Daylight Basement delivers a series of black fingernail-scraping hooks, lipstick-smeared melodies, and tight rhythms encased in red leather pants, while Loughlin lovingly displays the width of her personality, from fire-band assertive to disarmingly vulnerable.

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This quintet is more than a sappy self-indulgent shoe-gazing band; these boys and girl mix their elixir with equal parts spine-vibrating rhythms, toe-tapping melodies, and honest insightful lyrics.

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This is a more interesting album than you would assume from the Devo-derivative bondage-imagery of the cover, which sort of makes the insubstantial nods to the past seem like an obtrusive gimmick.

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Armed with real bass skills, acoustic trills, ghetto blasters, noise-makers, bullhorn, distorted microphones and gadgets of all type, his art dances.

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The band Vetiver is the music of Andy Cabic who, though he has been placed in the dim and sultry avant-solk spotlight by pal and housemate and aesthetic comrade Devenda Barnhart, is worthy of consuming without any knowledge of where it is grown or who cultivates it.

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It's the tale of a relatively unknown indie band from the crowded scene in New York City releasing its debut album on a web-based indie distributor without a label that has caught on thanks to relentless touring and positive word of mouth.

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As the haunted flow of the ballads — and this is pretty much a solid album of ballads — grow around and over you like some sort of wintry kudzu, the pricks from the thorns in the lyrics can barely be felt by the overwhelming lovely outpouring of it all.

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Portland band Climber have created a very melodic bit of electro-pop with their self-titled EP, one that swims around in your heart like a very comfortable fish.

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Like the two guys in They Might Be Giants, Padilla is a humble weirdo with something to say, and though sometimes it's just an observation to make you laugh, it also inevitably makes you think, in spite of its gentle humor.

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The depth of talent showcased on Division is truly spectacular; the songs are highly refined, intricate, and polished with a heavy dollop of panache.

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