The Band: Tempo No Tempo
The Buzz: A nervy, worked-up band from San Francisco, Tempo No Tempo have been kicking around for nearly four years now, getting steadily better while remaining stubbornly under the radar. Their latest EP should change all that: blending hurtling dance rhythms with jabbing, elbowing post-punk guitars, the group takes a literal approach to the notion of “panic at the disco.”
Listen If: Dancing stresses you out a little, and you want your music to reflect that anxiety.
Key Track: The terrifically severe “Kilometer,” where the clanging guitars feel like a starting bell, setting the song’s tense quiver in motion. Vocalist Tyler McCauley coos, “I could never wait for you,” and it’s true — no sooner does are the words out of his mouth than he vanishes, leaving us dead in the middle of a guitar solo that whips around as wildly as a cut power line. (more…)

Who: The 37-year-old son of Paul Simon, who’s casting out under his own name for the first time with his fall debut (read the RS review). Simon says the process of becoming a solo artist was a “journey of discovery” and though he was hesitant to step into the spotlight, “I realized, ‘If I don’t do this I’m going to regret it.’”

Sounds Like: Simon’s self-titled debut is a gorgeous collection of vintage-sounding country-folk tunes like the shuffling “Tennessee” and the dreamy psychedelic ballad “The Audit.” Have a listen to his Elliott Smith-esque “Shooting Star.” (more…)

The Band: Bang Bang Eche
The Buzz: New Zealand outfit fronted by one T’Nealle Worsley makes raw, riotous, ice-cold synth rock sharp enough to cut stale bread.
Listen If: You’re a DJ at a German nightclub looking for new tracks to power a long night.
Key Track: The raucous “4 to the Floor,” which is whipped around by a hyperactive guitar and Worsley’s stern vocal recitation. (more…)

Who: These folk-rock rookies started their career as the buzzy post-punk band Simon Dawes, co-fronted by ­Malibu native Taylor Goldsmith. But when the band’s other songwriter bowed out, the remaining members — Goldsmith, his brother Griffin (drums) and bassist Wylie Gelber — shortened the name and traded their Smiths rec­ords for plaid shirts and pedal steel. (more…)

The Band: Shrinebuilder
The Buzz: Shrinebuilder may be a relatively new band, but they’re hardly up-and-comers. Comprised of members of metal titans Scott Weinrich of St. Vitus, Al Cisneros of Sleep, the Melvins’ Dale Crover and Scott Kelly of Neurosis, the group binds together the best qualities of its significant legacy, making slow-moving metal that engulfs like a tar pit.
Listen If: You’ve ever waxed rhapsodic about Master of Reality — and especially if you have done so from the passenger seat of a Camaro.
Key Track: Seven-minute sludgefest “Pyramid of the Moon,” a heaving, hulking mass of riffs and groaned bocals that proves definitively that music doesn’t need to be fast to be punishing. (more…)

Who The U.K. synth-pop sensation — it’s scored two Top Five hits in England — consists of striking androgynous singer Elly Jackson and behind-the-scenes beatmaker Ben Langmaid (he refuses to be interviewed or photographed and doesn’t perform live). But Jackson is used to being the center of attention, for her hair — a red, Woody Woodpecker-style pouf — and her piercing voice. Says Jackson, “It’s a massively powerful instrument.”

Sounds Like Inspired by Eighties keyboard-and-vocal groups like the Human League and Yaz, La Roux’s tunes — which the pair cut in Langmaid’s living room — feature staccato synths over pulsing beats and Jackson’s insistent, high-pitched vocals. “I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell,” says Jackson. “But when I started going clubbing, I realized I didn’t want to sit on a chair with a guitar.” (more…)

The Band: Thao with the Get Down Stay Down
The Buzz: She may play the guitar with instruments as unconventional as a toothbrush and a pen, but the songs 25-year-old Virginian Thao Nguyen writes are sweet as honeycombs, as rich in detail as they are sparse in arrangement. And if that’s not appealing enough, she’s offering to write a personal song for a lucky fan to benefit the musicians’ organization CASH.
Listen If: You always wondered what Cat Power might sound like providing guest vocals for late-period Modest Mouse.
Key Track: “Know Better, Learn Faster,” where Nguyn’s surprisingly husky voice grounds a skipping guitar line, making the whole song sound like a giddy playground afternoon. (more…)

Who: Before this rising New York indie-pop quartet played a note together, they had a band name, a MySpace page and some shared tastes: “We loved loud, sort of enthusiastic, life-affirming pop like Yo La Tengo and Smashing Pumpkins,” says frontman and songwriter Kip Berman, “where there’s big guitars and everything’s right in the world.”

