Grooms

Brooklyn, NY's Grooms like to play both sides of the field, dishing out tunes that are as jarring as they are pop friendly. One moment you'll get a full on, distortion-loaded, feedback-hungry racket and the next straight-up ear-grabbing melodies, with one extreme smoothly transitioning into the other. It lives up to the term "noise pop," as well as giving Grooms' debut album, Rejoicer, steady legs to stand on. Sure, there's definite hints of noisemakers such as Silkworm and Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth, as well as anthemic pop makers like Broken Social Scene, but it's more a situation where fans of those groups will appreciate Grooms' brash pop tactics, not write them off as imitations. It also doesn't hurt that head Groom Travis Johnson has a knack for dishing out a hook, and then tearing it to shreds.