The appeal of songs such as “C’mon” and “Answer To Yourself” is that they are not sung by cloying children, not emo and sad and sensitive. Fuck that baby shit.

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Don’t be mistaken by the band’s “Lite” side project, which is Melt-Banana substituting Agata’s guitar for synth programs and samplers and the revolving door drummers replaced by beats. Everything else is pure Banana. The end result is the kind of music teenage Terminators would mosh to.

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This EP’s song styles and track order feel classical in form, ala Homer and Virgil, but trade bombast for the correct balance of grit and sheen. With Donovan (Drums) and Kate (Bass) supplying solid, pulsating grooves for Tim and Mateo to splatter colors of guitar tone over, Cobalt Cranes earn themselves a place in the garage pantheon. Listen. Love.

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Michael Nhat’s debut LP sounds more Angelino than Vietnamese, with humorous non-sequiturs, pent-up hostilities, portraits of hipster chicks, and admonitions about werewolves rapped and sung over tracks that sound like they were sampled right out of the air in Filipinotown or the less gentrified parts of Echo Park.

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The album exists in a perpetual winter, evoking the awe of beholding snow-capped mountains for the first time. Swelling strings, delicately picked classical guitars, and jovial glockenspiel loops lie atop a foundation of shuffling beats produced both acoustically and electronically. Their multi-tracked harmonies could be easily mistaken for door-to-door carolers fiending for a fix of figgy pudding.

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Thao Nguyen is the hetero-indie dudes’ dream girl: an adorable multi-instrumentalist who wears her heart on her sleeve yet is secretly really sad (but not too sad to dance). What makes Nguyen an even better catch is that she flies past the whole Jenny-Lewis-bunny-like-adorableness and straight into Ani DiFranco-intensity, with darker-than-Feist throaty vocals.

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Don’t be discouraged by the lackluster cover art, a watery-looking band photo topped with the album title in scribbly font–San Francisco’s Brilliant Colors triumphantly deliver ten noise-pop nuggets on their debut album Introducing Brilliant Colors. Beneath all the echo and fuzz you still need a well-crafted melody to keep the listener engaged, and Brilliant Colors get this.

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If you’ve never heard 60 Watt Kid, We Come From the Bright Side will make you immediately fall in love with them. If you have heard them, We Come From the Bright Side will let you enjoy 60 Watt Kid on a new level, allowing bright sonic tendrils to clutch your inner eardrums tightly, like a slumbering bear clinging to a sappy pine cone.

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