Ponytail

Baltimore group Ponytail won its crowd by sheer virtue of joyously splattered madness. 2008’s Ice Cream Spiritual flings singer Molly Siegel’s yowls and barks against her band’s fractured but accessibly perky scribblings and squawks for a wiry, jerky art-rock sound that follows artists like Marnie Stern and Deerhoof into the realm of spastic virtuosity. The band’s albums are unhinged, to be sure, but the live show goes wilder in which the members of Ponytail display their penchant for screaming non-sequiturs, dancing spastically, and—if the audience is lucky—tossing candy out into the crowd.