Since the release of their Sing Song mini-album, hailed as "one of the year's most lovable indie-rock CD's" by The New York Times, the buzz about The Little Ones has electrified the underground. On weblogs, social-networking sites, MP3 lists, and elsewhere, deejays, record-store clerks, and tastemakers everywhere have been spreading the word and recommending this quartet to anybody who loves offbeat, melodic indiepop. The Los Angeles indie rock band has toured America and Canada with the Kaiser Chiefs and The Walkmen, played a stunning showcase set at SXSW, streaked across Britain with Tilly and the Wall and The Magic Numbers, all while securing rave reviews in Pitchfork and NME.

With its Jesse LeDoux (Chutes Too Narrow by The Shins, Achilles Heel by Pedro The Lion) album cover and its wistful track titles, Sing Song looks and feels like the perfect accompaniment for modern heartbreak. The songs are sunny and bright - but lead singer and frontman Ed Reyes's beautiful arrangements conceal barbs. "Lovers Who Uncover", the current single, is a fantastic singalong number complete with shouts and handclaps, and a sugar-coated melody that wouldn't sound out of place on a Fleetwood Mac set. But listen a bit closer: it's a song about miscommunication, and the passage of time, and the cost of maturity. The heartbreaking clip for "Lovers Who Uncover" borrows its concept from "The Gift" by The Velvet Underground: a foolish lover mails himself across the country to the object of his affections. But there's no cruelty or violence in this version of the story. This time, the tragedy comes entirely from misapprehension - and that makes it all the more painful. Unlike Waldo Jeffers from "The Gift", the main character of the "Lovers Who Uncover" video isn't kidding himself about his girlfriend's affections. Instead, she's trying her best to get his attention while he, halfway across the country, concocts his plan. She sends him Polaroids, calls him on the phone, and checks her mailbox regularly for a reply - but instead of giving her the quick ring she'd need to reassure her, he opts for the more spectacular (and time-consuming) gesture. By the time he arrives on her doorstep, she's grown tired of wating and left to find him on her own, leaving them literally on each other's doorsteps!

Although the group has yet to chart a stateside hit, mainstream press reaction to The Magic Numbers was nearly as overwhelming in the U.S. as it was in the U.K., where the quartet was nominated for the 2005 Mercury Prize. The New York Times listed the first Magic Numbers set among the year's finest; the Wall Street Journal concurred, and added that "to call it the debut album of the year might not be praise enough". Spin, Details and Rolling Stone all raved - and even the USA TODAY got into the act, lauding the band's songwriting and three-part vocal harmonies. Back home in Britain, The Magic Numbers received a shower of ecstatic praise, the album soared into the Top 10, and the band launched four singles into the U.K. top 20. Stodart and his band toured with U2, Brian Wilson, and The Who, and played almost every major summer festival held in 2005 and 2006 - including Bonnaroo and Coachella in the United States. Warm summer sun, outdoor stages, and The Magic Numbers music were all meant to go together.

Kenyata Sullivan and his team are back with a new clip for "Break It And Breathe", the second single from the independently-released and critically-lauded Schizophrenology, and we're excited to report that The Majestic Twelve have upped the ante. The song is a painfully honest reflection on a suicide of a friend, but the accompanying clip is no downer; rather, it plays whimsically on notions of escape, alienation, and breakthrough, and does it all under brilliant spring sunshine. Also, since this is a Majestic Twelve project, there are men in robot suits, and men in space suits, and men in cowboy suits getting chased through the streets of Wilmington by a tribe of gorgeous Amazons, and candid shots of bemused (but always game) passersby. It's an absolute hoot, it's beautifully shot and convincingly performed, and it conjures that same sense of defiance, camaraderie, and celebration in the face of tragedy that we've always found in Sullivan's music.

Kenyata Sullivan has been one of the principal organizers of the annual Wilmington Exchange Festival (www.wefestival.com ) since its inception over ten years ago. Whether he intends it to be or not, the "Break It And Breathe" clip functions as a fantastic advert for WEFest: the streets of the coastal North Carolina city look gorgeous and welcoming, the Cape Fear river is a dazzling blue, and the folks on the street appear to be game for all manner of good-natured weirdness. "Break It And Breathe" reminds us again that there's no better place to be during Memorial Day Weekend than Wilmington, and no more gracious hosts than Kenyata Sullivan and The Majestic Twelve.

They're named after the world's most famous synthesizer, but they're indisputably a guitar-based band. The country of origin stamped on their passports is located in Central Europe, but they've developed a sound that wouldn't be out of place in the nightclubs of Goteborg, London, or the Lower East Side. They tackle dark subjects in their songs - the lead track on Sold For Tomorrow is positively vampiric - but their videogenic faces are sweet. They're The Moog, and they're Budapest's answer to The Strokes, The Hives, and other internationally successful garage-pop luminaries.

Video director David Vigh was trained in London, but he's a Hungarian, too, and he's made Budapest the base for his production company. Art Mafia has shot clips for many of Hungary's hottest acts, and has also worked with internationally-recognized artists such as Marc Almond. His clip for "I Like You" lavishes plenty of screen-time on the five members of The Moog, and they know exactly what to do with it, too: as they perform, they pose and gesture toward the camera with the easy assurance of true rock stars. As the band plays, a young witch in a darkened chamber crafts voodoo dolls of each member. Satisfied with her work, she turns to the business of torturing the musicians: she electrifies one guitarist, tangles the other up in cords, sets the bassist's feet on fire and sets the drummer's back itching by pouring insects on his doll. She saves her most malicious act for Tonyo, though: as he reaches the bridge of "I Like You", she drives long pins into his chest and stomach. Doubled-over, barely standing, he fights his way to the microphone to deliver his message.

The Shins are an indie rock group with elements of folk and alternative country on Sub Pop Records comprising singer, songwriter and guitarist James Russell Mercer, keyboardist/guitarist/bassist Martin Crandall, bassist/guitarist Dave Hernandez, drummer Jesse Sandoval, and Eric Johnson of the Fruit Bats. Their sound is commonly described as indie rock, drawing on several musical genres including pop, alternative and folk. The Shins are based in Portland, Oregon. "New Slang" was featured on the Garden State Soundtrack.

"Every Day", the first cut and lead single from the new album Down The Way, is a musical riddle that draws the listener into the odd, dreamlike logic of The Three 4 Tens.To bring this reverie to life, the trio has turned fellow Pennsylvanian with a taste for the trippy: the well-regarded underground artist, sculptor, and filmmaker Marc Brodzik. Best known for his bizarre reinterpretive paintings of Fifties and Sixties advertisements, he's got quite an eye for the intrinsic weirdness of American culture. For the strange and mysterious "Every Day" clip, Brodzik has intentionally narrowed his camera range and tinted his footage so that the video looks like a WWII film-strip. (He even shakes the camera a bit - and appends some test-shots to the beginning and end of the clip - just to give the video that vintage news-reel feel.) The clip follows an old man - possibly a war veteran - slowly assembling some kind of bomb from blueprints and schematics. He does so within the confines of a seedy room decorated with 1930s Japanese rising-sun posters and recruitment placards. Images of weapon-smelting are superimposed over others of a deserted city street, or of the old man moving to the music (or some other, inner music), or of Japanese characters. By the end of the clip, he's waltzing with his bomb, and he climbs into bed with it, just as a rising sun logo emerges from behind high mountain peaks.