Sounds Like: February’s debut disc and the just-released Higher Than the Stars EP are dreamy and shimmery, with plenty of guitar fuzz — a deft update of late-Eighties and Nineties indie-and-alt rock, from 120 Minutes staples like Sonic Youth and the Cure to obscure, strum-heavy acts like Black Tambourine and the Pastels. “Even if things have been done before, it feels novel when you do them yourself,” says Berman. (more…)

Photo: Perou

The Band: Temper Trap
The Buzz: Rock and fashion have always enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, but in the case of the Temper Trap, the connection is more literal: this Australian band met at the Down Under equivalent of Urban Outfitters, ensuring they’d be well-dressed even if success proved elusive.
Listen If: INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” was your wedding song — or you want it to be.
Key Track: “Love Lost,” which manages an odd combination of Simply Red and Coldplay, pitting Dougy Mandagi’s emotive vocals against steady, determined guitars — a stirring hybrid of Britpop and soul. (more…)

Who: Michigan singer/multi-instrumentalist/producer whose month-old debut of retro-soul gems, A Strange Arrangement, is earning him fans like Justin Timberlake, Mark Ronson and John Mayer, who ­Tweeted, “Record of the year goes to Mayer Hawthorne,” and then invited the rookie to open for him on New Year’s Eve.

Sounds Like: Hawthorne’s self-produced tunes are an eerily accurate homage to the Motown hit machine: Think Funk Brothers-style grooves, luxuriant harmonies, Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting chops and sweetly naive vocals that recall Smokey Robinson and the Chi-Lites. “I always tell people, ‘It’s not a soul revival, it’s a good-songwriting revival,’ ” says the 30-year-old. “I try to write timeless material, so hopefully kids will be digging my albums 30 years from now like I’m digging Lamont Dozier right now.” (more…)

The Band: Memory Tapes
The Buzz: Ex-member of overlooked Philly punks Hail Social, Dave Hawk writes eerie, mysterious pop songs long on atmosphere and mood. This is no hipper-than-thou niche act: Hawk was recently contacted about remixing a Michael Jackson song for a posthumous collection.
Listen If: You’re slowly getting into this whole “chillwave” thing, but wish that chilly meant “spooky” as often as it meant “remote.”
Key Track: “Green Knight,” where Hawk’s unnaturally high voice glides over gently burbling percussion and strange, plaintive organs. It’s lovely and unsettling at the same time, like The Police’s “Wrapped Around Your Finger” sung by a choir of ghosts. (more…)

Who: Dead Man’s Bones finds Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling and his friend Zach Shields spinning fireside ghost stories into mesmerizing “Monster Mash” sing-alongs with the help of L.A.’s Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir.

Sounds like: The Arcade Fire, Tom Waits and the cast of Sesame Street performing a Kurt Weill musical. Gosling and Shields wanted to collaborate with kids from the start and cite the Langley Schools Music Project’s Innocence and Despair and Nancy Dupree’s Ghetto Reality — two affecting and endearing recordings of untrained grade schoolers singing — as inspiration. “When we first wrote the songs, all the vocals were for the children’s choir to sing,” Shields tells Rolling Stone. “We were never going to sing on the record. But when we were working out the parts for them, we started singing and decided to make it into a duo between us and the kids.” (more…)

Photo: myspace.com/basiamyspace

The Band: Basia Bulat
The Buzz: Canadian singer-songwriter returns with a second record that’s even stronger than her debut Oh, My Darling, applying her gently wavering voice to stark, dramatic folk songs.
Listen If: You still rep hard for 10,000 Maniacs’ In My Tribe.
Key Track: The harrowing “Gold Rush,” where Bulat sings like an old West widow, bemoaning her fate over taut bursts of violin and rollicking rhythms. (more…)

Who: Band of Skulls, a British trio whose shit-kicking, bare-bones brand of gritty rock & roll earned them a spot on the hugely anticipated soundtrack to the next Twilight movie, New Moon.

Sounds Like: White Stripes fans will dig Band of Skulls’ swampy, heavily blues-influenced jams, especially the psychedelic stomp of “Light of the Morning” and the hard-charging “I Know What I Am.” But these guys aren’t just blues-rock formalists: they occasionally veer into complex prog-rock territory on tracks like the sprawling, appropriately-titled “Impossible.” “That song was definitely a breakthrough for us,” says singer-guitarist Russell Marsden. “We realized we can make a wider, more epic version of our sound. [Drummer] Matt [Hayward] came up with the guitar hook, this lovely and complex finger-picking pattern. But I just dumbed it down.” (more…)

The Band: Jemina Pearl
The Buzz: Ex-lead vocalist of art punkers Be Your Own Pet, Pearl is now primed to give Paramore a run for their money. With a solo release on the Thurston Moore-run Ecstatic Peace label due this month (and an appearance with Moore on Gossip Girl last year), Pearl’s harried, hooky punk combines the snap of yesteryear with a canny pop sheen.
Listen If: You have a soft spot for Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson, but also know who the X-Ray Spex are.
Key Track: The hyperactive heartbeats, where Pearl’s bratty sneer opens with “It’s not all the cocaine” and proceeds to describe the strange palpitations of a romantic crush over hotrodding guitars. (more…)