Nevada

Nevada:

Candy Warpop

PHOTO: ARSLAN GUSENGADZHIEV

CITY: Las Vegas
SONG TO DOWNLOAD: "Candy Warpop"
WEBSITE: candywarpop.com

WHY THEM: Forget about any slick, polished, new-wave revivalism the Killers made us attach to Sin City back in the 2000s, because the gritty, born-to-lose avant-rock of Candy Warpop seems more appropriate for a debauched night out on the Strip (or helplessly stuck at the slots). May's Pre-Op Lollipop EP is a lost highway of punk aggression with hard-rock riffs, and vocalist Enid Sols provides a window to that female-fronted alternative-nation soundtrack of the mid-'90s. Sols recently ditched the singer/songwriter coffee-house scene to get dirty with the Warpops, and though this quartet is only a few months old and played its first gig June 4, we expect them to quickly shine . . . like Vegas at midnight, with a few bulbs burnt out.

ALSO CONSIDERED: GHOST DRIVER — The horror-flick darkwave of Ghost Driver's Dead End EP is frightfully devilish and cinematic. But we weren't sure if the band actually hails from Nevada, or if its storyline of a Camaro hunting down victims in 1977 on Nevada highways was just part of the made-up spectacle. Seriously.

By MICHAEL MAROTTA

New Hampshire

Nebraska