The Heavy hail from Noid, a small town in southwest of England. The band will be lumped in with the retro-soul revival, but The Heavy add cool lo-fi samples and facemelting guitar solos to create a one of a kind groove that's heavy, dirty, and funky.

Baltimore duo Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack chose the name Wye Oak after they realized Monarch, their first choice for a name had already been claimed by 7 other bands. Their recorded sound is layered and lush. They try to capture that same sound when the two of them perform live, but they also feel that if a song is good enough, it should be able to stand on its own.

Devonte Hynes used to draw a comic strip called Lightspeed Champion to kill time while he was in math class. When his indie-buzz band Test Icicles broke up in 2006, Hynes resurrected the name for his new project.

No, Carbon/Silicon isn't a chemistry lesson about the periodic table of elements. It's a collaboration between The Clash's Mick Jones and Tony James of the Billy Idol-fronted Generation X, which sounds more like dance rock rather than their punk roots.

Here's the short story: being compared to Al Green, he recorded three soul singles in the early 1970s, disappeared for 25 years until BBC Radio 1 host Gilles Peterson brought Darondo, also known as Double D or Dynamite D, out of hiding in 2005 on his "Gilles Peterson Digs America" compilation. That's also the long story.

With a music career spanning over two decades, the sometimes folk and sometimes punk singer/songwriter Billy Bragg has teamed up with legendary artists like Wilco and Johnny Marr (The Smiths) as well as new artists like Kate Nash in addition to his abundant solo work.

Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward first met when they were recording a Richard Thompson song for a movie soundtrack. The actress and the singer-songwriter hit it off and soon after that, Deschanel shared with Ward some of the songs she had written. Volume One is their first CD together.

The Duke Spirit is coming to America again, despite a 2006 tour that saw all their gear stolen in Portland and a broken elbow for bassist Toby Butler in Las Vegas.

Dizzee Rascal grew up in the East End of London, and honed his MC skills as a teenager at raves and on pirate radio.

One critic wrote that the music of White Williams ties pop eclecticism to peripateticism. We figure that's exactly what 23-year old Cleveland native Joe Williams was hoping for while he was recording Smoke (because nothing is more rock and roll than peripateticism).