Lo-Fi

1) Led by brothers Brent and Darren Rademaker, the mid-'90s indie pop outfit Further transformed from an earlier band, Shadowland, who issued a pair of albums for the Geffen label, 1989's self-titled debut and 1990's The Beauty of Escaping, before becoming Further. Whereas their precursor band was based in '60s music, Further was more a kin to such '90s alt-rock icons as Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr.

http://www.myspace.com/assassins88

Washed Out is Ernest Greene, a young guy from Perry, Georgia, USA who makes bedroom synthpop that sounds blurred and woozily evocative, like someone smeared Vaseline all over an early OMD demo tape, then stayed up all night trying to recreate what they heard. There’s a sense of longing and distance in Greene’s somber, filtered vocals, but it’s what he does compositionally that makes Washed Out stand out. Backed by gently pulsing, Balearic-tinged disco, Greene’s voice takes on a new dimension.

Zola Jesus is the endeavor of a solitary girl named Nika Roza Danilova to simultaneously combat and invoke the approaching apocalypse using the only weapon/offering she has: her voice. After a decade of opera study and a musical awakening involving such varied inspiration as Billboard bubblegum, classical arias, no wave, avant industrial, she was able to thread her influences into a sound uniquely her own.