Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from the charts at BlogFreshRadio.

The Band: Ting Tings
The Buzz: British boy/girl duo dish out dance tracks done up in neon; find themselves scoring iPod ads and Gossip Girl.
Listen If: The first thing you did with GarageBand was make a Lily Allen/Franz Ferdinand mashup.
Key Track: "Shut Up and Let Me Go," which updates the guitar strut of Blondie's "Rapture" with lyrics about getting off and getting angry.

The Band: Ponytail
The Buzz: Bonkers Baltimore band creates chaotic compositions bursting with joy, possibility and life.
Listen If: You're tired of pasty whiners and want music that sounds like a series of exclamation points.
Key Track: The spectacular "Beg Waves," where a breathless strum does battle with vocalist Molly Siegel's euphoric ululations, resulting in a song that lifts the spirit while blowing the mind.

The Band: HEALTH
The Buzz: LA noise band have just dropped a remix album, adding a little rhythm to their sturm und drang.
Listen If: You always thought what free jazz was missing was a wicked backbeat.
Key Track: "Triceratops (Cfcf Remix)," which starts like the Halloween theme and ends with what sounds like a screaming keytar — which is a whole different kind of scary.

[Photo: Getty]

Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from the charts at BlogFreshRadio.

The Band: Ratatat
The Buzz: Brooklyn duo makes clever, clattering floor-fillers with nods to both rock and techno.
Listen If: You play guitar along to Daft Punk tracks because you're plagued by the feeling something's missing.
Key Track: "Shiller" is his latest, and it's so controlled and restrained it's almost taunting: nothing but music box synthesizers and an ominous bass thrum.

The Band: This Is Ivy League
The Buzz: Covert crew members on the Cobra Starship go undercover as twee-hugging indiepoppers. In fairness: they were in Ivy League first, but someone has to pay for that Snakes on a Plane song.
Listen If: You do the bulk of your record shopping in the dollar bins at Salvation Army and know your Left Banke from your Free Design.
Key Track: "Love is Impossible," which scoots along on sugared-up percussion, decked out with bleary brass and broad, bright strumming.

The Band: Spiritualized
The Buzz: Rock vets break a long hibernation with a song that trades their druggy majesty for genuine penitnence.
Listen If: You wish there was a little more room for imperfection (and songs about the same) on the pop charts.
Key Track: "Soul on Fire," from the forthcoming Songs in A&E, which is about the best junkie-gospel this side of Marianne Faithfull.

Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from the charts at BlogFreshRadio.

The Band: Radio Dept.
The Buzz: Swedish indie poppers who've edged gradually away from shoegaze toward some coy approximation of the Cure's Disintegration
Listen If: You wear black on the outside, because black is how you feel on the inside.
Key Track: "Freddie & the Trojan Horse," from their forthcoming EP of the same name, where dour vocals do battle with thwacking percussion and neon-blue guitars.

The Band: Mr. Gnome
The Buzz: OK, full confession: we didn't even know there was a band called Mr. Gnome until we looked at the BFR charts. And we keep up on this stuff. So, buzz? They're a duo from Cleveland named Mr. Gnome. Any questions?
Listen If: Good god, man, they're called Mr. Gnome! How many more reasons do you need?
Key Track: The excellent "Night of the Crickets," where great swipes of serrated guitar slash across Nicole Barille's gooey vocals. The absolute antidote to all those shrinking violets we've been big upping lately.

The Band: Brendan Canning
The Buzz: Canning is a member of Broken Social Scene, whose solo record Something for All of Us will be released in July.
Listen If: You like pop music scuffed up with grimy guitars, or you are Facebook friends with someone who plays in Broken Social Scene (which, let's face it, you probably are).
Key Track: "Hit the Wall" is the one that's turning up, and it buries Canning's tiny voice deep beneath squawking guitars and groaning bass. It's fevered and frenetic and contains exactly the measure of paranoia you'd expect from someone who belongs to what's essentially a musical cult.

Every week, Hit or Hype wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from the charts at BlogFreshRadio.

The Band: CSS
The Buzz: CSS means Cansei de Ser Sexy, which in turn means "Tired of being sexy." Fittingly, this Brazilian group pairs sly, self-aware lyrics with bright, buoyant pop.
Listen If: You're itching for an update of Cibo Matto's giddy electro.
Key Track: "Rat is Dead (Rage)," which sounds like Sonic Youth if Sonic Youth finally decided to give in and write that radio pop song.

The Band: Sloan
The Buzz: Power-pop vets return with another record of sunshine supersongs.
Listen If: Your idea of "bubblegum pop" is the Raspberries and mid-period Kinks.
Key Track: The Sloan catalog is vast and work exploring, but the current Key Track is "Witch's Wand," where a steady guitar chug is illuminated by bursts of vocal harmony.

The Band: South
The Buzz: Decade-old UK pop band returns with new record, same sound.
Listen If: You spend days dreaming of the intersection of Britpop and indie rock.
Key Track: "Better Things," a light and lovely bit of folk-pop that takes its time arriving at its yearning chorus.

[Photo: Getty]

Every week, Hit or Hype wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from the charts at BlogFreshRadio.

