My Cousin, The Emperor may just be the band to make you reconsider your long-standing dismissal of country music. Winner of WNYC’s Battle of the Boroughs Brooklyn Throwdown, they’ve been converting rock ‘n rollers by filtering their classic country sounds through low-fi nuances, such as heavy guitar reverberation and lower-quality recording techniques to add the ‘alt’ to their ‘alt-country’ categorization. “Long Way From Home” won the Independent Music Award for best alt-country song, and features finger-pluckin’ quick enough to challenge any Appalachian band, and in “Montevideo,” lead singer/ songwriter Jason Reischel laments about lost love to the accompaniment of country music fundamentals pedal-steel guitar and banjo. – Katherine Bennet