Wet Mango

There’s a picture of Wet Mango, aka LA’s Cristina Irene Fuentes, on the MySpace page of her project Sonic Death Rabbit that perfectly captures her aesthetic. With red-and-black eye makeup, she stands wearing a plastic hat that’s like the head of R2D2. Rabbit ears with a pink-and-white psychedelic design dangle from the hat, with a glow-in-the-dark green brain stuck right on top. She holds a lime-green Game Boy Color right up to the camera, playful defiance wiped across her face.

Like that snapshot suggests, Wet Mango condenses a mélange of geeky influences into a product that’s incessantly cool. Solo with just a couple Game Boys and some electronics to help her out, she somehow yanks chiptunes—that is, music made by such technology—away from the realm of nerd and into a light that’s stylish and daring. Noises and melodies reminiscent of long nights in pre-64-bit fantasies are tied to thumping beats sure to get heads moving’. Bent over her Game Boys in ridiculous get-ups, Wet Mango rescues the distractions of childhood and gives them new life by delivering them to adult parties.

“Actually, sounds like my Game Boy thinks it's tougher and louder than it is,” Fuentes quips. Well, it’s definitely louder and tougher than mine, because beating Bowser never felt as boss as this. —Jordan Lawrence