Rolling Stone's Artists to Watch: The Rockers and Rappers Who Will Dominate 2007

The way The Academy Is...look at it, there's a battle for the ears of young rock fans. "When kids walk into Target or Wal-Mart, they're faced with the choice between groups like us and Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance or these shit-burger cock-rock bands like Hinder and Nickelback," says guitarist Mike Carden, whose pop-smart emo band is poised to follow Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco as the next major success story for Fueled by Ramen records, which releases TAI's second LP, Santi, in early April. "With any luck, these kids will choose us. That other stuff, it's just bad."

THE FORMULA (Fall Out Boy - Fat Guy) + Skid Row = The Academy Is...

SOUND Santi — the follow-up to TAI's 2005 debut, Almost Here — combines emo's heart-on-sleeve melodrama with a hard-rock swagger on memorable cuts such as "We've Got a Big Mess on Our Hands," "Bulls in Brooklyn," "Same Blood" and the sweeping ballad "Everything We Had."

MUST-HAVE TRACK "Seed"
This anthemic emo tune bares the tender underbelly of TAI's brash rock & roll pomp.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION While in high school, Carden and Academy frontman William Beckett hung out at Back to the Office, a club in Chicago's northwest suburbs that hosted early shows by Fall Out Boy and other bands in the city's tight knit post-hardcore scene. "The crowd was still really small," says Beckett, 22, a lithe pretty boy. "Every week, there would be the same fifteen kids there, and now those same fifteen kids are in the bands we tour with today." The pair recruited a few other local musicians and recorded their debut for Fueled by Ramen. As online buzz built, a series of tours with Something Corporate, the All-American Rejects and labelmates Fall Out Boy put the band on the map, helping push sales of Almost Here past 200,000 copies. This spring, the group is touring again with FOB, "But this time we're playing arenas," says Carden, 22.

LOST IN TRANSIT After winding down more than two years on the road with a grueling summer on 2006's Warped Tour, the Academy Is...headed to Los Angeles to team with producer Butch Walker on a new record. "On the flight there, I was writing in my lyric book," recalls Beckett. "It was the notebook I'd been using to scribble down my chicken-scratch ideas all summer. Then I realized I left it on the plane and completely freaked out." The first morning of recording, the rest of the band headed to the studio, and Beckett stayed in his room, panicking. "The music was going great, but the days were counting down until I had to start vocals. I moved into a dingy motel and did the rest of my writing there," he says. "I discovered that I have to be isolated to get to that level of creativity. I wouldn't want to lose my lyric book before the next record, but I'm actually glad it turned out the way it did, because there's something really spontaneous about the record as a result." JENNY ELISCU

Next: Mika

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