Lucas W. Nathan’s lyrical/avant-polka project, Jerry Paper, is taking off for a European tour this summer following the release of his latest, brilliant, rather Eno-esque record, “Carousel”. You can catch him in Brooklyn at Aviv tonight (May 22) and at Rough Trade on June 12. After entertaining the experimental music lovers of Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris, he’ll come back to play a home show at Shea Stadium on 7/31. Don’t let the man’s upbeat quirky tunes confuse you—listen closely and many of these songs are stern critiques of society, police, and politics. They ask questions and point fingers. Despite his primarily cynical outlook, in the song “Doesn’t Matter/Take Me” the narrator experiences and analyzes beauty, determining that whether life came about by chance, mutation or invention, and despite its excess of problems, experience is meaningful: “if my inner life/ is just a silly mutation/ is it any less amazing, uh huh/ than if some dude in sky/ dreams us all from birth til’ we die/ all the love and the tears and the beauty/ all so a code can copy copy copy// i’m not saying i know shit/ about if the clown is real or all in my head/ all i am trying to say is life is beautiful either way/ from clown or DNA.” – Leora Mandel

A simmering dark menace pervades the latest release from Massachusetts ex-pats, now Brooklyn-based Boom Said Thunder, who’ve been active since the early ’10s. Their deep and heavy guitars share a similar sonic texture with fellow Brooklynites (and champions of the current noise rock scene) A Place To Bury Strangers. Most notably when their sound focuses primarily on the lower guitar strings. Those similarities end with female vocalist Abby Bickel, whose overall timbre is slightly reminiscent of Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries. The band’s two latest tracks, “Summer Twin” and “Carnivore” (streaming) were recorded at Converse Rubber Tracks, successfully merging a live-in-the-studio feel (frequent loose drum fills) with state-of-the-art sound quality. – Dave Cromwell

This artist submitted music for coverage here.

On June 16th, NYC indie surf poppers Little Racer will see the release of their new EP, “Foreign Tongues”. While we wait, we’re listening to the two singles already available for streaming: “Montevideo” (streaming) and “Jack Knife.” The sound here inspires visions of The Shins on a surfing trip to a secret beach. The melodies are sweet and smooth and the vocals spill from early 2000’s indie rock into chillwave. This sincere, relaxed aesthetic brings to mind summer love, beach towels, holding seashells to your ear – or at least dreaming up such things while getting by “on a lousy 9-5”. The band will be performing at The Living Room on June 11th within the Northside Music Festival. – Leora Mandel

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

If you wonder why videos of summer in the big apple "feel" always so much better than summer itself, the answer is "NYC humidity:" cameras don’t capture its unberable stickiness. Therefore, we might as well say that what you see in the video of single "Breezy," by tropical-indie-pop band Scooter Island, is as good as NYC summer gets. The song’s mellow guitars, beachy percussions and casual vocal melodies will also enhance this experience… but if we were you, after enjoying this misleading protrayal of our city’s hottest season, we would get out of the house and revel in the gorgeous May weather (which is actually breezy), before the killer heat of the summer will force us in a (tight) air conditioned place for months… it’s just a few weeks away!

Jennie Vee is a rather – shall we say – glamorous looking  NYC musician and singer songwriter who plays a brand of dream pop that flirts with modern rock. The young lady is obviously good at getting into the right "circles" – apparently she’s become Courtney Love’s best friend, if not "muse" (whatever that may mean!), which led to the two touring together. Jennie released her debut EP ‘Die Alone‘ in 2014, and she recently unveiled this video for the cover of Echo and the Bunnymen’s legendary single "Lips Like Sugar." The song will be featured in Vee’s upcoming EP "Spying," due for a middle June release.

Some records have the ability to plunge the listener into some kind of alternate reality. Annique Monet‘s uber-psychedelic debut album ‘Phantom Letters‘ will do that to you. It took a few notes for opening track "Salt, Veruca," (streaming) to hypnotize us with its haunting beginning: a simple electric piano part, whistles, a fake horn section and a droney verse slowly led us towards a celestial chorus, which was quickly fogotten – for good – in favor of a baroque, droney outro. The following track ‘Voodoo‘, a grottesque and dissonant waltz, took us to a really weird (and scary) place: we saw the devil looking at us through the speakers, from Vienna. With a beautiful melody, the first few bars of "Nowhere"  brought back some hope for a return to light, but the song didn’t go anywhere – we should have expected it, considering the title. ‘Relapse‘ delivered another waltz – a more subtle one – but filled to the brim with eerie and decadent melancholy. From its plodding intro, Turtlenecks in July resurrected the ghost of The Beatles’ psychedelic pop, although sounding nothing like it, while in ‘52,’ Greek mermeids lured us with the most ghostly of lithanies, asking us to join them – and drown. The following two songs on the record kept this beautifully absurd, elusive dream going, with noteworthy track "Unchange" closing the collection.

Although we often praise structure in songwriting (many songs here would benefit from more of it), there’s very little structure in a dream – which is what this album is. In a scene that seems to have lost the imagination of its peak years, this is a record that will hopefully inspire other NYC artists to be more daring. You can catch Annique Monet live at Baby’s All Right on May 26.

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

Three years ago, The Deli caught a whiff of The Littlest Viking on their self-titled LP off Mountain Man Records. It was hairy. It was sweaty. It was 12 songs of start-stop rhythms and callus-inducing riffage that would make Pete & Pete beam with pride.

