Gino DePinto, AOL Thank Manhattan's unforgiving rental market for the birth of the band Chappo. When co-founder Chris Olson read an ad for a roommate needed in namesake member Alex Chappo's sweet East Village pad, he made sure to show up to the open house first. It was serendipitous, because once they realized they were like-minded musicians ...

Forcefield PR As the leader of Gravy Train!!!, Seth Bogart, aka Hunx, traveled the country throwing sexed-up, electro-fied dance parties. As that band split apart, Bogart took the advice of pal Nobunny and again picked up the guitar, turning back to his first love: rock 'n' roll. As the face of Hunx and His Punx, the sometime ...

Sarah Jurado In the '90s, when the entire music scene in his adopted hometown of Seattle zigged one way, towards punk and grunge, Damien Jurado zagged the opposite, picking up an acoustic guitar and embracing vintage folk. Encouraged by the genre's longstanding embrace of unusual voices, Jurado began self-releasing a series of ...

Tape Deck Mountain Travis Trevisan never wanted to be a frontman. He got his musical start playing saxophone in the school band, and even when he discovered Smashing Pumpkins, the Verve and Spiritualized, he was more interested in playing guitar than hogging the spotlight. After playing in dozens of bands with musicians who would often ...

Thrill Jockey Pontiak are literally a band of brothers -- Van, Lain and Jennings Carney, all of whom grew up with musical parents in rural Virginia. Still, it wasn't until all three had finished college that they began making music together, getting their start in the fertile Baltimore scene. They eventually returned home and due to ...

Raphael Ouellet Just as Montreal-based DJ-producer Ghislain Poirier began making his name in the electronic music scene, he realized no one could pronounce it -- the first part, anyway -- so he pulled a Morrissey and decided to go by just his surname. Poirier may have simplified his handle, but he hasn't dumbed down his music. He continues ...

Jagjaguwar New York quartet Small Black make wistful, highly textured, electronics-based music, but don't call the band "chillwave." Despite the blogosphere's best efforts, the foursome has managed to transcend that dreaded genre tag by writing songs with actual structural substance. Influenced by everything from '80s dream-pop to hip-hop and ...