Hamlet, Lars Van Trier, Lars Ulrich: Denmark has produced its share of overly-intense dudes. Now you can add these post-punk teens to the list. On their debut album Iceage replicate the tormented post-punk of very-early Joy Division, Wire and New York no-wave with evangelical fervor ­ it's like the ghost of Ian Curtis appeared to them in a holy vision (maybe after a night raiding their parents' liquor cabinet). Wicked guitar shards poke out of the bruising, twisting rumble as singer Elias Rønnenfelt fires off modernist doom chants like "Collapse! Collapse! Collapse!" and "I am white ruin!" His cold, imperious Nordic voice is more Ian Curtis than Curtis himself; it'd be kind of funny if it weren't so creepy.

Listen to tracks from New Brigade:

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“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"