The Fiery Furnaces

It would come as no surprise if Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger revealed that their parents used to lock them in the basement with a Fisher-Price record player, a piano and a pair of drumsticks. On their debut LP, the brother-sister duo, known as the Fiery Furnaces, mix Peanuts-inspired piano lines, deep blues licks and a healthy dash of nursery rhyme rhythms to generate an annoyingly catchy brand of kitchen-sink art rock. Fiercely autobiographical tunes like the marching "Asthma Rock” mingle seamlessly with Dr. Seuss goof-offs "Two Fat Feet” and "Tropical Iceland” and genre-less ditties like "Don’t Dance Her Down.” Sure, sister Eleanor’s vocal metre never really changes but this stuff should go over just as well with preschoolers as it does with hipsters.