alt J - Fitzpleasure

This song is consistently inconsistent. The lazy tra la la's in the beginning lead into True-Blood-theme-song sexytime bass, and then into silence right before it takes a shot of espresso and amps up again. It's like a moving rubex cube that never matches up, but it sounds hella good.

Glitter Pox rating: 96% rating

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The Glitter Pox

Au Revoir Simone - Fallen Snow

Au Revoir Simone has a similar sound to Laura Veirs or Rilo Kiley, but with a lonely holiday vibe. Even though the three part harmony has a diamond-pure tone to match the bell-like music, there's something to the soft singing that's less than uplifting. Fallen Snow evolves from major to minor and back to major with grace, as effortlessly pretty as it is sad.

Glitter Pox rating: 85% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Pop Etc - Keep It For Your Own

This song is subtly folk-styled on top of its more obvious night vibe, with the soft vocal melody in the verses and the upbeat backbeat stringed through the whole song. The piano bits sound like wind chimes, but the bass and later chorus keys contrast it into a song with a pop pulse. The music is darker than the vocals, so it gives this edge of confusion which somehow works for it.

Glitter Pox rating: 83% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

PVT - Nightfall

This song has a kind of Gotye 'Heart's a Mess' feel, but with deeper vocals and a darker fantasy. It's 90's throwback with video game love; dark and dangerous, but adventurous and anxious. The background vocals sound like voice samples being played on a keyboard, even though they don't sound synthetic - there's just an undeniable instrument quality in the way they're looped, sometimes even sounding like strings. It's one of those fuzzy dreamstate songs you can put on repeat for hours, with static echoes and distorted music.

Glitter Pox rating: 71% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

The Mynabirds - Disarm

Disarm is percussion on percussion on percussion on your heels through the whole song. The guitar has a melody that strings the vocals together, but it's the drumming that creates something solid to combat. It's like the music is making a wall the vocalist is singing against, until they both come up with a compromise and sync.

Glitter Pox rating: 86% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Peter Wolf Crier - Beach

Beach has a rain stick background and a completely organic vibe, the drumming sounding like it's done on a tin can under storm clouds. The double vocals throughout the song are layered and overlapped in a way that's natural, even though they sound like schizophrenic thought. The song goes quiet in the drained out static of the last few seconds, contrasting the sticky-sweet layers of frosted notes that made this song into a musical confection right before its sugar-high drop.

Glitter Pox rating: 84% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Sleeper Agent - Get It Daddy

Favorite lyrics: I'm not a baby no more.

The lead singer chick in this song really sounds like she could kick your ass, and it's great. It's consistently solid, but it's the breakdown that makes it gold. From upbeat to slow hard rocker bass with a Jack White inlay, it makes for the best downplay to the freedom of this song. And it's followed up by a vocalist switch that's very Jamie Hince-ish, so the reminiscent references this band has are top-notch. But this song has its own incomparable vibe to it, a roguish complex that brings a Skins-like naughty teenage road trip to mind.

Glitter Pox rating: 90% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Dan Croll - From Nowhere

This song starts like a garden breeze, with keyboard and drumpad taking place of songbirds, and then the bass comes in and slams the windows. It's a little like Miike Snow's 'Animal,' an artist that can similarly blend synth and grit. And instead of just fading out, the song echoes out, a repeat of verses and background vocals mixing together to bounce around cave walls all night.

Glitter Pox rating: 74% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Revolution, I Love You - Not So Sure

Not So Sure is lead by a shaky-voiced someone and backed with music you can dance to - especially the parts with the electric, metallic-zipper backbeat. It's like the music is full on robot and the shakiness in the vocals is full on human, and the mixture of the two makes one classyass transformer-like dance song.

Glitter Pox rating: 78% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Icky Blossoms - Perfect Vision

Favorite lyrics: I closed my eyes, I lost my mind

There's such a slow, lazy rock feel to this song, with something peacefully chaotic about it and the way it builds a constant sonic mess of words and woahs. There are a lot of layered vocals with a monotony behind them, fading into straight smoky dance music, so that there's always either quietly dedicated boredom or pulsing percussion. It's just such an everlasting kind of song, like there's a lifetime in its six minute time slot.

Glitter Pox rating: 89% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Marble Sounds - The Time to Sleep

The Time to Sleep is a catchy haze of a song, with typewriter sounds and shivers of induced dreamstate melodies. Marble Sounds somehow made an upbeat lullaby in this one, a tuned paradox that insists on a happy coma. It's a song that's perfect for laying around and staring at ceilings.

Glitter Pox rating: 62% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Hannah Georgas - Elephant

Elephant has this silencing experience, like it perfectly captures the moment when a crowded space goes quiet. It really is like an elephant in the room, but a graceful one. Hannah Georgas' voice is like pure church bells, and the growing background has this reverse effect on it, like the polarity of her clean voice and the increasingly cacophonous music creates this balance of rough perfection. After you listen to Elephant 534982 times, go listen to her other songs, like Fantasize, which has this catchy-ass Breakfast Club feel, and yep, you're now a Hannah Georgas fan.

Glitter Pox rating: 81% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Fast Romantics - Funeral Song

Favorite lyrics: I set out to sail the moon and I came back so lonely

In 'Funeral Song,' Fast Romantics prove that dance and death go together. It's a song of constant motion, the guitar and drums mimicking each other in the background like a constant anxiety of something impending, but it's so catchy in its anxiousness that it tangles melodically in your brain. It's consistently dramatic, but not in an overtly theater-club way; it's just dramatic in the sense of being filled with something that makes you feel something.

Glitter Pox rating: 95% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

PAPA - Ain't It So

PAPA has Mikel Jollet-esque vocals, but with a piano lounge backdrop. The guitar progressions go from passive to aggressive, with an underlying cloud nine melody. Then there's a key change that revamps the song right at the end, like it's downing caffeine right before shutting the front door for the night.

Glitter Pox rating: 58% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Saint Saviour - Here In Me

This song sits at the bottom of a swamp, its muddy-water music sounding distant and faraway but simultaneously encompassing. The vocals are this crisp, clear film over it, like a layer of diamond on top of all the pond-life. It's gorgeous and unfiltered in a way that makes the contrast enchanting.

Glitter Pox rating: 81% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

AM & Shawn Lee - Somebody Like You

The melody behind the vocals in 'Somebody Like You' is so fluent while the music is so simultaneously disjointed, like the vocals are what's steady about this song more than the beat. It has this funky old feel to it, with quiet lyrics that are like intimate candlelight whispers, sweet nothings with a soundtrack.

