Nate "Igor" Smith

Telli Gramz of Ninjasonik

Why isn't there universal shorthand for tracks in which rappers individually single out their loved ones, from God to Mom to the local corner slinger? Lupe Fiasco's "Outro" is a bloated example that comes to mind, with 12-plus Food & Liquor minutes of Cornel West's model citizen shouting out everyone he ever added on MySpace, but these things really do need a name. "Crew clip," "homie holla," "family props," or "posse cut," as one intra-office dialogue yields, don't quite seem right. Rap nerds, where's your clever?

​Good look on both sides--Busy Signal featuring M.I.A., "Sound of Siren." Busy Signal has a new mixtape out on which this song is on, Hottt Ed Turf!!!, which is a bit less daggering-y and bit more "bounce bounce," according to the scholars at the FADER. (When it comes to dancehall, we bow down to the experts.) Pitchfork wonders if it's really M.I.A. on the hook/sample, but if it's not, that singer is about to have a lot more problems than just being misidentified on a tracklist. The Major Lazer wolves can find you, impersonators! [Ha, update: We were more right than we knew. It's a Major Lazer track.]

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Marielle Solan

​Taut New York five-piece MiniBoone are an enchanting mesh of old-school energy and new-school melody. The band mixes the dervish energy of '78-era post-punk with the super-hooks of modern indie-pop--think Buildings And Food-era Talking Heads if David Byrne could travel back in time and tell himself about Arcade Fire. Their debut EP, Big Changes, was released last week on up-and-coming local indie Drug Front and it doesn't let up for one second of its 6-song, 20-minute run time: three-part harmonies come fast and flurrious, Wire-style grooves frame hand-scribbled clap-alongs, and feverish rants spin off their axis. "Devil In Your Eyes" has a Devo-meets-Funeral groove that propels it past the churchy opening, between the splattery dots of spindly guitar, and into a glorious chorus that dramatically splits the difference between XTC's brand of overblown pop and the Darkness's brand of overblown pop.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Hurricane Bells. Photo by Mayumi Nashida.

​Hurricane Bells is the bedroom recording project of Longwave frontman Steve Schiltz. Far more claustrophobic, sensitive, and homey than Longwave's romantic, extroverted NYC enormo-rock, Hurricane Bells is band that relies on music written, played and recorded on Schiltz's MacBook. Like Bowie's "Heroes" on a MySpace budget, Schiltz fills his expansive singer-songwriter hooks with plenty of reverb, Echoplex, background swirl and home-cooked unease. The band's album, Tonight Is The Ghost, is a natural fit for the newly only-sorta-emo Vagrant Records, and an even better fit for the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack, where one of its B-sides landed. Second track "This Is A Test" is a timeless piece of two-minute sulk-pop that seems to come straight from the days of The Church, Psychedelic Furs, and the Mighty Lemon Drops.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

​Increasingly huge Brooklyn-via-Milwaukee fuzz-dance duo French Horn Rebellion is the next step in that whole wave of crunchy-riff, post-Daft Punk, Francophilic blown-out house. Mainly because they pretty much sound like a good rock band. A pair of real-life brothers, Robert and David Perlick-Molinari make chug-house that's more friendly, less neon, and way huggable--the genteel face of an insular scene. "Beaches and Friends" was co-written with Brazilian duo Database via a series of hooks and ideas they passed around their circle of friends. Without an "original" track to ever work with, Database popped out a propulsive club edit, fellow Brazilian club-knockers the Twelves popped out a pair of windswept mixes, and the Chicago trio Hey Champ weighed in with a disco-funk version of their own. French Horn Rebellion's "New York Version" is the punkiest, new-waviest of the bunch, existing somewhere between a grimy stroll down "Electric Avenue," a sweaty Justice warehouse show, and a Spanish rave. It's out in the U.K. now on Once Upon A Time.

​Seems like just yesterday Japanther were bringing out 2008's Tut Tut Now Shake Ya Butt, staging punk rock operas in the basement of PS122 with Penny Rimbaud from Crass, causing trouble in various Barnes and Nobles, and getting robbed on the A Train. But a new year brings glad tidings--a new record, Rock 'n' Roll Ice Cream, due out on Menlo Park March 2nd; a new member, the Soviettes' Anita Sparrows, whom the band met out in California on Christmas Eve; and a new single, "Spread So Thin" (download below) which adds a new layer of demented girl group harmony to the band's usual fuzz n' buzz melodic tricks.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

