Darlings' grungy garage rock brings back some 90s nostalgia, with that kind of attitude that is lackadaisical yet sounding effortlessly put together. Their simple-yet-extremely-catchy hooks got stuck in my head almost immediately. The first song off their new EP, Warma, titled "Dont' Be So Hard on Yourself" may bring to mind the catchy boy/girl harmonies of The Rentals. They have that trade-off on vocals, but the song is decidedly more guitar-driven than synth driven. The second song, "Spit It Out"…

People get antsy, if not downright angry, when they can’t easily categorize an artist. Gilbere Forte’ has those people close to crawling out of their skins. The Philadelphia-based rapper (singer, songwriter, producer) realizes this, devoting a post on his blog to the questions surrounding him. “Who am I? Where did I come from? What lane is he trying to be in?” he writes. Early last year, he dropped the single “Black Chukkas,” an unsettlingly off-kilter record that sounds like the…

Genre: Electronic/Rock   Sounds like: part Of Montreal, a bit of Franz Ferdinand maybe, and a whole lot of originality I enter Moving Units’ new EP, Tension War, with a somewhat tabula rasa mindset.  I know nothing of Moving Units outside of seeing them on the Coachella 2011 line-up (they play Friday, April 15th. Add that business to your Coachooser.) and knowing that a single track of theirs, “Pink Redemption” has found its way onto my workout playlist and has pushed…

Bedroom-crafted tracks meet otherworldly vocals in an exciting new noise pop duo from England, Echo Lake. Echo Lake’s debut EP, Young Silence, is a dreamlike trip through strange worlds. One track can sound like you’re floating through the air on a cloud, while the next feels like floating through a vast undersea landscape. I’m not usually a big fan of noise pop, which I am told I have to listen to cranked loud while I drift in and out of…