Glitter Pox rating: 75% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Pegase - Without Reasons

Without Reasons has a water drop, one step beginning. A minute and a half in, though, new vocals and percussion builds up, nonstop until the open air ending. The whole song is a slow burning crescendo, smooth and progressively different.

Glitter Pox rating: 70% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Manila Kiddo - Golden Egoes

This song has the same thing that makes MGMT so listenable. It's involved, with bass and synth and cowbell and drumkit and everything ever. It's like a galaxy of instrumentation. Your brain just goes HAM when you hear this song, and it's entirely appealing.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Jukebox the Ghost - Somebody

'Somebody' starts with straight falsetto, the backdrop all happiness and handclaps. But after the facade of the first few seconds, you get the exact type of jaded bitterness that's so delicious in lyrics. Optimism and pessimism vibe off of each other like they're best friends 4evah in this song, contradicting the other but still wearing matching mood rings. The sound changes to match the lyrics, so it goes from sparklyglitterfunparty to brokenhearticecreambinge in seconds, but it's great because they compliment each other in a weird way.

Glitter Pox rating: 89% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Hustle Roses - Alive

'Alive' has this weirdly 'Love Shack' kind of catch to it, but with a bit of girrrrrl power that fits with the flirty lyrics and groovy back beats. The lyrics, with the whole "I'm in the business of being alive" bridge, fit the vein of songs that make you want to get off of your laptop and jump into nightlife, but with an addition of some fancyass synth chimes. It just has this whole Victoria's Secret runway vibe that makes it sultrily empowering.

Glitter Pox rating: 72% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Tanlines - Brothers

There's something so nonstandard about Tanlines. They've got some deep vocals, which in general automatically have this nostalgia of a different music generation, but Tanlines add shiny, quartz-like beats to back up their low-noted lyrics. They're the rare kind of band that can either chill you out or amp you up, like they're the overlap in a musical Venn diagram.

Glitter Pox rating: 74% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Now, Now - Dead Oaks

This song is short and quick and bitterly sweet. Dead Oaks is full of the repetitive thoughts that loop through your head when your mind won't shut off about something or someone.The looping doesn't end with the thoughts of the lyricist, either, because the melody of this song stays in your ear with the silent brainsinging of catchy beats. It just rolls over and over through your temporal bits, nonstop. It's like the happily unhealthy kind of space that fixation is a vice to, where obsession-laced insomnia leads into dreams.

Glitter Pox rating: 67% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Cameras - Defeatist

Favorite lyrics: There’s never been so much to fake

With that low Cure voice paired with a light mimic of softer vocals, this song has you at first harmony. The backup singing is gorgeous and entirely noticeable in a way it's usually not, and the background music is the same. It's continuous and builds an affect to the song that keeps it moving quickly - almost too quickly, like another verse or chorus could be added and you would still beg for more. There's not a lot of lyrics to this song, but there's something about the way they're arranged that's kind of brilliant and almost Bowie-ish. The video is pretty fantastic too: a murderous spoon-stealing wolf that makes the quirky bow-peep fall in love, a dark retelling of a child's fairy tale.

Glitter Pox rating: 85% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Skyler Stonestreet - A Little Taste

Favorite lyrics: baby I'm afraid but I like being frightened

Skyler Stonestreet has a Pierces harmony with Lana Del Rey's sassy sexiness. It just exudes that smoky Jazz feel: red lounge and mixed drinks, or old pinups taped behind an ancient radio. It's sultry, playful pop in its modern incarnation, but the static and syrupy singing add that old flapper era vibe to the song. It's kind of the perfect prohibition song, actually, all unlawful desire and addiction.

Glitter Pox rating: 78% contagious

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The Glitter Pox

Pepper Rabbit - Murder Room

Synthy and peppy, Murder Room has a Grouplove happy-as-hell catchy melody to it, and then you're hit with lyrics like "you will never come back / because I killed you dead." It's like Sweeney Todd, a chillingly dark song that has a smile to it.

Glitter Pox rating: 74% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Azure Ray - Scattered Like Leaves

Favorite lyrics: if you could guess how the world will end, would pockets of dreams be emptied into the wind and scattered like leaves?

Scattered Like Leaves' start is straight out of a dark rainforest - it's got this ethnic, cultural simplicity, like it belongs in Avatar or something. And then the vocals start, and the lead singer has this foggy quality that sounds like she knows all the secrets of the world - and they're not pretty secrets. The whole song has that secretive vibe, with an urgency and warning to it inside the calm sweet vocals; it's like a poison dart frog all beautiful and ready to kill.

Glitter Pox rating: 75% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Matthew Hemerlein - Gyllenhaal Sandwhich

This song we initially listened to because its title reminded us of Jake Gyllenhaal and we're shallow, but it ended up being entirely brilliant. It has a gorgeous string beginning that morphs into a type of Japanese club waltz, like you could dance into it and never find your way out. Matthew Hemerlein has that Andrew Bird vibe, with unexpected string instrumental and the lyrics of someone who has exuberant amounts of inspiration. The whole song feels very mysterious, with vocals that sound like ghostly whispers and layers of relentless depth in its music. Gyllenhaal Sandwhich is like an abandoned mansion you could explore for days.

Glitter Pox rating: 90% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Hey Ocean! - Alleyways

Hey Ocean! is one of those feel-good bands that make you like people a little bit more. They're like a giant flannel blanket of music, their sound is so freaking comforting. There's a cleanness to their songs, but the vocals have that Ray Lamontagne thing, when a singer is able to somehow project their voice as both smooth and gritty; it's like putting bells on a rhythm stick. They play so well together, too - if you check out some of their music videos, it's easy to see they're tight-knit and and that they genuinely enjoy making music, which is kind of important. Thumbs up.

Glitter Pox rating: 67% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Niki & the Dove - The Fox

Favorite lyrics: I've grown a handsome tall tree, mother/ And I want to bear a fruit for you/ And I've carried your fears and your hopes, father/ I will concur them for me and you

The Fox is 80's Cyndi Lauper meets indie orchestral genius. It has a slow-motion, window smashing effect that's consistently hypnotizing with the vocals, which switch between playful, sultry, and serious. It just has such a huge sound, with atomic-bomb bass and a continuous beat that seems almost irregular, like an off-kilter chase. Some music sounds confined into a certain space, and other music sounds like it has the entire world to fill up. This song is the latter, making The Fox straight audial addiction.