The Band: Santogold
The Buzz: Philly by-way-of-Brooklyn vocalist reinvents '80s pop, garners repeated and inexplicable M.I.A. comparisons.
Listen If: You wish Siouxsie & the Banshees had occasionally killed time with King Tubby.
Key Track: "Lights Out," where bright, skating synths provide the support for Santogold's aching falsetto.

The Band: M83
The Buzz: French producer makes 70mm songs for John Hughes movies yet to be filmed.
Listen If: You like Daydreaming about New Order covers of Kate Bush songs — or vice-versa.
Key Track: "Graveyard Girl," which somehow turns Joy Division's "Atmosphere" into a bright summer pop song. If you're not pumping your fist by the spoken word section ("I'm fifteen years old, and I feel it's already too late to live"), you probably have never had an unrequited teenage crush.

The Band: No Age
The Buzz: L.A. outfit rides chaotic live reputation to create droney, lo-fi albums that restore much-needed scuzz and atonality to the increasingly (and depressingly) polite world of indie rock.
Listen If: You think melody is optional (we do, too) and prefer volume to structure.
Key Track: "Eraser," which boasts serrated, detuned no-wave guitars, sloppy, off-tempo percussion, hollered vocals and buckets and buckets of charm.

Every week, Hit or Hype wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from the charts at BlogFreshRadio.

The Band: The Last Shadow Puppets
The Buzz: Alex from Arctic Monkeys & Miles of the Rascals.
Listen If You Like: Playing Parklife while watching The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
Key Track: "Age of Understatement," which sounds like an outtake from the soundtrack from some mod western, full of clomping percussion, twitching guitar and a string section that swirls like a lasso.

The Band: Frightened Rabbit
The Buzz: Scottish quartet finds catharsis through rock.
Listen If You Like: Sobbing along to the Frames while flipping through pics of the ex.
Key Track: "The Modern Leper," where a dry acoustic strum builds to a thundering, pleading chorus.

The Band: The Black Angels
The Buzz: Stonerrific psych rock.
Listen If You Like: Standing on your neighbor's lawn in a black cloak, lit torch held high.
Key Track: "You on the Run," which marries doomy guitars to even doomier drums.

Every week, Hit or Hype wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from the charts at BlogFreshRadio.

El Perro Del Mar: Another solo artist disguised as a band, Swedish chanteuse Sarah Assbring has been painting pop music blue since 2005. Her music is a coy inversion of the girl group format: take shoop-shoop vocals, hand claps, finger snaps and lyrics about love and longing and sloooowww theeeem dowwwwwwn. Assbring's voice goes way up high and on songs like "Jubilee," where she's cooing softly over a pan flute, it's almost as if she's imparting some kind of mossy, ancient wisdom.

Man Man: Is there some kind of "safe space" between "Hit" and "Hype?" Can we invent one? This Philadelphia quartet is astonishing in a live setting: full-on bonkers and unwound, pushing their music and their antics to the edges of acceptibility. On record, though, they've never quite captured that manic sound. Despite a new label (Anti-) and cleaner production, Man Man's latest still feels a little schticky and, well, polite.

Cut/Copy: The Australian band Cut Copy — essentially the brainchild of one Dan Whitford — is operating a solid twenty years behind everyone else on this list. The songs on their latest record, In Ghost Colours, are jittery electro pastiches that pluck up shiny shards of OMD and Depeche Mode and incorporate them into a sweet, pulsing whole. There's nothing wrong with that, but adopting a pose that's so insistently retro begins to seem less like a career-maker and more like a casualty.

Every week, Hit or Hype looks to wade through the buzz to determine which blog-favorite bands are the best of the bunch. This week: a few choice picks from the charts at BlogFreshRadio.

Lykke Li: First things first: it's pronounced "Lick-ee Lee." This Swedish vocalist has been gaining traction online for a while now, but enthusiasm skyrocketed after a series of sensational shows at South By Southwest. Her songs are terrifically coy, full of longing and hesitation. Take breakout hit "A Little Bit": the song consists of nothing much aside from a steady bass thrum and Li's fluttering voice, but the instant she starts skipping across that angelic chorus, it's curtains for your resistance. Verdict: HIT

The Mae Shi: This Los Angeles quartet has been kicking around for four years now but, like Lykke Li, they used this year's South By Southwest as a kind of self-contained tour, playing nearly 20 shows over the course of the week. Their music is blissfully chaotic, pulling equally from hardcore and schoolyard chants and computer-pop and built around gang-style choruses. They can be a bit obnoxious, but separate their songs from their demeanor, and there's more than enough memorable bedlam to satisfy. Verdict: HIT

Fleet Foxes: Recently signed to Seattle indie behemoth SubPop, this Washington quintet occupies that same intersection where '70s AM radio meets '00s indie rock (you can hear equal parts Neil Young and Rogue Wave in their music). There's nothing specifically wrong with Fleet Foxes, but haven't we had enough of cottony falsetto and twinkling acoustic guitars? The full-length could prove us wrong, but the songs on their EP are so wan that they're almost airless. Verdict: For now, we're saying HYPE