Artist The Phenomenal Handclap Band

This band boasts a great name and an ambitious origin story: Eight musicians, fed up with their roles in various borough-spanning bands, combined their powers to form a genre-splicing supergroup. They do the electro thing, they do the prog-rock thing, they do the gospel-revival thing. The bizarre blends somehow melt together on this year's self-titled debut, however, as this vast group of contributors finds shared pop hooks in seemingly disparate genres.

Updated 08/12/2009