Glitter Pox rating: 97% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Reptar - Sebastian

'Sebastian' has a spacey intro that dead-drops you into an island's heatwave. It's both breezy and chaotic, with such a back-and-forth pacing of peacefulness and disorientation that you don't know whether to listen to it on a hammock or while running for your life. Midsong, the vocals get funky, away from the springy happiness of the beginning melody, before flipping back into the same summer-swim vibe as the start. It's like the switch from a murderous deathglare to a genuine smile, that transition. It makes the vocals entirely unpredictable; sometimes the lyrics are blurred together and other times they're enunciated or shouted through gritted teeth. The music's the same way - it has a really tribal feel, with that quirky as hell Oberhofer similarity, but even though it's so wildly everywhere, the percussion grounds the song. There's so much going on in it that when the last note hits, you're left hyperaware.

Glitter Pox rating: 79% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Tigertown - Lions and Witches

The melody that starts Lions and Witches is the liveliest intro in non-electronic music you'll hear all week. The same melody makes it's way back into the chorus but it's layered under these magically dreamy harmonies that weave in between drumbeats with a really ethereal adventure sound to them. There's an innocent curiosity to the whole song that's replicated by the otherworldly lyrics and Narnia-ish vibe/reference, like you can almost feel yourself parting leafy tree branches to see something new behind them.

Glitter Pox rating: 60% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Cheers Elephant - Get Ya

Get Ya! switches between bored monologue and self-proclaimed insanity. It's like the song's having sets of glorious mood swings, the pacing changes so often but so naturally. Compared to some of their other songs, like 'Leaves,' with a hyperfast melody and slow vocals, or 'Doin' it, Right,' with straight poprock sass, this band obviously likes to experiment with different sounds. Get Ya has this solidly independent, unconventional feel - all bands obviously have inspirations, but it seems like Cheers Elephant has their own definable thing, especially in the coffee-sipping to cavalry-leading vibe change this song has.

Glitter Pox rating: 73% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Low Roar - Help Me

Favorite lyrics: Bones made of glass, I'm starving for someone to feel my blood, my skin.

This entire song is like an echo; the vocals barely pause, long notes running into each other like a string instrument that effectively leaves traces of itself behind. It has the cathartic sadness of bands like The Antlers, with a song that destroys you but leaves you comforted in some kind of numb way. Musically, there's a definite tide to Help Me, with slow strums pulling into the crescendo of overlapping voices before edging out into wariness. The percussion is what makes this embedded song the 'special version' and it adds an element that takes it from sad to soulful, though the acoustic version has just as much impact. Both versions have this eroded intensity, with a sleepy, hollowed melody that's impossible not to sink into.

Glitter Pox rating: 85% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Devin - You're Mine

Favorite lyrics: Oh, they gotta tear the hooks out my heart / So it keeps from breaking

This song is perfection for a punk swing-dance. It has an old fashion edge to the music, but the vocals are so strung out and high energy that it's also fully modern. It has the hotshit checkmark apropos for a good stereo-blasting song, one that makes you feel like everything around you is instantly breakable and you're the one to break it.

Glitter Pox rating: 71% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Doldrums - Copper Girl

The music carries Copper Girl as much as the hazy vocals - they accentuate each other into this dreamlike state that the whole song has. It starts off slow and sweet for a few seconds, until something dark gets dipped into it and it becomes more tainted the longer it goes on. It has a kind of Sleep Party People thing going on, a creepy sinister innocence vibe.

Glitter Pox rating: 78% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

You Go Running - Deep Sea Diver

Favorite lyrics: you watch your lips pulse to the beat of trouble

This song starts with laughter and shouts, a kind of prologue for the dancing you'll be doing. There are few bands who manage the quirky nonchalance as easily as Deep Sea Diver does in this song, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. There's just a catch to their songs that makes them unforgettable, and You Go Running has that. It switches beats so effortlessly and flawlessly, with enough seamless movement in the riffs to make it lively. Near the end, right when you get into the routine of the song, it stops into a drum breakdown and then a new melody picks up. It's consistently refreshing until the end, never falling into what you'd expect.

Glitter Pox rating: 82% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Bad Veins - Devil Hides

Favorite lyrics: you can't give up cuz I give up the most

Devil Hides sounds like a science experiment, with bites and rattles like a sped-up Animal Planet commercial; it sounds like a hunter lazily enjoying its prey or a flower blooming in hyper speed, something beautiful but intimidating. There's a steady static sound with an abundance of definition throughout the entire song, making the ending sound somehow more silent than before you even started listening to it. The music is the obvious catch, but there's a wariness in the vocals that becomes more intensive the longer you listen.

Glitter Pox rating: 66% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Harrison Hudson - Indie Rock N Roll Queen

Favorite lyrics: oh don't look now, there there she goes again. oh my lord no, my heart is following

We really love us some songs about femme fatales. Indie Rock N Roll Queen has a rock sound in some of its verses like you'd think, but it's also mixed with a catchy indiepop chorus. Harrison Hudson has this quirky 90s TV-special vibe, a band you'd expect to see playing in front of ice cream-colored comic book POWs. All of their songs have this retro rock feel with an innocence to it, so the edge in this song immediately makes you stop and listen. We've seen them live twice, and both times they stood out because each song is seemingly about a different person. Listening to their album is basically just meeting a cast of characters through music, more so than most artists manage, and it's like being invited into a party full of strangers whose life stories you get the instant you greet them. And it's a pretty party.

Glitter Pox rating: 88% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Gentlemen Hall - Makes Me Feel Alive

'Makes Me Feel Alive' starts with a hip hop beat, some combination of Eminem and Sisqo that you would never expect to hear alongside a band that labels themselves "flute pop." There are so many different elements to this four minute song that it's almost like switching the radio through stations, the vocalists matching the changes fluidly. There are two lead singers in Gentlemen Hall and they harmonize in this song, a high and low contrast that perfectly matches the pacing, but they also break off so that they're both individualized in the rest of their songs, adding even more of a dynamic to the band.

Glitter Pox rating: 86% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Atlas Genuis - Back Seat

Favorite lyrics: We're complicated, but we're as simple as we wanted to be

Back Seat has an oldtune sound with a dancy vibe fueled by quick drumbeats and tambourine taps that echo through the whole song. There are layers of vocals that are looped like instruments, making it rely on a vocal beat as much as the percussion. The falsetto crescendo is the pull; the part that hooks in your head and drags you to the surface with an easy reel. Atlas Genius kind of have an overall effortlessly orchestrated feel in this song, like they took the time to make their music blend in just the right way so that the overlapping rhythms sound casually laid back.

