Sleigh Bells have ridden their love of cheap beats and scorched-earth guitars into an almost Vampire Weekend-level hype storm. This Brooklyn duo keep it hilariously simple: neck-snapping hip-hop beats and blasts of gonzo riffage from producer Derek Miller; bratty, bubbly chant-singing from Alexis Krauss; everything air-raid-siren loud. Their debut suggests the White Stripes' White Blood Cells by way of M.I.A.'s Arular, noise that's friendly and cute, primitivism that masks pop smarts and respect for tradition, from New Wave to Sixties rock. Their most songful moment, "Rill Rill," samples Funkadelic and paraphrases "Subterranean Homesick Blues." They dig history. Wonder how they feel about staying power?

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.