17 crush-worthy emerging acts

Former Gringo Star guitarist Matt McCalvin heads up Mermaids, a new rock outfit that dabbles in everything from doo-wop to old-school soul.

Kid Stuff brings, post-rave elation and psychedelia with entrancing house beats and lights in a scene lifted straight out of a warehouse party circa 1991.

b>Trench Party is the low-fi recording project of one Jake Cook, a singer and songwriter who bares all of the jagged and self-effacing lyrical tortures and ironies of the earliest, dirtiest offerings from Pavement, Sebadoh, Beck and the like.

Dope-toking riffage from a band of locals never sounded as sweet as it does when the monolithic Wizard Smoke lights up a room.

The Bukkake Boys’ brand of hardcore mashes up screaming, sweating disaffected rage with a penchant for doom and pornographic imagery.

Richelle Brown’s electric dance-floor romps are so flirty and innocent, she could be the first purveyor of her own microgenre: temper-tantrum funk.

Surf, sci-fi and reverb constrict around the Clap’s slow melodic ways.

Rhythm is the driving force behind Roman Photos’ dense, dance-punk jams.

Spirits and the Melchizedek Children’s vocalist/guitarist Jason Elliott leads a slow procession of ghostly strumming through a tussle of gorgeous resonance and wide-eyed rumination.

Ka’Ra Kersey cuts through the experimental chaos of Afrobeat and minimalist hip-hop with vocals that shimmy-shimmy-ya on her recently released collaboration Land of the Free with Corinne Stevie.

Gold-Bears craft rich, scratchy pop that swims in distortion, feedback and rhythms.

Former Leechmilk vocalist/guitarist Dan Caycedo returns with Sons of Tonatiah, a new group that channels thrash, sludge, doom and punk/metal into stylish and concise song structures.

There’s a raw, vampy aesthetic behind Buffalo Bangers’ slow barreling songs, driven by a ramshackle reverence for the natural order of the universe.

Balkans are four young dudes who know their way around the sleazy corners of sunlit surf-pop. Scuzzy ear candy that keeps a cool distance.

Lyonnais continues to bring the heady drone with resolute authority, playing blissful gloom that sounds concocted in the earth’s core.

Flawlessly flailing, White Light Forest Choir play a charmingly slipshod brand of jagged-edged space rock; weird and tribal but with a total pop sensibility.

Mind-melting and sample-driven, Nomen Novum plays sneakily serious lo-fi rave-up jams that pull from pop’s past and prurient present.