Glitter Pox rating: 60% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Kopecky Family Band - Animal

Favorite lyrics: your mouth knows the kiss of danger / I want to hear

Soft and seductive, the beginning of 'Animal' is like the sensation of falling in lust. Passion is added with each instrument until the foundation of the song is strung out with music that's almost tangible. It's a really gradual transition, a barely perceptible change in tone that makes the song seem like it goes from a whisper to a yell, even though the vocals are constantly controlled.

Glitter Pox rating: 80% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Generationals - Greenleaf

Favorite lyrics: where did she get the stones to act so tough?

With a keyboard whose battery is plugged right into the sun and low vocals/bass tones, Greenleaf has an equal vibe of light and dark. It's layered, like the light melody is oil skimming on top of water, but the punchline of this song lives right in the center where the upbeat and downbeat meet. It has a kind of ice cream truck quality with a youthful innocence to it, but also a funky kind of bitterness.

Glitter Pox rating: 57% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Night Panther - Snudge

Favorite lyrics: Pulling out your tongue, / she's gonna' rip it out and / find news, find news.

Snudge is space disco for people with good brains in their head. "Dance music" is kind of associated with repetitive words and beats, but the lyrics in this song are verses full of twisted imagery. It's like someone went and took out all their favorite quotes from a book and put it in a song with some funky keyboard action. It's shoulder-shrugging music, that quirky modern remodeling of an older style that bands like The Drums are so good at doing - and, apparently, Night Panther.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Taken by Trees - Dreams

Favorite lyrics: I know a place that we can go and you can get back on your feet, boy.

With a Lana Del Rey indifferent vocalist and island-esque white noise beats, 'Dreams' is a song full of dance static. It has a very laid back, drifting, careless sound, like a sassy remix of a chill beach song. The build of the song is great, a wave of mellow melody with pulses of native music.

Glitter Pox rating: 68% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

RACES

RACES played at Cleveland's Beachland Tavern on their tour with Saint Motel, and they played good. We'd listened to their track Big Broom a lot, but hadn't fully delved into their album, Year of the Witch. That changed a lot after the show. Their vocals are basically flawless and the music that accompanies it is like small, contained explosives: it radiates from the center and just gets larger after it's played, like an instrumental collision game. Check this song out and you'll understand:

Even though they have softer songs, like 'Living Cruel and Rude', they have something really large about them. Followed up by 'Don't Be Cruel', it's like the tracks are playing entire lives inside of one album. The lyrics are well-written enough that they'd be good with almost any melody attached to them, but the way these songs are constructed and layered is really artistic. They're songs that are meant to have memories attached to them.

And the way the album ends is like it's all being ripped away, like those memories were stolen from you. So it's back to track #1 again.

Bunbury Festival

On the 13th-15th we made our way to the lovely city of Cincinnati to attend the first ever Bunbury Festival. We got there early to check out the set up and found out that the area is really easy to navigate, so we mapped out our schedule and smiled like idiots while we waited for our weekend of music to start.

The first band we checked out was Capital Cities, and they made the trumpet sound like it had thunder and lightning in it - it made their songs full of energy, and the dual vocals of two male lead singers worked perfectly with this band. It was a unique set up but it worked out into this incredibly quirky dance music. Perfect to wake us up on our first day.

After CC we saw Crash Kings, which is, I think, the first rock band we've gotten into that doesn't have guitar. The keyboard makes up for it with a whammy bar, though, and the bass is pretty heavy, so it works. We saw them a while ago, but it was really cool to hear some of their new stuff and the new band mates had great stage presence.

We stopped by to see Ra Ra Riot for a bit and say hi to some friends, but we'd seen RRR recently and were dying to rock out for Airborne Toxic Event, so we headed over to their stage and waited at the front. Seeing TATE is like an entirely different experience every time, because for as long as they've been doing live shows, they put everything they have into them. The lead singer engages the crowd more than any frontman we've seen, and their music is so incredibly easy to shout that it's impossible to stand in front of them and not have an amazing time.

We caught the last half of Foxy Shazam to end our Friday the 13th, and as usual with Foxy, it got weird. A really, really good kind of weird. The keyboardist crowd-surfed with his keyboard, still playing it with a wire trail leading back to the stage. The entire band is like a rockstar circus act, never letting a single mellow second pass. They're just all about a show, and you'll definitely get one if you see them.

Day two started out with seeing 1,2,3, who we've seen once before opening for Yellow Ostrich, and it was definitely a good start to the day. They have something really genuine and effortless about their music, so much so that it gets you amped up for a day full of it.

Then we checked out Imagine Dragons and even though we were way in the back, we danced in the grass and the sun. Their song Radioactive is amazing live, full of enough energy to reach way past the stage. We're gonna be seeing them again in a venue when they tour with Awolnation, so it'll be interesting to hear all that dance energy packed into closer quarters.

We took a break and chilled out for the rest of the day, catching part of Manchester Orchestra and part of Gaslight Anthem and then got up front for Grouplove, who were fantastic live. There were tons of giant inflatable beachballs being thrown around with glowsticks inside of them, so instead of just focusing on the stage, it was like the entire crowd was part of the show. Then after catching a few songs from Weezer, we headed back to our hotel.

Day three started with a lot of rain, so the sets were a little off (but were updated on the mobile app, which is awesome and kept everything organized.) So we got there in time to catch Pomegranates, which is a great band based in Cincinnati. It seems like they are music fans as much as they are musicians, and the influences in their songs are steady, but they have an original, modern sound.

Lights, who we caught the end of after Pomegranates, has a more pop sound, a kind of Paramore vibe that was upbeat and lively, even though we were all sundead. Afterward, we found some shade and caught the more mellow City and Colour. It was a big music genre shift, but it's great to have an eclectic festival to check out different types of artists.

After the rain, it got extremely hot so we were melting into the lawn. We put our umbrellas up for shade and listened to Margot and the Nuclear So and So's laying out on the grass. If you could get impregnated by sound, it would be by this band. They have a really intense tone that gets under your skin, and mixing it with the heat, it felt like it was drugging you into a kind of sunhaze.

Then, we woke ourselves up and got right into the crowd for Neon Trees. We've seen them live a few times (and will again in Cleveland in a couple weeks!) but this was the first time hearing most of their new album. We thought we had a fantastic time at the last couple of their shows, but it was like they took up every good moment of the weekend and just expelled it into the crowd. Tyler Glenn did a piano rendition of Your Surrender that reminded you how freaking talented his vocals are, followed up by some of their new songs that are so high energy you forget how to do anything but jump.

We ended the weekend by listening to Death Cab for Cutie on steps overlooking the lake and the city.

