Work Drugs unleash a new single, "Lisbon Teeth" concerned with a listing and sun-blasted summer in Europe. The kind where you wake up on a roof in Seville and drive to Portugal because it's within your reach and there's nothing else to do. The kind where you end up swimming in the Mediterranean at 7am not because you rose early but because Barcelona's clubs turned you out with the rising of the sun. Work Drugs take this pan-Europeanism at full volume, lilting and washing synthesizers backing an attractive melody. It's falling asleep on the lawn across from Buckingham Palace; it's sleeping on the streets of Berlin and in the commuter parking lots of Swiss train stations. It's waking to the border patrol and their dogs. In short, it's fun, an ode to that unique mixture of youth, travel and disposable income, a cocktail as confusing and sweet as it is ephemeral.

The Echo Friendly :: "Worried"

The Echo Friendly possess one of the better stories of any band who once doubled as a romantic couple. This is no Mates of State circa 2003 love story. Singers Jake Rabinbach and the Chrissy Hynde-inspired Shannon Esper made their music to come to terms with their terrible, long distance break up between Brooklyn and Memphis. They are now best friends. On 2011 single, "Same Mistakes," the band explored the crushing depths of screwing up and each other. They passed lyrics and melodies back and forth though and built beautiful duets all while falling in and out of love. On "Worried," the couple, now separate, appear communicative, if not optimistic. As they confide to each other in the chorus, "Pessimistic as it seems, sleep will never come that easy," before unleashing the final, repeated conclusion, "we we always have bad dreams." The sound is hooky and bass-heavy like a lost contribution to a mid-90s movie soundtrack compliation. For Esper and Rabinbach, we are the beneficiaries of their mutilations, dark and pretty pop coming out of an impact crater made in slow-motion over years and 1,100 miles.

Reptar :: "Orifice Origami"

Past the graphic title of "Orifice Origami" is the first chord of summer. Reptar, a band about to rise somewhere between Givers and MGMT circa 2008, unleash an absolute burner behind the lyrics, "Something's not alright here" as synths buzz and shiver as if they were struck with a gigantic, youthful gong. The rest proves a summertime anthem with little doubt that this will be one of the breakout bands of the next few months as they tour with GROUPLOVE and make their way into the hearts of thousands of relentless, face-painted youth. Stream below, like the band on Facebook for a free download or, just click here.