10 Artists to Watch 2006

>> Listen: Hear tunes from the Noisettes and other Artists to Watch.

Shingai Shoniwa, the twenty-four-year-old lead singer and bassist for London blues-punk trio the Noisettes, didn't plan to become a rock star. While attending art college in 2000, she spent time in the fringe-theater scene. Fellow student Dan Smith, meanwhile, was immersing himself in music. "He'd play in these ridiculous jam sessions - too many people strumming broken guitars thinking they're Syd Barrett," Shoniwa recalls. "I'd never joined in, until one day Dan was playing and I started singing along."

SOUND On What's the Time Mister Wolf - the band's debut LP, due in early '07 - the Noisettes merge Smith's bluesy guitar, Jamie Morrison's glam-metal drums and Shoniwa's violent and soulful vocals into a thrilling hybrid. With its jungle beats and staccato guitar, the lead single, "Iwe," sounds like an unhinged Erykah Badu fronting the Bad Brains, while the jazzy, cabaret-ish "Wind Blows Hot" shows the band's quirkier, less intense side. "There's a balladeer underneath the icy exterior of every Noisette," notes Shoniwa.

LIVE WIRES Self-described "gig sluts" who cut their teeth playing anywhere they could, the Noisettes quickly gained a reputation as one of Britain's rowdiest live bands. Shoniwa - in lame hot pants, fishnets and mismatched boots - flails around as shaggy giants Smith and Morrison bash away beside her. "The crowd might throw beer bottles at the chicken wire, like in The Blues Brothers," says Shoniwa. "But I'm only going to have this kind of audacity for so long. I might as well use it." ELIZABETH GOODMAN

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