The atmosphere of the festival was great and the people were awesome - everyone was there to hear some good music (which there was definitely plenty of.) We suffered from some post Bunbury blues while heading back to Cleveland, but we're really excited to see who they have come next year. We'll be there.

Kids of 88 - Just a Little Bit

Kids of 88 adds just a little bit of flavor to your water. This song is the weirdest combination of pop mixed with Marilyn Manson growl, and it has a constant catchy beat, full of chorus. It's 100% dance, from the second it starts to the second it ends; a healthy dose of fun and guilty pleasure that should be played at every club ever.

GP rating: 91% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs - Alone in This Together

Favorite lyrics: Does it make you weak, is it something new / to admit you failed

This song starts off mellow, with just a guitar and vocal melody; but then the drums start, and they're straight determination. The lead singer's voice is torn and rigid, but full of emotion - and the music is the same, the powerful guitar solo being the point in the song that's wholly encompassing. The ending kind of is infinitely depressing, with the vocalist's voice trailing out, like the energy of the instruments just drained dry. The entire song is an on and off wave of strength and weakness, and it produces a kind of a slow extended-release reaction, like it's still stirring after it's over.

Glitter Pox rating: 72% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Margot and the Nuclear So and So's - Shannon

Favorite lyrics: I wanna have your babies, take your last name, oh, but I'm probably gonna just get drunk, Shannon.

'Shannon' is slinky and syrupy, like dirty honey; it's a dark song that pulls you in like a secret with its increasingly strange lyrics and smug vocals. Its baby-making bass leads into a sauntering kind of melody, like it's getting closer to you with each note. Margot and the Nuclear So & So's have a sound that screams of a filthy lullaby in this song.

Glitter Pox rating: 85% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Beat Connection - Palace Garden, 4am

We just saw Beat Connection play with White Arrows, and Palace Garden, live, is true to its lyrics: it makes you dance. All of their music does, really, but when a dance song talks about dancing, it's like a whirlwind paradox. It's a dreamy and foggy song, but the percussion kind of grounds it, so it's a mix of smoky airwaves and cemented beats.

Glitter Pox rating: 81% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Voxhaul Broadcast

Voxhaul Broadcast has a lot of variety in their music and their albums, but they always have really otherworldly guitar work. 'Turn the Knife' has a kind of Arcade Fire feel to it and the vocals have an 80s rock sound to them, but each of their songs are unique and melodically different (check out 'Leaving on the 5th' here). We saw them open for Airborne Toxic Event last year and they have a ton of energy, so if they're ever around you - they're playing the Troubadour on the 25th and you can check out their site for other events - check 'em out!

Ravens & Chimes - Arrow

Favorite lyrics: I hope the sun is pouring on you now

The piano is made a focal point in Arrow, and it just completely engulfs you. It's almost louder than the lyrics, but in a way that makes its notes of equal importance, spotlighting both the music and the vocals. The male vocalist sounds a little like Nate Ruess from Fun., that same unique artistry in his voice, and the female vocalist matches it and stands out just as much. It's a genuinely artful song, full of talent.

Glitter Pox rating: 57% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Local Natives - World News

Favorite lyrics: And a cloud covers your car at just the right time / for you to see the dark on your face / in the mirror

The melody for Local Native's 'World News' starts in the vocals, moving to the guitar and frenzied drumbeat only after establishing that these boys have some voices. The song is all about perspective and the story inside it is a simple one, but it's written so uniquely and with such a different approach that it's really heady. It holds a kind of delicate substance, and the song itself accomplishes the same effect as the character in the lyrics goes through, a shift in outlook even if it's just for a few minutes. It's a powerful song hidden in catchy music, a clever combination of depth and dance.

Glitter Pox rating: 68% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Signed ANNA SUN EP (Walk the Moon)

Walk the Moon (who we featured here in June 2011 and have subsequently repetitively listened to) is a pretty amazing band - they're four crazily energetic guys who put on a great show and if they're ever around you, we'd definitely recommend going. At one of their Cleveland shows, we got an EP signed (by Nick, Eli, and Kevin - we couldn't find Sean!) and we wanted to give it away to one of you guys! Here's what it looks like:

And here's what it sounds like:

It has three (amazing) songs: Tightrope, Anna Sun, and Next in Line. You can dance to all of them, and if you win you will. Just fill out the form below (we just need your name and email for now, unless you win.) The form might take a minute to load, but if you have any problems or questions, shoot us an email at theglitterpox@gmail.com. Good luck, and if you haven't checked out Walk the Moon's new CD, their self-titled album just released and you can check it out on itunes for a happy time.

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Incan Abraham - Beige

Beige starts with pure potential energy - enough that you can feel the musical chemicals mixing as the drumming starts to amp the song up. It's like it doesn't have an intro or verses or an end, but is more like a gradual blending of a musical procession. It goes from minimal instrument into a build up of sound waves, vocals adding in not to overlap the music but to be an additional instrument to drop into the tide of music peaking and receding.

Glitter Pox rating: 75% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Jungle Giants - No One Needs to Know

Favorite lyrics: while everybody's sleeping we're just quietly creeping out of our empty beds

The Jungle Giants are wild and sunshine-fueled energetic in this song. Music that sounds genuinely fun is what a summer soundtrack should be all about, and No One Needs to Know fits right into the middle of a perfect humid night's street-party playlist. It's full of drumming that makes you stomp your naked feet, guitar riffs that scream adventure, and vocals that hold the promise of a good time.

Glitter Pox rating: 68% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Daughter - Home

Favorite lyrics: Burned out flames should never re-ignite/ But I thought you might.../ Take me, Take me, home.

This song's entire tone begs to be among something familiar, a want to become part of a certain part of your life again. It's a song that lives in the past, but it has a small resistance to it, too, so it comes across as both desperate for and disastrously against the same desire. The vocalist plays around with her own voice as if she were trying new things with an old, well-used instrument; kind of like The Cranberries' quirky melody in 'Zombie', 'Home' has a unique vocal playground. Sometimes adding a lot of different style into a song is distracting from the passion in the lyrics, so a lot of singer/songwriters do better with acoustic, but Daughter has just the right mix of music and raw emotion, with a drum beat that sounds like a repetitive door-knock and moments of silence that fit well into the song. Daughter is just a really stand-out artist and entirely emotionally addicting; it'll be hard not to come back to Home's play button.

