Challenger :: "Back to Bellevue"

John Ross of Challenger is a synthesizer genius. Latest single, the first from a coming yet-to-be-titled LP, "Back to Bellevue" shares the stomping and halcyon Reading Rainbow-electrics of his 2012 offering, "I Am Switches". Similarly, "Bellevue" also features a stunning second movement, vocals spun in reverse and a leading keyboard line. It stands that the Challenger LP that comes with "Bellevue" will be an enormous and wantonly nostalgic slice of synth-pop, set wide-screen for impact.



For New Yorkers, the band plays Arlene's Grocery at midnight on Saturday, May 18.

Swimming Lessons :: "Double"

An effervescent slice of electronic pop, Swimming Lessons meanders pleasantly through debut single, "Double". The percussion resonates as carbonated, an ever-rising loop of chiming sounds and loops - a snare sound for organizational purposes only - mixed with Ben Lewis charming, echoing vocal. The Leeds outfit gives hints of the Clock Opera empire that never was, and windows to the better sides of Ernest Greene's work in Washed Out. None of it necessarily aims for the ceiling. "Double" gives little hint of unchecked ambitions, rather a frictionless slow-drive through electro-pop tropes that sound as familiar as they are pleasing.

Magic Man :: "Nova Scotia"

The great hope of Providence, RI, Magic Man recently hooked their cart to the Neon Gold imprint of Columbia Records, meaning you might be reading this in early 2014 when one of their songs ends up in a Taco Bell commercial and your Shazam-ing turned Googling leads you here. Their mercurial rise will be completely earned and entirely righteous. After all, it isn't cheating when the game has already been fixed. You aren't skipping steps when you've always written hooks this sticky. Having heard some of the unreleased cuts live a few months back, Magic Man are an easy prediction for an intensely relevant band in the summer of 2013, portending an absolute heater of a next calendar year.

Frugal Father :: "Red Headed Hipster"

Lost somewhere between the confessional barritone of Matt Berninger's work with the National and the glittering sonics of an LCD Soundsystem record, comes LA-by-way-of-Boulder, Colarado band Frugal Father. Essentially, the one-man work of Mac Welch, a young guy who has been cutting his teeth as a roadie for other bands, Frugal Father will soon be making its own way through the independent rock wilderness on the back of bulletproof first single, "Red Headed Hipster" and its charming mixture of lyrical hedonism and nihilism, one of the lines of 2013, "We don't have to be best friends/but I like your cardigan/let's dance." The arrangement grows in expansiveness from an initially limited perimeter, channeling a weird mixture of "Dance Yrself Clean" and "Bloodbuzz Ohio" in the opening measures before unleashing a somber glitch-pop anthem in the final movement. With just two songs to his name, Welch and Frugal Father have nothing but green lights ahead with this titanic mixture of indie rock.

Bend :: "Short Crush"

Like a wedge finding the weakness in a small fissure, the keyboard pop coming out of the minds of the current crop of adolescents and post-adolescents is both tiny and potentially huge. Built in the ashes of a post-Postal Service world, the bedroom jams of burgeoning LA two-some - currently at USC and Vassar College  respectively - Bend represent the smallest of impulses on the appropriately titled, "Short Crush". Soft 8-bit breakdowns lay beside a snapping loop and pretty boy-girl duet, all accented with the type of lyrics that make most intimate sense to 19-year-olds who wrote them. But if "Short Crush" lacks a certain universalism, it still manages to strike a deep sonic chord with anyone who ever loved Give Up, a new generation of painful bedroom pop for the kinds of thoughts and minor terrors that, understandably, never left the bedroom in the first place.

There Is Danger :: "Passport"

The charming last movement of There Is Danger's latest single, "Passport" offers singer Illya Riske riding down the back of a cascading melody and a mantra, "All I wanted was adventure." It sounds vaguely apologetic, the final iteration of a song that has Riske admitting, "I keep my passport in pocket" and "I fall in love in every city", a love song to wanderlust and all her terrible drivers. The sounds are dreamy and spirited, lo-fi and ambitious, a little prop plane rock song that buzzes low over the trees. Appropriately, Riske ends not with an apology but a demand, "Just give me adventure." Both he and his listeners won't be disappointed by what the next movement brings, a national tour and unfolding recognition, one of the best independent bands in this vein since Throw Me The Statue and Youth Lagoon.

Tideup :: "Beaches" and "Walk"

Orlando's Tideup take their slow-drive electro-pop out to the backyard and let it drift on the surface of an in-ground pool. Both singles, "Beaches" and "Walk" are bedroom jams, full of sparkling lo-fi loops and taut drums. Vocalist, Noelle Indovino shimmers and shakes in a distant, full-bloom fecundity, backed by the instrumental architecture of her collaborator, Ben Guzman. It's a night drive through a suburbia with no zoning laws; it's the terrible beauty of the afternoon strip mall, the subdivision, the backyard and all that lies beyond.