After years of playing with Portland rockers Skidmore Fountain, guitarist and vocalist Randy Bergida broke off to form The Letter Yellow. The Brooklyn-based band started out of Bergida’s solo work, releasing the debut album “Walking Down The Streets” back in September with a full band rounded out by Mike Thies – met during his Skidmore days – and Abraham Pollack. “Walking Down The Streets” features a melodic, alt pop sound with thoughtful tinges at times reminiscent of The Smiths, and serene lyrics that detail Bergida’s life on both ends of the country, with stories of Brooklyn cafes and driving up the California coast. The band will perform at the Rock Shop on November 5.

You know when you’re the subject of one of Anna Haas‘s songs, you’ve done something right. From the suffering children, Marilyn, or ‘The Real New York’ off latest record ‘Crazy Is,’ the singer-songwriter always responds to her muses with a unique understanding of life’s complex realities.

Hailing from Nashville, Anna absorbs the Country croons of Gillian Welch along with Regina Spektor’s tender intimacy, and mashes it all around to an effective hook and chart-busting melody. All that, and she’s also (according to Lucky Mag) one of the most stylish music women out there today. Need more proof? Check out how she deals with men (and some creepy puppets) in the album’s first single ‘Maypole’ – streaming below.

View the video here, see her live at The Living Room on November 1st (she’ll be premiering a new video that night), and check her site as she’ll be announcing national tour dates later this month. – Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

This is going a couple of weeks back, at The Everymen’s ‘NJHC’ release show. Yet I’m still not sure if since, I’ve seen as endearing/straightforward comical as this pudgy shirtless papa-bear punk singing "Suffragette City" from the bottom of his soul. And that was only the icing on the cake. Jamie and the none-too-sharped-dressed lads, known as The Brooklyn What, is a big and noisy rock&roll all-man band from… well, Brooklyn (duh!), who hardly hide that candid generosity with which they deliver, a trait which that their records can barely begin to convey. Don’t take my word for it though, go see them at Saint Vitus on November 16th, and watch out for ‘I Want You On A Saturday Night’ (streaming below), one of their standards, the one to get the girls going. – Tracy Mamoun

So apparently Prince Rama has written ten new hits to accompany the upcoming end of the world. The band has put together a pseudo-compilation album for their latest effort "Top Ten Hits of the End of the World" (released by Paw Tracks … Avey Tare’s label) set to hit the cosmos November 6th.

The two sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson have decided to cover various songs from otherwise fictional bands that highlight our pending doom in what can best be described as one of the most exciting aural acid trips you’re ready to take this year. Lead track and apocalypse anthem "Welcome to the Now World" should already be familiar to children that grew up singing this song in schools… or at least they did in this band’s parallel universe. Complete with old style electronic effects referring of the fictional computer-generated band (Hyparxia) that Prince Rama are supposedly channeling, the song produces a space-age effect hypnotic enough to help you conjure up some new Gods to pray to.

One of the most fascinating freak groups to come up in Brooklyn in quite some time, the band recently mesmerized us at their CMJ performance and will be back in NYC in December from their international tour with label-mates Animal Collective. – Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

Surely the youngest act to hit the CMJ stage this year, The Orwells is an Elmhurt, IL-based self-defined ‘Flower Punk’ five piece fronted by the impressively charismatic Mario Cuomo, this tall blond stick-figure who owns the stage like few are able to. Especially that early in the afternoon (2pm when I saw them). Call them perfectionists, or just really good at what they do, fact is, rarely do you see a band so well prepared to take on its crowd. With so far one album, “Remember When’ (first self-released a year ago) to their name, full of the passionate lo-fi ballads that would tend to set their effervescent, American spirit-soaked, sometimes erratic garage aesthetic right in the footsteps of the Third Man himself, they’re a definite favourite of this year’s talent quest, one we’ll have to be keeping an eye on. Oh, and if you’re curious, why not listen to Mario Cuomo rap. Sure worth your three minutes. 

With one album to their name, a second in the making, and already a sizeable fan base, EndAnd are the outsiders to keep an eye on. Thoughtfully split between polished recordings and DIY methods, their "Adventures of Fi in Space" cross the paths of bands like Husker Du, Nirvana or Queens of the Stone Age, finding on their way this tricky balance between aesthetic satisfaction, pop sensibility, and a dedication to hard rocking. Pulling through power chords and fuzzed-up weirdness with a strongly disarming sensitivity, they’ve managed to reach some unexplored confines of 90s heritage, off the beaten tracks, where everything you thought you knew just suddenly sounds a little peculiar. – See the band live at Union Hall on 11.09, read Tracy Mamoun interview with the band here.