Glitter Pox rating: 89% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Lighthouse and the Whaler - White Days

The Lighthouse and the Whaler is from Cleveland, OH - where we live - but we've only recently discovered them. They have a great solidity of mellow melodies, bright xylophone, and happy hand-claps that make it a song that easily wins windows-down approval. It's a song that's really laid back, like something you'd listen to while reading outside by mason jar candles,but the lyrics are so personal, even though they're sung about someone else, that it connects as a harder hitting song than the music implies. There's something so validating about a singer observing the most intimate parts about someone that makes it almost more transcendentally emotional than if it were about the person actually singing it.

Glitter Pox rating: 70% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Young Man - Fate

We saw Young Man when they opened for Oberhofer, and they are just as flawless live as they are in this studio version. 'Fate' is a song that stuck out to us that night; it has enough movement with its climbing vocals to keep your attention, but it also has a sleepy tranquility to it. Toward the end of it, right when you expect it to be over, there's this great break down that completely changes the whole tone. Most of Young Man's songs on their newly released album, Vol 1, are lengthy, but there's enough change and refreshment in their music to make each of them unique and continuously interesting.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

White Arrows

White Arrows just released 'I Can Go,' a song that'll be on their new CD 'Dry Land is Not a Myth," released June 19th. This band blends its sound into a beat that's strong enough to survive as instrumental, but they also add vocals that manage to be both indifferently calming and restlessly dissident, similar in sound to one of our favorite bands, 123. 'I Can Go' definitely has that mix, with pan flute in the background of the chorus making it seem like a summer daze, followed by echoing vocals that you would probably hear whispering right before having a mental breakdown. Our favorite track of theirs is 'Get Gone,' with percussion and guitar riffs that pace the song like a sugar rush. Comparing the two, their CD will obviously have range, but it'll probably hit all of its targets dead center.

Glitter Pox rating: 83% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Animal Kingdom - Strange Attractor

This song manages both elegance and eccentricity, beginning like an echo and going into a soft falsetto followed by the deepness of a good bass drum. The contrast creates a song that has the quirky attractiveness the chorus is all about. It's not too sentimental, because the music adds depth to it, but the singer has the kind of soprano voice that generally only lives in pretty, mellow songs; the additions in the music, though, modernize it into something that catches your attention and keeps it.

Glitter Pox rating: 81% contagious

Hope you catch it,

the Glitter Pox

Tobias Fröberg - When We Go to War

Favorite lyrics: When we go to war I'll keep a picture of you in my heart

The string instruments hidden beneath the synth pop voice in this song are equal parts genius and enchanting. It's like an audio version of the movie Pleasantville, falling into a world that lacks color and slowly gaining it back as the overlay of ominous orchestral symphony fills in the silence of the most hollow parts of the song, like a mix of standstill and struggle. It doesn't have much musical resemblance, but there's something about the songwriting in When We Go to War that is comparable to Sufjan Stevens, the same style of lyrics that completely encompass some kind of common emotion in a rare way. You can put yourself on either side of this song and have it supply an instant reaction.

Glitter Pox rating: 92% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Clock Opera - Lesson No. 7

Favorite lyrics: You crouch like a hunter, seconds from a kill.

Dark, biting, and aggressive, Lesson No. 7 starts out as a hate list of attributes before the bass line hits, so heavy it falls onto your shoulders like a dead weight you want to shake off. Leading into lyrics about want, it's a song that holds a lot of desperation and disbelief, a dissonance of notes that are humanized by the vocalist's low, smooth sound; a voice that easily infects your mind in long counts of emotional cacophony. It's like a full-on musical attack, leaving you feeling like you did something wrong solely by the determination behind the song.

Glitter Pox rating: 82% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Paper Kites - Featherstone

Favorite lyrics: when you go what you leave is a work of art / on my chest on my heart

The Paper Kites have a kind of Avett Brothers thing going on in Featherstone. It's calm, but has a long distance top-of-the-world feeling, with a steady clock-ticking beat in the background that grounds the music to something earthly. It's rare to find a song with a sad story that's still optimistic, but because of it Featherstone has a kind of take-on-anything mood, like being at the beginning of something new.

Glitter Pox rating: 70% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Lumineers - Ho Hey

Favorite lyrics: I don't know where I went wrong / but I can write a song

The Lumineers have that extra something that defines them as good folk music, where the rawness of the vocals and the ingenuity of the percussion draws you in. It's a simple song, but it sounds like it's being sung outdoors, with a group of people stomping their feet, which is also a characteristic of the best kind of folk music - where the listeners feel genuinely involved in the music. 'Ho Hey' has a similar sound to Of Monsters and Men, with a feel to it that's as inviting as a summer bonfire.

Glitter Pox rating: 68% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Headphone - Ghostwriter

Favorite lyrics: I'm not even here.

This is like an audio version of an experience like The Bell Jar, a descent into something nonsensical but acknowledged by the writer in clipped, tangent lyrics of stream of conscious thoughts. The song is very solid all the way through, like footsteps in tandem being overlaid with more intricate beats. It's a personal song, but in an almost controlled-chaos kind of way, like the lyrics are the interior and the music the exterior of a person slowly disintegrating.

Glitter Pox rating: 74% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Features - Lions

Favorite lyrics: Not even lions can tear us apart

This song is like trying to force two musical magnets apart, the intro beat is so push-and-pull; but you want to be right in between those sassy magnets, feeling their unbalanced energy, because what they're giving off sounds really, really good. When it leads into the vocals, there's a tension break inside the calming voice of the singer, like an attempt at a resolution with the back-and-forth of the guitar progressions, until the music starts back up again and it blends into something universal. It's a very listenable song with a few layers of eccentricity that your ears will be happy about.

Glitter Pox rating: 82% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Jun Miyake - The Here and After

(track #2)

Favorite lyrics: night has thrown its heels at our door and stormed its way in, bidden / our feet in drunken incantations

Jun Miyake is a composer/musician who has collaborated with many other great musicians, and what's produced from his work with vocalist Lisa Papineau and the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra, in The Here and After, is something soft and tribal, a perfect fit for the dance movie, Pina, it was featured in. The vocals exercise an eerie but moving feeling, echoing a beauty and closeness to nature or spirit or something other than purely human, a kind of ethereal lightness. There are multiple instruments, from wind to brass, that jumble together into a masterpiece of a symphony to back up her voice, which makes it echo even louder. This song whispers to you in a way that makes you want to move in expression, but in the gentle whole-bodied flow that only dancers seem to achieve.

Glitter Pox rating: 90% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Best Friends With Wolves Club - Again and Again and Again

The Best Friends With Wolves Club - Again and Again and Again

With a Beirut-like intro and a vocalist with a sadistic love approach, this song is like a Halloween party for scorned lovers. It's a morbid storybook of characters that Tim Burton would probably adore. It's upbeat with a weirdly hopeful sound, for as bitterly pessimistic as the lyrics are; it's not the kind of words you'd expect to be accompanied by a ukulele, but it's all the better for it.

