Philly band Human Television is often described as jangly. Jangly nostalgic slack rock. Simple yet intelligent melodies and rhythms that, no matter how jaded you are, will make you tap your foot and smile. Recently Gothamist heard the bands live set on KEXP and we instantly found ourselves removed from the fluorescent white noise in our office, briefly put in a better mood. Tonight they play (with some other bands we love) at Pianos,......

The Harlem Shakes are young, but their influences seem to cover decades of New York rock. Their sound is lo-fi tinny garage rock that will definitely make you dance (and yes, by dance New Yorkers, we mean disaffectedly tap your foot and occasionally bob your head.) We're not going to make the obvious comparison, okay we will, but it's meant as a compliment...the Harlem Shakes sound like what the Strokes should sound like. Their......

Do you remember rock n' roll? Not the synthy 80's stuff that's been inundating our ears lately, but actual guitar grinding rock. Well Dear Leader will make you remember, incase you don't. They are what rose from the ashes after the band Sheila Divine broke up in 2003. Their lyrics and sound are anthemic and loud. So come stomp your feet to them tonight at Pianos. More details after the interview. Recently Aaron Perrino......

A sextet from Montreal the Dears create a new sound through old influences. A whirlwind of sonance reminiscent of The Smiths, Belle & Sebastian, Serge Gainsbourg, the Kinks and a list that could go on forever. Brit pop, french pop, art rock. Lyrics and drama that create orchestral anthems for a new age. With ten years behind them the Dears are ready to descend upon us as more than just another band in the......

People seem to describe bands by listing off names of other bands they sound like. It's akin to when you meet someone, develop a crush, and try to explain to your friend who lives across the country what this person looks like. You list off a mixture of famous people to create an image that becomes a muddied version of reality. In fact when we first heard this band we had to stop what......

If the Beatles conceived a lovechild with The Kinks while Pet Sounds blasted in the background and then made him listen to a lot of 60's pop music - this lovechild would be Jeddediah Smith. He is the one man behind My Teenage Stride. With a voice that, from song to song, can go from one of those early mop tops to a more chipper Ian Curtis...MTS appeals to the masses. Chances are that......

[Photo by Couirey Eckmayer] Morning Theft, fresh off the bus from Boston in 2003, have been desribed as Pearl Jam meets Travis, Nirvana meets the Cure, the Pixies meets Radiohead...you get the point. But these guys have their own sound. And it sounds good. They're the band who has been (not so) silently brooding in the corner of the indie rock scene. They're loud. They're catchy. They're pensive mood rock. Gothamist (and pretty much......

Gothamist first saw Gym Class back in August at Pianos. We can't remember who we originally went there to see, but we remember Gym Class. They had faux hawks. They played edgy synth rock that made us tap our feet (the equivalent to dancing in these parts). We imagine that if heaven and hell existed, and it existed as multi-leveled notes and chords played in the 1980's, 1990's and 2000's simulatenously...and they crashed together...Gym......

This week Gothamist is particularly excited about a performance a bit different from what's normally on our concert schedule. Ensemble Pamplemousse, a 10 person musical troupe, has been described as 'extremely forward looking' and 'breathtakingly virtuosic', however we're pretty certain that words can't describe what will take place during their three performances later this week, nor would a word do it justice. Some of New York City's finest composers will collaborate with Swedish artist......

When The Fresh isn't playing some hip venue in the Silver Lake region (that's LA's answer to Williamsburg), we're betting he's locked up in an artificially dark room somewhere just south of Hollywood Blvd surrounded by keyboards and guitars. A virtual mad scientist of musical standards, the Fresh isn't just a musician, he's a performer. An award winning one at that, just ask the Malibu Film Festival. To learn more about the Fresh check......

Vermont...what have you done for us lately? Actually (and beyond Ben & Jerry's) you've done quite a bit for us. And now musically, you give us Vorcza. We admit it, we're fans. This isn't like the "Sunday morning jazz" you listen to while doing the crossword. It's jazz, it's funk and it's danceable. Three musicians in this band...and they create a layered, sultry sound that is, yes, reminiscent of Medeski, Martin & Wood, but......

Canadians have become pretty hot over the past few months, and their homeland even hotter since November 2nd. While this may all just be the biggest fad since hula hoops The Arcade Fire, from Montreal, are way more than the flavor of the month. To those who are lucky enough to hold tickets to tomorrow nights show at Bowery, hold on to them...no matter how much you are offered. Their album, Funeral, was made......

Brooklyn's Fort Ancient have come a long way since their humble days when there were only two members, and humble nights of playing Brooklyn rooftop parties. The band is now five members strong, originating in Kentucky, Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas. An engagement and two weddings later (two of the band members are married to each other), the Fort Ancient family is releasing its third EP, I Believe in Tornadoes, mixed by Thom Monahan of the......

With his signature Stetson and the swagger of a man completely at home on the stage, Christian Gibbs seems to be the perfect rock n' roll cowboy. But this Brooklyn dweller has lived and performed all over the world, with a number of different outfits, including a 4AD British band, the Morning Glories and the Cardia Brothers. Most recently, he's been playing a number of shows with his group, the C. Gibbs Review, around......

We first caught the guitar heavy indie-punk band These Bones during CMJ, but we had heard their cover of Britney's Toxic long before then. With a sound that borders on garage anthem rock and choppy punk the bands style and energy certainly doesn't do anything to hurt their live show. You know how people don't dance at shows in this city? They do at These Bones. It's rock n' roll for the attention deficet......

New York has a well-earned reputation: bright lights, honking cars, late nights, frantic energy, non-stop. All this constant motion necessitates downtime: an aimless stroll, sifting through the Sunday Times, an afternoon nap, a hot bath. Brooklyn's Argentine makes music that goes hand-in-hand with a somber mood or rainy day. An antidote to a more common musical typology (four boys in suits and haircuts playing something loud and fast and fleeting), Argentine's slowcore sound swells......

Once upon a time, in a college town in the Pacific Northwest, four young men formed a band. They chose a name (the title of a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band song that appeared in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour), made a few records, developed a local and regional presence, and unglamorously toured the country in that grueling, indie, young twenty-something kind of way. They worked hard and remained modest, cultivating a following and garnering......

Sam Champion is New York's musical anachronism. While most rock bands either bow down to Max's Kansas City circa 1975 or the UK in the post-punk wave of the early '80s, the finest band ever named after a local weatherman is all too happy to take its cues from the '90s. The slack trappings of Pavement are channeled through the ghost of Credence Clearwater Revival and the loping, folksy rumbles of Neil Young and......

A few weeks ago someone told Gothamist about this band called The Cloud Room. We went to their site, gave them a listen...and immediately asked them if they'd like to play at our show coming up in November. They couldn't do it this time around...but we still love them. They give the 80's pop resurgence we're hearing from so many bands right now a bit of a darker edge. A thickly lined beat and......

Toronto's controller.controller have been garnishing critical praise here in the states and fueling dance frenzies north of the border for the last couple years but are only now making their second trip to New York. With their highly infectious melodies from female lead vocalist Nirmala Basnayake they prove that they are more than just the latest band to jump on the dancepunk bandwagon. Recalling the best of female rock vocalists from Debbie Harry to......

Trying to describe the Head Set we wanted to avoid the catch phrases that litter today's reviews. Post-punk, "the new Strokes"...you get the idea. It's hard though, with this band, because they are those things, in the best way imaginable. We don't usually do this, but listen to them right now, then come back and read the rest. So there you go, they're post pop and brit rock fused with what you might hear......

Before twentysomething Glaswegian art rock quartets were bestowed all the credit for generating the highest level of audience excitement and participation since the mosh pit craze of the early nineties, Ted Leo taught the indie kids how to dance. Churning out high energy punk-pop, the ever-enthusiastic and hardworking Leo tours relentlessly (even during massive blackouts and severe thunderstorms), and has been described as the Chevy trucks of indie rock. He lives and breathes rock......

What a surprise. A local band sounds influenced by its hometown. What’s refreshing about Dennis Cahlo’s newest project, The Sons of Sound, is the way in which it transforms the bleak emotion of New York into haunting, almost comforting warmth. Listening to The Sons of Sound, one is struck by the contrast of lonely, wailing vocals set against grandiose walls of sound. It is a sound of an individual entrenched in the bustle of......

New York City doesn't exactly have a worldwide reputation as a breeding ground of power pop bands. Even though Fountains of Wayne finally got a hit, our fair city is more known for hip hop, various strains of Joy Division-influenced indie rock and old school hardcore. Power pop is alive and kicking, but it's our little secret. Thanks to bands like Fireworks Go Up!, Lower Manhattan's club scene is filled with bands who continue......

If you don't know who On! Air! Library! is right now...well, we'd like for you to stop reading this and go educate yourself on good music. Seriously. Go. Now. Okay, go tonight when they play Tonic. Anyway, you WILL know who they are soon enough if you don't already, because they're opening for New York sweethearts Interpol in the upcoming months. This band somehow takes everything worth listening to in the music scene and......

If you had asked us a few months ago who Inouk was, we would have stared blankly. If you asked us today, we'd tell you the following... You cannot not write down what this band "is" and you better pencil it in if you do, because you'll be coming back 2 minutes later to change it. They are an overflow of former descriptions. Their debut album, No Danger, progressively draws you in with its......

Gothamist had a chance to see the Moirai earlier this year at Trash Bar in Brooklyn. To us, they captured the darkest parts of our favorite Radiohead songs while simultaneously giving us something to rock our heads to. Once they began playing, the layers of sound seemed to build up past what we expected it to and at just the right time it finally came crashing down. As it opened up, lyrics fell into......

As a band, Radio 4 (Greg Collins, Anthony Roman, Tommy Williams, Gerard Gerone, PJ O’Connor) has existed for about five years. As a concept, they’re about as old as the city from which they’ve sprung. In many ways, Radio 4 is the quintessential New York band. Understated yet vocal, cynical yet hopeful, blasé and yet undeniably excited by their peers, Radio 4 take the amalgam of sub-cultural emotions and meld them into danceable middle-finger......

The Naysayer is Brooklynite Anna Padgett, alt-country storyteller who weaves descriptive narratives of seemingly mundane people, places and things, delivering curt punchlines in deliciously laconic fashion. A native Houstonian, Padgett lingered in Louisville, Kentucky before settling in New York. Southern sensibilities seem to ground the narrator in Padgett's songs, who doesn't mince words, recounting with a healthy thread of skepticism, observations of life in the Big City and other tales. First, some questions about......

We've had a chance to listen to the band Audio Fiction recently and thought they'd be perfect to tell you about this week. Why? Because the RNC is in town, and this band is most likely doing everything in its creative power to counter the Republican agenda. Stop. Pause. And thank them now. Not to pigeon-hole them as only a politically driven band they are catchy pop rock with a message. Check them out......