Railbird was definitely one of the highlights of our CMJ Music Marathon. We thoroughly enjoyed the band’s show at our CMJ Electronic Stage on Thursday 10.18, when they performed their quirky and delicate songs with precision and warmth, in front of a packed room. We recently interviewed them here.

We covered People Get Ready so much in the last few months that we have really run out of words to describe how good they are – see past coverage here. Don’t mis their CD release party at Glasslands on October 27. Album out on legendary NYC label Brassland – run by members of The National.

"I’m a bartender in Brooklyn, and spend most of my life on *that* side of the bar" says Jon DeRosa. Having myself spent a couple of years holding the fort in an East London boozer, obviously, I was intrigued. Man, the things you see from ‘that’ side… ‘Birds of Brooklyn‘, starting off as a downbeat gravelly barytone ballad telling romanticised tales of some regular faces, picks itself up slightly with its pace, as the trumpet joins in and silences get filled and the listener’s caught up in a warmly orchestrated parade a la Beirut, quite far from the original Cat Stevens-ey melancholy. DeRosa, whom we find for the B-side covering 1962 Nick Charles track ‘Sunday Jealous‘ – released this single a week back as the first off his debut solo album, ‘A Wolf In Preacher’s Clothes‘, which on November 5th will be available thoughout Europe thanks to a recent deal with Rocket Girl; following a performance at this year’s CMJ Festival, we’re expecting to find new dates announced soon – stay tuned.

Amidst the constant rumble of bands releasing debuts, merging into ‘supergroups’, changing names etc, opportunities like these are not what come around the most often: seeing a band play its first EVER live show. Awww..! Earthy Babes, originating as two Bushwick mates’ collaboration, is putting out today a first EP, ‘Still Earthy‘; follow-up to a debut album released exactly a year ago, for which Justin Ripley & Tyler Anderson surrounded themselves with a cast of friends to take on the backing vocals, bass, guitar, this six-track pack of cheerful reverbation and cosmic pop will be marking the new five piece band’s stage debut this evening at Union Pool, where they’ll be sharing th stage with The Denzels and Vivienne Eastwood. Along with the EP, Earthy Babes will also soon be releasing a first music video. Fancy perhaps going to support them? You can check out their music on their Bandcamp.

1- SLEEPiES "Hard to come back on these guys without either repeating myself or going into too much detail, which I am saving for a Q&A to be posted soon. So for now, I’ll stick to a couple of comments, starting with the fact that I finally got to hear the Hot Singles played all in one go, which, despite understanding where the hesitation would come from (Feelers, with its sprightly clean-cut sprightly punk, tying far less into the new album’s aesthetics (or even those of their earlier records) than would Sludge River Mouth,), I’d been wanting to hear for a while."

2- Unstoppable Death Machines "Queens-bred sibling power duo, UDM is ‘a noise-punk tour-de-force built upon menacing riffs and insanely fast smashing drumbeats that threaten to break the sticks or drums themselves any second, with vocals passed through effects via a microphone strapped right onto Mike Tucci’s mouth– one of the most satisfying acts caught during the day"

3- Mykki Blanco "NYC’s own potty-mouthed ‘acid punk rapper’ Mykki Blanco (pictured), androgynous style icon on the rise, entertained the tiny jam-packed Cake Shop basement with half an hour of nasty raps turning into […] one hell of a frantic spoken word performance." 

Josh run The Deli’s CMJ Music Marathon last weeks (consisting in blogging about 26 emerging bands based in The Deli’s 12 local scenes – but mostly NYC). Here’s his top 3. We’ll have a list of honorable mentions tomorrow.

WARNING: Josh was our "guy/mellow/folky" runner. Tracy – the "girl/upbeat/punky" marathoner – was covering noisier bands, stay tuned for her selection.

1. Wilsen "When the forlornly whistling of the lead singer, the eponymous Wislen, coincided with striking crash of a cymbal, I can’t imagine there was a spine in the room left sans-shivered".

2. Blonds "With their commanding take of an already strong catalog, Blonds proved to be the highlight of CMJ Tuesday."

3. The Nightmare River Band (pictured) "The Nightmare River Band played a great set filled with some rather awesome rock n’ roll songs."