Glitter Pox rating: 66% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Bethan - Vague

This song is as subtly menacing as an unblinking stare, with haunting echoes and ocean waves in the background making it seem like a never-ending approach. It almost sounds like a storm being smothered. Whispering hisses and shaky vocals add to the solid strength of the singer, giving the sound a kind of wavering intensity. It's like whatever the history behind this song is, you can hear the effect of it in the music, but there's a power in it because of that.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Givers

Givers is a great group of musicians that offer up a different sound to each song, but with the same familiar feeling of jumpiness - like the music can't help but bounce. 'Up Up Up' is something you get more into each time you hear it. It's hard to find a song that can so easily and readily cheer someone up, and the way it's spaced is brilliant, slowing down to slowly feed you into the insanity of the chorus. It's kind of reminiscent of Grouplove's 'Colours,' in style and in general good vibrations. 'Meantime' feels like an entire album inside of four minutes; it transitions into so many different blends of music so smoothly that it seems much larger than a single song. 'Ceiling of Plankton' has a more indie rock singer/songwriter quality, but just when you think you know where the song is going, it surprises you in pacing and intensity. Definitely a group to become newly obsessed with.

Glitter Pox rating: 87% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Jhameel - The Human Condition

The Human Condition requires consistent movement, which is kind of the point of the song. If you were challenged to stand still while listening to this you'd probably fail, with its double vocal and catchy guitar. And while there's a lot of upbeat modern music, what makes it different is its lyrical content; when you hear a song about humanity, it's generally rough and critical and bitter, about killing the planet or the disconnection of feelings, and they're great because we're all a little angsty. But a song about a changing generation that's actually positive is refreshing. It's like a message against becoming jaded and for becoming alive, a kind of revolutionary speech in song - or at least one that doesn't make you hate people.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Howth - Wind Blows Cold

Favorite lyrics: "I have no fear that you'll disappear cause you were never here."

Wind Blows Cold is such a vulnerable song, it feels almost invasive, but it's something you can't shake once you hit play. The music occasionally stutters like it's having fits of something uncontrollable, like the heart murmur of someone about to face their fear. It just has so much passion in it, especially for being a song about someone that doesn't exist. As well as it's put together, there's still something incredibly raw about this song, like it's being sung in the exact moment the lyrics are being thought.

Glitter Pox rating: 91% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Leisure - Early Morning Skies

Early Morning Skies opens with a beat that sounds like something you'd listen to while staring at an optical illusion, funky and hypnotizing. It's like the inside of a lava lamp, slow bubbles of intense music slithering through one solid beat, with moments of monotony that make you crave the insanely hooking guitar sections. And the first introduction to the vocals is entirely inviting, begging you to fall into the smoky and syrupy music.

Glitter Pox rating: 83% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Magnetic North - Rackwick

Favorite lyrics*: What do you dream at night, when the lights' off? What do you feel in your heart at the highest? What do you see through your big green eyes? I wonder if you dream at all.

 In Rackwick, The Magnetic North has a kind of XX's feel, but with a more ethnic sound and with a bigger range of instruments, like classical but with the addition of electric synth. The fast-paced music works really well with the slow-paced lyrics, and the vocals have just as much going on as the music does. There's a Vampire Weekend voice-shimmy going on in the beginning, but it mellows out into organized whispers and soft singing. It's a song you discover more of each time you listen to it.

 *lyrics by ear, so here's hoping our ears are correct.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Balthazar - Fifteen Floors

Favorite lyrics: My sugar to feel her teeth

With a soft piano intro and a jazz beat, Balthazar has a Cake-like groove and easy flowing lyrics that parallel with the slow-tempo trumpet in the background. It has some lazy afternoon sinful vocals, ones you can practically hear sung with heavy-lidded eyes in a script-written, poetry-reading kind of way. It's a story that tells everything that happens through one pair of curtains, like a lyrical Rear Window.

Glitter Pox rating: 85% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Plants and Animals - Lightshow

Favorite lyrics: And I'm like an earthquake when I get thinking too much

Solid and shaky and with a beat like popcorn, Lightshow has a soft indie vibe with spontaneous rock solos that fade in and out of the song. The slow way it's mixed together has an Oasis feel; it's not always easy to find a song that does both mellow singer/songwriter and passionate rock really well, but this song definitely manages the seam between both.

Glitter Pox rating: 60% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Chapel Club - Blind

Favorite lyrics: This snake has left us with last year's skin.

Songs that feel like they're from the 80s mixed with more modern sounding melodies are easily catchable. It's kind of like The Cure (vocal wise) and Young the Giant (with that slow, drawn out but still upbeat music) made sound-babies. It actually has the kind of vibe that would be perfect for a The Perks of Being a Wallflower soundtrack, that feeling of being infinite while simultaneously being stuck on Earth with shaky relationships. And lyrics-wise, it has a lot of good moments; Blind starts with "Where to begin?" like you asked for a story and the singer is only responding to your question. It's one of those songs that takes up an entire room, like you can almost feel the sound waves leaking through the walls.

Glitter Pox rating: 80% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Real Fur - The Fool

Favorite lyrics: Will I catch the fool who catches you? Will I hunt him down and run him through, or will I be the fool to fake a smile as I watch him take you down the aisle?

The bass line for The Fool carries the song and sets the whole mood - and with sporadic, funky guitar riffs and random silence, it's pretty diverse. Even though it feels like something that could blasted on the beach, the lyrics have a melancholy feel. The music video also has its own kind of desperation and beauty. The mix of the song, about a man with a frantic need to to keep someone around, versus the video, with a girl violently determined to get away from something that's holding her back, is a kind of musical and visual contradiction that works really well.

Glitter Pox rating: 70% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Foreign Slippers - It All Starts Now

Favorite lyrics: the wind got tired of blowing us back into town.

It All Starts Now has an Airborne Toxic Event-esque chorus with a vocalist hailing from Sweden that really knows how to blend words and music. The album this track is on is titled 'Farewell to the Old Ghosts,' which is perfectly fitting for this song; it has the kind of airy optimism that makes you realize you have hours ahead of you that aren't spoken for yet. It's just always generally refreshing to hear a song that's both musically and lyrically fantastic in a purely talent-driven way, without any flashy additions.

