What do you think has been the most buzzed-about indie style over the past few years? Electro-house? Dubstep? 9tz grunge?

All worthy guesses, but look to the music of New York City duo Cults for a better answer. Their reverb-laden '60s Girl-Group-pop is one part sunny sheen of a hipstamatic California beach party, one part big-city crime noir. It sounds like roller skating down the boardwalk and tripping over a murdered wannabe Hollywood starlet, then falling in love with her anyway. Of course, the same can be said of everyone from Lykke Li to Best Coast to Vivian Girls to La Sera to Dum Dum Girls and every other indie bird with fierce bangs and a shoulder-sleeve tattoo making music now in a reactionary magical manic-pixie antithesis ideal.



Of that whole crush-gaze sorority — to coin a ridiculous sounding term that might just be dumb enough to gain some bloggy traction — it's Cults who make the sunny parts sunniest, and the dark parts darkest; and who, most importantly, have the best tunes on their 2011 homonymous full-length debut off Columbia imprint In The Name Of. "Go Outside" was possibly the song of the year in 2010 when it came out as a single, and then again the next year when it blew up. The twinkling schoolroom glockenspiel and the hypnotic echoing multi-tracked vocals created a dreamy, crushed-out, teddy-bear-spooning after-school vibe, but underpinned with enough dirt and cynicism to smudge the veneer. The Jim Jones audio clip at the beginning doesn't hurt the malevolence quotient either. read the rest

Tim Bergling, best known as Avicii, was recently nominated for a Grammy. “I would never have assumed it would get this far,’’ the 22-year-old says. photo by Dan Reid

Restoring euphoria to the floor The DJ moves fans with music and aids hunger relief

...Being aware of his good fortune in that regard has inspired Bergling and Pournouri to pledge $1 million of their personal fees from the tour to Feeding America, a hunger relief charity.

“Ash came up with the idea of doing something for America, kind of our way of giving back to a country that’s given both of us so much. It made total sense since the fans here have supported me so much.’’

He says that coming from Sweden, the extent of the need for hunger relief charities was shocking. “We found out how big the hunger problem actually is here. It’s something I haven’t gotten to see when I’ve traveled there. I was baffled. It’s ‘the land of prosperity,’ I didn’t know how big the problem was.’’

A pledge of that amount wouldn’t be possible if not for the success of tracks like “Levels.’’ The song’s framework goes most of the way toward capturing Avicii’s signature style, which relies on arpeggiated piano chords, escalating trance-like synth stabs, insistent house beats, washes of ethereal static, and, on other hits like “Fade Into Darkness’’ and “Seek Bromance’’ (his breakthrough track, released under the name Tim Berg), big, crowd-pleasing, soulful vocals that satisfy contemporary dance music’s insatiable demand for pulsing euphoria. read the rest

Hot Pink Delorean, ‘The Revenge of Sisyphus’

One of the biggest success stories of the past few years in Boston EDM, the trio Hot Pink Delorean have amassed the type of resume that most young producers and DJs would kill for. Tours throughout Europe and Australia, and support from the likes of Tiesto, Benny Benassi, and Carl Cox, to name just a few, certainly didn’t hurt. The band’s success has come in large part from its ability to maintain a nimble, quickly morphing style of playing and writing that sidesteps from one genre to the next, mostly seamlessly. Its first LP packs all of that territory into 19 tracks, most of which maintain a high energy four--on-the-floor beat surging throughout. “Blew Steal’’ is a glitchy, chopped-up video game soundtrack, while upbeat, soulful tracks like “I Surrender’’ and “All You Ever Need’’ with their insistent disco-house vocal samples call to mind superstar acts like Nero. “Excite Music’’ and “Lead the Way’’ are dirtier club bangers, with angular bass drops and trancey keyboard leads. It’s all decidedly on the poppier, club-packing side of contemporary techno and house, but for an introduction to one of Boston’s most likely to succeed electronic class, it’s a fun trip. (Out now.)