Cults

It's not exactly a rags-to-riches story, but Cults' too-good-to-be-true rise to relative prominence has all the makings of one.  Here's the pitch: Two 20-somethings from San Diego (Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin) fall in love and move to New York City to study film-making.  On a lark, the two of them decide to start making music together. After crafting a few songs, they upload a few of them to the Internet to share with friends.  One listen leads to another, and after only a few months—not just of having the songs online, mind you, but a few months of making actual music—their three-song debut (available on the band's Bandcamp site) becomes the talk of the web. In the circles that give an iota about these things, the duo's forthcoming full-length becomes a Very Big Deal.

One listen to "Go Outside" (the best of the three quite good songs in their repetoire) and it's not hard to see why—it's a shimmering little gem of a tune, a dreamy pop song that doesn't forsake a sense of rhythm or adventure, topped off with Follin's guile-free summer-sweet vocals and (for the post-modernist in you) a chunk of dialogue taken from a speech by noted Kool-Aid enthusiast Jim Jones. If the thought of a precocious Saint Etienne let loose in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (with a helping and friendly Phil Spector behind the boards) sounds at all appealing, then you'll understand why folks are so eager to hear what else Cults has to offer. It might be a bit much to hop on board a bandwagon that's just taken off its training wheels, but if Oblivion and Follin can do the voodoo they do on their debut, then Cults will easily develop a following that's worthy of their name—and maybe more. —David Raposa