Brooklyn isn’t much known for its singing-to-the-rafters crooners these days. For that kind of anthemic bloodletting, one usually has to look across the Atlantic. Our borough is best known for its host of freaks, and the music usually exists on a planet accessible to only the more experimental among us. Well, Candidate must have had a sort of epiphany with their latest record ‘Psychic Dissonance,’ released a few weeks ago. The album takes these freak worlds and brings them to a place of shared anthemic pleasure.

Tracks like opener ‘April Again’ and ‘Untimely End’ remake psych jams as emotional excavations on par with bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and the genre-hopping Super Furry Animals. A hard group to pin down, they had a solid run at CMJ this year, where We Listen For You voted them one of the top 10 bands of the fest. Keep checking their website for upcoming live show. In the meantime, check out ‘April Again’ below – we just added it to our Soundcloud compilation of the best tracks by emerging NYC bands.

Featured on the cover of The Deli back in 2007, Clare and the Reasons play elegant pop propelled by married couple Claire Muldaus Manchon’s sublime voice and Olivier Manchon’s imaginative orchestral arrangement – they both worked on several Sufjan Steven’s songs, and scored several movies’ soundtracks. Definitely darker and more tribal than the band’s average material, the band’s new single "Bass Face" was inspired by a conversation the couple had in Berlin with a bass player, who claimed he "made no face" when playing his instrument. The single’s video (streaming below) protrays the "bass man" as some sort of new Elephant Man, while strolling aimlessly through the frozen streets of the German capital city.

Following a single and an EP, Brooklyn five-piece Gross Relations released last week a first (self-titled) full-length – and it’s tasty. Rarely has lo-fi seemed like such a good alternative to routine. Driving synth-heavy melodies through a stream of 90s alt-rock a la Lemonheads, Fountains of Wayne & acolytes, the album takes fuzz to its cheerful place through a (free!) collection of hopeful anthems. Starting with Signs – the most vivid example of this tendency – Gross Relations rethought the buildup of a pop rock song, one part at a time, as a path that doesn’t have to end in a scintillating explosion but can convey the exact same satisfaction in a crackling, confused mess of a climax. Download their single "Fine Tune Something" below. – Tracy Mamoun

Mp3: Gross Relations – "Fine Tune Something"