Glitter Pox rating: 74% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Belligerents - Such a Crime

Favorite lyrics: Washed up on the rocks again
And I can't climb

The opening of Such a Crime has notes dropping in from everywhere, adding instruments as the song adds seconds in a way that completely changes the melody with each new progression. Vocals stay in tune with the bass in a chorus that makes you want to scream it back to the band, even if it's through the stereo. It goes from summer-jam to techno vibe to accented punk, and it makes the song really diverse. There's also a voice-over that almost gives it a creepy feel, like it's trying to become a voice in your head, and with the break down after the first chorus, it has this slight feeling like it's out to get you. And you'll probably let it, because it sounds really good.

Glitter Pox rating: 81% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Mansions - Seven Years

Fav Lyrics : If I don't believe in the afterlife does that mean I can't go?
Will it be me and me alone?

There's a Matthew Mayfield singer/songwriter vibe to this song that leaves you with a smoky burning feeling inside; the kind only great lyricists can accomplish, that can't be washed away by a followup pop song - it sticks there and it'll probably ruin your day in a good way. It's like crying during Where the Red Fern Grows, that depressed feeling that makes you somehow feel more alive. It's a powerful song, one you can really hear each word of - words that beg for empathy and definitely get it from these ears.

Glitter Pox rating: 76% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Black Lab - This Night

Favorite lyrics: Take this night and wrap it around me like a sheet. I know I'm not forgiven but I need a place to sleep.

This song belongs on a show like Dexter, right after somebody gets murdered. It's dark and deadly, like whispered confessions. It leaves you with a shocked feeling, like you have no idea what just happened but you know it's something incredibly intense and with a body count. The ethnic twist of instrument puts you in a kind of foreign headspace, too, which makes this song stand out.

Glitter Pox rating: 81% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Dø - Too Insistent

Favorite lyrics: Should we act like people
Who think they have seen it all
They're so indifferent

The Dø does it right. Such a melodramatic song, set to a trumpet-blaring orchestral arrangement, sends mixed emotions. It has a sound and a story for both love and loneliness, so it's fitting. The way the chorus is sung is catchy because it's full of light longing - it has emotion, but it's not too heavy that it's slowed down and prevented from looping in your head. It's a simple song with a minor twist that makes it stand out.

Glitter Pox rating: 63% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Jinja Safari - Forest Eyes

Fav lyrics: If I could design this day, I'd never let it get away.

Lion King + sunshine = this song. Everything about it is light, like the melody is floating aboveground and you have to keep reaching for it before it drifts away. Even the vocals are light and jumpy, like they can't stay grounded for too long. It doesn't use an excess of instruments or beats, but somehow it feels like an orchestra that pulls you in a million different musical directions until you throw away your compass and just run with it. This is what should be the soundtrack to every springtime adventure you get yourselves into.

Glitter Pox rating: 73% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

The Trouble With Templeton - Bleeders

Favorite lyrics: Fevers raging beneath those bones
But those tales you tell seem to hide you well.

It's hard to find a song that makes you want to sleep and amps you up, but there's both a soothing sound and an energetic, passionate side to Bleeders. It's a calm melody, but there's a lot behind it; right when you're about to close your eyes and fall asleep to the subtle sounds of exhale and consistently gorgeous guitar, the singer wakes you up with low calls of anger. And the story in the lyrics is really inclusive to the listener, like you're actually having this conversation full of bottled, unsaid words with an amazing background soundtrack.

Glitter Pox rating: 77% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

1,2,3 - Work

Favorite lyrics: There's one word that I would say to you, and it's a good word.

We saw 1,2,3 this week as an opening act for Yellow Ostrich, who we were really excited to see. We were casually sitting in tavern chairs and waiting for them to take the stage, not knowing that in three seconds 1,2,3's melodies would be some we'd be listening to nonstop for the next few days. We hadn't been this excited to buy a band's album in a while, despite the cover being distinctly creepy, because the taste of it that they played at the Beachland Tavern was infectious. Each of their songs has a different vibe, from old school rock to prom night slow dance to culturally-inspired intros; their music changes pace with each song, but they're not a new band still trying to find their sound - it's more like they're a band that can take any sound and make it theirs. They have well-written lyrics and a vocalist that sings in and out of his own voice, from subtle moans to falsetto growls. Mixed with some guitar work that grinds along your shoulder blades, drumming that makes you unconsciously tap along, and some tambourine/sleigh bells that rattle your mind, 1,2,3 knows how to serve some good music.

Glitter Pox rating: 98% contagious

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Modern Skirts - Jane Child

Favorite lyrics: I won't tear your heart out like those other men

'Jane Child' isn't exactly in tune or evenly paced, but it's definitely well crafted. It's like being in the mind of obsession, a song that is partly enchanting and completely creepy. It goes from lyrics sung with determination and without music, steadily seeping into singsong - like the song is gaining momentum in insanity. You start to feel like you're becoming obsessed with Jane Child, too, as much as her name floats through your head after listening.

Glitter Pox rating: 90%

Hope you catch it,
The Glitter Pox

Wildlife - Sea Dreamer

We saw Wildlife at Daytrotter's Barnstormer tour, which was a fantastic line-up of bands playing in the middle of nowhere, in barns that you find on back roads. It was a lot of fun, and Wildlife is a band we discovered through that - they were the first act that night, and even though the rest of the bands were all fantastic, it was hard to follow their performance (even with the lead singer in a cast.) Each of their songs has a melody that shakes you up and makes you grind your teeth, choruses of anger and Manchester Orchestra-equivalent passion. Check out their new video Sea Dreamer and find out for yourself.

Elizaveta - Meant

Favorite lyrics: If silence can kill, I know it can heal.

There's a Florence and Pierces combination in Elizaveta's voice that makes a sultry, bittersweet song out of Meant. Elizaveta actually studied opera; her music style doesn't suggest it strongly, but you can hear a hint of soft power in her vocals that's fitting, as if her musical studies were only unconsciously included. That makes it both theatrical and modern, like something you could listen to either on a movie score or through your car speakers. Each of her songs has a different contradiction, between soft vocals and loud bass or high notes and hand claps, her album Beatrix Runs is a varied mix of both bold singing and hurried whispers.

GP rating: 71% contagious

If you want to listen to the whole album, you can find it streaming on soundcloud here.

Console Warriors - Vicious Fishus

This song is contained chaos. If you poked a hole in it, it would be full Cage the Elephant crazy, but it has a more organized sound amid the disorganization, like someone that's barely being held back from a fight. And the breakdown is much more mellow, like the melody is pacing itself for another round of bruises. It's rough with a sexy bass line, memorable vocals, and good vibrations.

Rating: 65% contagious