​The Brooklyn-via-West Africa collective Burkina Electric play an effortless blend of the traditional rhythms of Burkina Faso and speaker-shaking booty-bounce of modern club music. While guitarist Wende K. Blass, vocalist Mai Lingani, and dancers As and Vicky all originally hail from Burkina Faso, the Bushwick-based electronics guru and drummer Lukas Ligeti has made New York the band's default home in recent years. Ligeti, the son of legendary Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti, started collaborating with musicians on the Ivory Coast in 1994 and has been mutating traditional music and contemporary electronics ever since--notably, the Burkina line-up is completed by legendary synth-punk Kurt "Pyrolator" Dahlke from German new wave pioneers D.A.F. The band's debut album, Paspanga (Cantaloupe), is a high-energy burst of Madchester beats, woozy samples and outright woofer-wreckage, hopefully doing for Burkina Faso what Buraka Som Sistema did for Portugal, give or take a heavier dose of the more laidback, psychedelic vibe of Eno/Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. Check out "Ligdi," a track that surges with disorienting polyrhythms, soaring vocals, Art Of Noise-style electro blurts, and a blissful, vibrant, maddening, chant-along coda that could have been on Merriweather Post Pavillion, no fooling.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Dinosaur Feathers. Photo by Aaron Colussi.

​Short version: "Teenage Whore" by Dinosaur Feathers is the type of song that makes the Internet go round: low-budget, high-concept, gentle-touch, heavy-reverb post-Post Pavillion indie-rock/mondo-pop. Shorter version: There's no reason these guys won't be huge by, like, February. Shortest version: This is great. Dinosaur Feathers are a Brooklyn trio who are super quick to dive into afropop and Tropicalia, but never at the expense of a good old-fashioned blurry indie hookfest. Seemingly existing at that magic RSS feed crossroads of Animal Collective and Vampire Weekend, the Dinos are a decidedly 2010 band--singer Greg Sullo admits that Panda Bear's "Comfy In Nautica" inspired him to explore huge harmonies and credits afro-indie crew Ruby Suns for opening him to new uses for non-Euro rhythms. But even though their sound is very up-to-the-minute, they don't temper anything with cloying nostalgia, intentionally lo-fi weirdness, or hipper-than-thou posturing--just some nice, genuine dudes with decent record collections and/or fast internet connections. "Teenage Whore" doesn't have the sunny Latin rhythms of their last leaked single "Vendela Vida" or the Beach Boys clap-and-stomp of "History Lesson," but does have their hugest, boldest hook of any song on their formidable debut Fantasy Memorial, due March 2.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

​Brooklyn's Shellshag have been playing mucky, minimal punk throughout Brooklyn and beyond for over a decade, touring all the time and putting out records under the radar. Rumors In Disguise, their third album, is the band's first for hot gnash-punk label Don Giovanni (home of Screaming Females), and should hopefully shed some light on their skeletal, long-awesome, abrasive sludgepunk. Just one guy (Johnny Shell) and one gal (Jen Shag) pounding away, making corrosive goon music, Shellshag's press release already beats us to the "Yeah, yeah, White Stripes, Jucifer, blah blah blah" aspect. But that doesn't really harness the band's destructive live presence, their feedbacky fuzzgazer hooks, and the friendly energy that has surrounded them for years. "Resilient Bastard" sounds like a doom-pop version of Weezer's "The World Has Turned And Left Me Here," but of course turns the sentiment from abandonment to survival.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

​Brooklyn's Ava Luna is the rare band that needs to be heard to be believed. In the band's hazy, floaty, post-TVOTR-maybe conceit, post-punk grooves, soaring soul harmonies, and classic indie detachment join forces for something beautiful, infectious, and damn-near indescribable. The twisted brainchild of Carlos Hernandez, the son of a soul DJ and occasional producer of bands like Fucked Up, Ava Luna is the sum of a lot of somehow congruous parts. The minimal drums/bass/synth lineup kicks out the most skeletal of Ze Records-era post-punk/nu-funk; a chorus made up of three backing singers add a razor-sharp doo-wop lilt; the sweat-soaked Hernandez is up front stirring-soul like Jamie Liddell or a James Chance for the Misshapes age. Their upcoming EP, Services (their fifth release for Brooklyn handmade CD-R label Cooling Pie) was self-recorded in the basement of a Brooklyn church and is getting an official party on Friday with Marnie Stern and Suckers. (Venue TBA, so watch their MySpace for details.) Opening track "Clips" makes super-sparse electro-funk clash with lush bah-bah-bahs, then shifts into high gear for a Stax-meets-Kraftwerk chorus.