Wyoming

Wyoming:

Bocat

PHOTO: BO ELLEDGE

CITY: Jackson
SONG TO DOWNLOAD: "Flashlight"
WEBSITE: bocat.bandcamp.com

WHY THEM Bocat's music is simple; old-time crooning over twinkling piano set to a drum machine. The lyrics are straightforward; stories about night bike rides, playing records on jukeboxes, and fist-pumping to "the classics." And when it's all taken together, it instills a type of whimsical nostalgia that has me yearning for things that may or may not have happened in the vaporous past of late summer nights. Piano and vocals receive the same grainy production treatment, placing the performance in a smoky '30s speakeasy, while the hooks are all big-band swagger. Maybe it's the seasonal change that's makin' us get all crazy-anxious up in this column, but Bocat hit my lo-fi nerves like CocoRosie and Sebadoh all mushed together in some weirdness of ripped-up four-track tape.

ALSO CONSIDERED Reproacher — Where Bocat are all about the sunshine, Reproacher bring the doom. Double kick-drum palm-muted power chords, mid-song tempo changes, and all the snarling, screaming vocals you can ask for. Definitely hardcore, absolutely metal, and all fucking awesome.

By P. NICK CURRAN

Alabama

Wisconsin