10 New Artists You Need to Know: February 2014

Photo: Shawn Brackbill

Nothing

Sounds Like: Old-stock alt-rock cut from the same guitar cord that connected My Bloody Valentine to A Place to Bury Strangers

For Fans Of: Smashing Pumpkins, Hum, MTV’s 120 Minutes circa 1994

Why You Should Pay Attention: These Philly-based hardcore expats formed this noise-pop group in 2011, but the huffy vocals and alternately jangly and static-y guitar lines on their debut LP, Guilty of Everything, sound as though they were excavated from the geological ruins of the first Bush Administration. Frontman Dominic Palermo plays fuzzy, Buzz Bin-ready riffs and ”“ like so many bands in the early Nineties ”“ he can only muster enough “voice” to qualify as a really loud whisperer. The lyrics on Guilty of Everything are personal too: Palermo finally felt comfortable enough to write about an early 2000s two-year prison sentence for a stabbing. Not that they’re exactly a serious bunch. “Our new bass player, Nick [Bassett], pranked me when we were touring with his other band, Whirr,” says Palermo. “He and his bandmates put my phone number on a Craigslist ad for free Pepsi memorabilia when we toured the south. It said that when you called, you had to say, ”˜Gimme that free Pepsi,’ so I kept getting calls from literally hundreds of hillbillies trying to score some free Pepsi.” by KORY GROW

They Say: ”I’d hate to be called anything besides a punk band; I don’t really like the term ”˜shoegaze,’” says Palermo. “That word gets thrown around so much these days that I would hate to even be attached to it. Anybody who has a delay pedal and a reverb pedal, go grab a Jazzmaster and you’re a shoegaze band now.”

Hear for Yourself: The nightmarish, slow-mo noisescape that is “Dig”: