January 8, 2008 – Even an ethnomusicologist in a hallucinogenic state couldn't invent a band like Dengue Fever. This Los Angeles–based sextet modernizes Cambodian psychedelic guitar pop from the '60s --which was originally influenced by the rock and soul records broadcast over U.S. Armed Forces radio from Vietnam. Got that? The band's genesis wasn't quite so convoluted. Singer/guitarist Zac Holtzman formed the group in 2001 when he moved to L.A. to live with his Farfisa-playing brother, Ethan, who had fallen in love with Cambodian rock during a trip to Angkor Wat. "We were sad that this amazing music had died out," Zac says, sipping a beer at the Echo Park house he shares with Ethan. Inspired by the florid sounds they discovered, the brothers began looking for a frontwoman in Long Beach, which boasts one of the largest Cambodian communities outside Asia.

October 14, 2005 – The day after electronic manipulator Hadji Bakara's wedding in Nelson, British Columbia, two of his bandmates are still battling the effects of a hasty return to their Montreal home base. Singer/keyboardist Spencer Krug mumbles drowsily after sleeping off a red-eye flight, while singer/guitarist Dan Boeckner is totally wired from driving all night. But if the sound of Wolf Parade's debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary (Sub Pop), is any indication, the band is accustomed to such a manic, twitchy frame of mind.PrintEmail

November 17, 2004 – The Mendoza LineFortuneBar/None The Mendoza Line are six brainy Brooklynites subletting a tiny one-bedroom on the fine line between sophisticated art-pop and insular indie rock. In addition to lyrics and grainy old photos of men in uniform, the liner notes to their fifth album, FORTUNE, are filled with incomprehensible faux-McSweeny's prose, not to mention shout-outs to the Williamsburg Bridge, Old 97's frontman Rhett Miller, their former publicist, the editorial staff of this magazine, and many more. If you had to read a whole book of this stuff, you might become a Sum 41 fan. Luckily, Fortune also comes with a CD, so you can just let its chiming, folk-rock beauty wash over you like a can of cool Pabst at last call. That's easiest when Shannon McArdle, one of the three singer/songwriters who alternately front the band, is at the helm.

October 15, 2004 – Fatboy SlimPalookavilleAstralwerksProdigyAlways Outnumbered,Never OutgunnedMaverick Though he should never be forgiven for that scene in She's All That where Rachael Leigh Cook line-dances to "The Rockafeller Skank," give Norman Cook credit for this: The man knows his limitations. He begins his fourth album as Fatboy Slim with a sample from the Five Man Electrical Band's hippie-pride anthem "Signs," later repopularized by the five-man hair-metal band Tesla. "And the sign said, 'Long-haired freaky people need not apply,'" a nasal voice whines over an update of War's "Low Rider" groove.

August 10, 2004 – The Mooney SuzukiAlive & AmplifiedColumbia Duringthe salad days of Rock Is Back version 1.0, New York's Mooney Suzukionly had the trash-talking Star Spangles for competition as theboomlet's lamest outfit. "In a young man's mind it's a simple world,"frontman Sammy James Jr. sang on 2002's Electric Sweat, "There's alittle room for music / And the rest is girls." In one cringe-worthysound bite (and one derivatively scruffy sound), James drowned out hisband's high-octane crunch by identifying neo-garage rock as nothing buta bratty boys' club. Meanwhile, over in Red Pill-ville, thethree Los Angeles-based songwriters/producers known as the Matrix were challenging Linda Perry as the go-toguys for teen popsters in search of live-band crackle.