Blending garage and rockabilly, Tall Juan plays music that’s unpretentious and fun. The Brooklyn via Buenos Aires musician also enjoys relevant connections: after recording (streaming) single "Falling Down" with Mac DeMarco, he left for a few east coast gigs with friend and Captured Tracks’ artist Juan Wauters, who also happens to play drums for him (to reciprocate, Tall plays bass in his band). You can see Tall Juan live at Shea Stadium on March 8.

Despite being a Brooklyn band, Youth Signals‘ latest single, ‘Prisms,’ carries characteristics of the other coast – or maybe even of the music some UK bands were playing in the late 80s (Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen). The song evokes a landscape (and society) far from hospitable ("we live in a land where everyone steals…. crumbling buildings/ no one has a home"), but for all its bleak content, ‘Prisms’ retains a hopeful disposition. Its sun-stroked, washed-out guitar keeps the song afloat, and this, coupled with the darkly lush vocals and languid pace of the drums, imparts a serene sense of calm. Towards the middle, the song slows, bending to entropy, but it soon breaks through, returning to its original elated existence. – @emilioherce

We added this song to The Deli’s playlist of Best NYC songs by emerging NYC artists – check it out!

Beech Creeps is a new, very noisy NYC based trio featuring members previously active with the likes of Yeasayer, Pterodactyl, People Get Ready and Ex Models among otheres (wow!). Their music has the immediacy of garage rock but sports a sound that’s more tense and explosive, reminiscent at time of Sonic Youth’s noise rock. Considering the talent behind the instruments, we highly recommend their upcoming shows, in particular the (self titled) record release party at Union Pool on March 3rd. If you are going to Austin for SXSW you may stumble upon them there…

We’ve been following The Parlour Tricks for quite some time (check out this 2011 interview when they were still called Lily and the Parlour Tricks), and admittedly we’ve had our up and downs with them (last year they didn’t appreciate our sarcasm about them premiering a video with the Wall Street Journal). But politics never affect our music appreciation, and this stylish indie pop band has been proving to have  the talent, the song and the commitment to thrive in what’s probably the toughest music scene in the world. We are therefore happy to celebrate their recent signing with super-awesome label Bar / None, home – among others – of pop luminaries such as Yo La Tengo, Of Montreal and Alex Chilton. The band was selected to play an officials SXSW show this coming March.

Coney Island rapper Your Old Droog (featured in our recent Best of NYC Emerging Artists list) derives his name from “Droog,” the Russian word for friend. Indeed, his music is like a walk down rap’s memory lane back to 1994. Initially coming off as another gravel-voiced rapper fresh out the gravel-voiced rapper factory, Droog quickly overcomes initial prejudice with his rapidly evolving rhyme patterns and sardonic wordplay. In “Porno for Pyros” (streaming) from the Kinison EP, Droog emphasizes his relevance saying, “Back in the line of fire. Sayin my style’s dated is like sayin’ wine has expired.” Cheers to that. – BrokeMc

LA just got a big ole gift from the city of Austin, Texas, as rocker pair Gal Pals has made the big jump further west. Gal Pals makes stripped-down, up-energy summer pop that’s a good bit garage, and also a good bit of bubblegum and fun. Y’get the feeling listening to their music that these two ladies moved to Cali just to put their music in the right setting, which is undoubtedly a beach party in the warm day, with the Gal Pals’ lazer-bright clothes and sunglasses standing out against the blue sky as they blast out their guitar-and-drums-and-nothin’-else pop music. The band will be playing official shows at SXSW this coming March.

Great news for NYC indie pop band DREAMERS, who were chosen from a large pool of hopefuls as direct support on the upcoming Stone Temple Pilots tour. The band was recently featured in our Best Emerging NYC Bands list.

Mysterious Brooklyn electronica duo GRUMBY, who made our recent list of Best Emerging NYC Artists, produces evocative and free music. Emancipated from danceability and structural concerns, their tunes introduce the listener to a world of beautiful sonic encounters, unexpected aural developments, and tasteful textures. The most striking of their recent tracks are eastern sounding single ‘Sultana Melek’ (our favorite one, streaming), which showcases a noteworthy production and attention to the detail, and "Yoshi’s Penthouse," which sounds like an exercise in electro-lounge. This track confirm our suspicion that today’s electronica is filling in for that genre you may remember your grandparents mentioning, called jazz (and all its derivatives), i.e. music that’s more losely structured than pop and relies heavily on improvisation – whether recorded or live. Grumby will appear at Bushwick Lot 45 on Thursday February 26.

Kristie Redfield’s brainchild Flying Pace (a band that needs a bigger couch, so that they can feel more comfortable in front of a camera) released its third EP "The Spectacle," at the end of 2014. The record sounds like an interesting blend of styles quite disconnected from each other. The overall sound is indie, but the approach is consistently mellow, with odd tempos often recalling the angularity of math rock. We hear some kind of jazzy influence in there too, but as soon as that thought materialized, their song switched to a very simple pop section. Single "Flying Pace Theme Song" (streaming) nicely sums up this complexity and unpredictabiliy. See Flying Pace at Mercury Lounge on Sunday 03.01 .

Feel-good riffs and a dancy rhythm section constitute the majority of Kuroma’s first full-band record, ‘Kuromarama,’ out April 7 on Votiv Music. The Athens/Brooklyn based band was conceptualized in 2008 by MGMT’s current guitarist Hank Sullivant, but was only recently fully realized, having signed on James Richardson and Will Berman (also of MGMT), and Simon O’Connor of Amazing Baby as permanent members. The result is an almost reggae-infused funk-rock that is danceable, yet soulful. Their first single, “Love is on the Way,” approaches the retro minimalistic structure of 80’s pop (with almost an islander feel thrown in), but it breathes fresh life into any preconceptions with a cool layering of keys, steadily novel percussion, and vocal brilliance that oscillates between hearty substantiality and far-out falsetto. Check out also the video for single 20+Centuries here. – JP Basileo

Young Ejecta (formerly known as Ejecta), whose lead singer Leanne Macomber was featured on the cover of the latest issue of The Deli together with three other NYC ladies fronting electronic projects, will be celebrating the release of her new album "The Planet" tonight (02.20) at Baby’s All Right – be there!