The labor and lust of Ruben "Emo" Cortez and "Metal" Christopher Gregory (first released in 2009) matches breakneck shredding and irregular time signatures that are as fun to play as they are to dance to, influenced by bands like Jawbreaker, Drive Like Jehu, and American Football. Fans of Giraffes? Giraffes! and Cinemechanica will feel right at home in TLV’s whirlwind of perspiration and referential music jokes.

This year, Littlest Viking is setting out to do the near-impossible: work a new album with a well-thought out pop direction. Says Cortez:
 
"While the first album was a portrait of two young punks trying to play every lick and fill we knew with ridiculous speed and the second album was a more self-aware album where we were trying to sift through the previous work, this new album is a focused collection of songs that is more methodical and self-edited than previous. We joke around that it’s going to be an emo Santana’s "Supernatural" album, which will make sense once it’s fully completed and we can finally get a callback from Michelle Branch."

And if you’re itching to see, smell, and hear these guys perform, you’re in luck: Littlest Viking will be joining Young Lovers for their third night of residency/music video premiere at Pehrspace on May 25th.

Not sold yet? Listen to "Lumpy Space Princess" off their self-titled LP below. – Ryan Mo

The streets are alive tonight with cacophonous bursts of jazzy cum and mangled Rock and Roll. A lonely neighborhood cool cat starts off the jam with a scratchy guitar, while a homeless dog plays the honky-tonk piano with a percussive fervor. Trash can fire vocals (sparked by the Mael brothers) howl at the moon, and soon a small audience of stoned Rock and Roll addicts surround the fire while Crazy Eyes feed it with their bludgeoning R’n’B stomp. With enough hooky noise and jumble jangle rhythms to hold up a small convenience store, Crazy Eyes toss swagger thoughtfully throughout the street; sometimes they throw in a pretty little ditty too, shedding sarcasm and spreading goo all over the city wherever they may go. While all the denizens of trash city chime in on the choruses and ring in the new era of grimy rock and roll prosperity.

Eula’s magnetic front woman Alyse Lamb and her musical partner/illustrator Chris Mulligan have added kickass avant-garde saxophonist Kate Mohanty to their project Parlor Walls. As great as their self-titled EP is to enjoy at loud volumes (not to mention free to download off Bandcamp), this is a band you really must experience live. Aside from rocking our favorite stages, they played a live score to a screening of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari in March. Their songs navigate through tense, distorted worlds with a driven voice, colorful brass howls and hiccups, and bouts of enthusiasm. Even if you hate moving your feet, don’t be surprised if you’ve caught yourself with a case of bobble-head syndrome. Parlor Walls is playing a slew of shows this summer, beginning with: 6/2 at Shea Stadium, 6/5 at Big Irv’s (381 Hooper St., BK), 6/10 at Alphaville, 6/25 at The Cake Shop, and Alyse’s birthday show on 7/2 at Alphaville. Eula is playing Palisades 6/13 with Xiu Xiu. – Leora Mandel

This Friday May 22nd, Brooklyn’s Pavo Pavo will play their first ever show at Mercury Lounge. As heard on debut singles “Ran Ran Run”(streaming) and “Annie Hall,” the Yale-trained quintet offers spacious yet tight pop that is immediately pleasurable and continually intriguing. Their preference for mid tempo, fully arranged tunes enriched by lush vocal harmonies puts them on Grizzly Bear’s musical path, although this band is not afraid to take unexpected turns – like in Ran Ran Ran’s unpredictable bridge (minute 3.12). "Annie Hall" is a slower, soaring track that would find itself at home in a rock’n’roll opera’s bittersweet finale, and confirms the group’s remarkable musical sensibility. Cerebral and warm music like this is cause for excitement. The group’s debut album ‘Young Narrator’ in the Breakers is scheduled for release later this year. The band is scheduled to open for Deli favorite Lucius at Celebrate Brooklyn on 06.13, which is also a very good sign. – Zach Weg

The Black Atlas is the art rock project of NYC’s multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Peter Koronios. Towards the end of 2014 the band dropped debut EP "The Other," featuring three brooding, mysterious and rather unpredictable songs, monopolized by Peter’s austere tenor. We are now premiering single "Black Milk" from upcoming EP "Devils,"scheduled for a June 23rd release. The tune reveals an extra push in the band’s dark, complex and imaginative sonic soundscape. After a two plus minutes long textured instrumental intro, a melody as ascetic as the one in Velvet Underground’s "All Tomorrow’s Parties" emerges, filtered through the lens of Pink Floyd’s epic, post-modern psychedelic exhistentialism. The chorus unexpectedly alleviates the grieving, giving release to the verse’s tension, but without losing edge, thanks to the sudden introduction of an odd tempo that keeps things subtly unsettled. The Black Atlas will be celebrating the ‘Devils’ EP release at The McKittrick Hotel on June 16 – the perfect venue for a band that likes to dwell in mystery.

Since the band is comprised of musicians already active in semi-established acts LVL UP and Porches, Brooklyn’s Downies earns automatically the not so prestigious title of "semi-super-group." But the one song they have available online indeed showcases a band with semi-supernatural musical powers, in particular in the speed and melodic departments. "Widow" (streaming below) is a terrific pop tune that proceeds at dangerous pace, while unassuming vocals barely float in a sea of distorted guitars. You could call this pop punk, if the genre didn’t bring to mind a million screaming Greenday derivatives. Rather, Downies’ music seem to draw influences from the more humble records of the pioneers of melodic hardcore, Husker Du, although with a dreamier vocal style. This is stuff with potential, we are looking forward to hearing more at Palisades on May 21, when the band will support Big Ups and Krill at Palisades.

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