Hospitality, one of the bands playing this year's 4Knots Music Festival.

The lineup for this year's 4Knots Music Festival—the Village Voice's free summer-music extravaganza, taking place at the South Street Seaport on July 143is beginning to take shape, and this morning brings news of the first five bands on the all-day affair's docket. Among the artists playing Piers 16 and 17 that day: chiming Brooklynites The Drums; the fuzzed-out Crocodiles; the outrageously pleasant Hospitality; the blistering punkers Bleached; and R&B revivalist Nick Waterhouse. More bands will be announced shortly, but for now, why not sample the wares of the lineup as it stands below?

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The Drums
Bowery Ballroom/Music Hall of Williamsburg
November 2/3

Better than: Staying home wondering why 30 Rock isn't on but Whitney is.

When I was a little kid, my parents used to have dinner parties that would always devolve into dancing by the second half of the evening. I'd sneak downstairs to watch as the attendees looked like they were pretending to be extras in the party scenes from Less Than Zero and sad synthpop came through the speakers. I flashed back to this scene thanks to half the crowd at the Drums' two shows this week: An army of Morrissey wannabes in high-and-tight haircuts and blouses, all mimicking Jonathan Pierce's slightly fey finger-snapping and hip-swinging.

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The Drums, willing to pretend they're paying Madison Square Garden themselves. Photos by Nick, more below.

The Drums/Surfer Blood/The Young Friends/The Dewars
Webster Hall
Wednesday, October 20

Better Than: There were how many performances yesterday? It had to be better than the vast majority.

Although last night's Webster Hall show was touted on the official CMJ schedule, the event felt almost above the festival's usual stock-market atmosphere, in which buzz and expectations often matter more than reality. Neither of the two headliners are new to this, and while this year's CMJ previews frequently invoke Surfer Blood (the consensus breakout stars of 2009), it's usually in asking who their 2010 equivalent might be. The show itself was in fact one of three going on in the Webster Hall complex, meaning that this venue alone offered at least an additional 10 acts (including, of course, that most tempting and omnipresent CMJ listing, "Special Guest") looking to become this year's festival darling. Last year's darlings were still pretty great, though.

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Brooklyn's own Drums are the most (somewhat winsomely) flamboyant of bands to emerge from our young century's ongoing Let's Go to the Beach surf-synth-pop craze, their tunes eerily precise bursts of '80s-blockbuster melodrama, their live shows very enthusiastic (and very confounding) affairs indeed. Tonight they invade Webster Hall, in a fete to be broadcast in real time on MTV.com at 9 p.m. sharp -- slap on some Spandex and join the party in spirit, out there wherever you are. Amateur tambourine-playing very much encouraged. Embed link below:

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Not a scene from Napoleon Dynamite

The Drums/Surfer Blood
Bowery Ballroom
Wednesday, January 13

So the Drums, near as I can figure it, consist of four pretty-boy villains from cheesy '80s movies who've banded together to play twangy, relentlessly peppy new-wave with a canned backing track of overzealous synths and robust whistling, featuring a half-pouting/half-preening frontman astride two jaunty guitar players, one of whom occasionally indulging in tambourine playing of such outsized zest and pizzazz as I lack the verbal acumen to accurately describe. Sample stage banter: "This next song, I wrote in my bathtub." Sample chorus: "I thought that my life would get easier/Instead it's getting harder." The young lady from the Pains of Being Pure at Heart comes out to sing a duet on a song entitled "Don't Be a Jerk, Johnny," which is the frontman's name. Let me just say that prior to this show I believed this video, in which the two primary Drums perform poorly at a track meet to much self-loathing/cute-girl disdain/intra-band wan fisticuffs, was ironic or a put-on of some kind, but now I'm not sure so sure etc. etc. My head hurts.

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Real Estate photo by Kyle Dean Reinford

Insound 10th Anniversary Party with Real Estate, the Drums, Cymbals Eat Guitars, and More
Brooklyn Bowl
Thursday, August 27

"It's a birthday party, y'all!" announced These Are Powers vocalist Anna Barie last night, her voice sounding slightly tinged with sarcasm--though she was conveying a truth of sorts. In honor of the online indie retailer Insound's 10th Anniversary, the New York/Chicago art trio were brandishing a gloopy, sample-triggered set at Williamsburg entertainment complex Brooklyn Bowl.

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