Recommended If You Like Foster The People

Very few bands “make it.” Far more toil in relative obscurity, only sometimes earning a fan base and a living wage for their art. Many of these little- or under-known acts, though, are the inspiration for or the compatriots of those bigger acts that make it. Thus, The A.V. Club’s Recommended If You Like, where we start with a bigger band—Mumford & Sons, for example—and run down a few acts that the bigger band’s fans might be into.

For this edition of Recommended If You Like, The A.V. Club focuses in on one of the biggest and most recent overnight success stories: Los Angeles-based indie pop trio Foster The People. The band took the world by storm over the summer, and its hit single “Pumped Up Kicks” seems to be everywhere these days. In fact, Foster The People will play a sold-out show at the Riviera Theatre Oct. 5 before heading off to join Ben Stiller on the Saturday Night Live stage on Oct. 8. In the meantime, for newbie fans, here’s a list of other acts to check out if you’re already sprung on Foster.

Q And Not U
As a DC post-hardcore band that came and went in the late ’90s/early ’00s, Q And Not U doesn’t seem to have a lot in common with Foster The People on the surface. In fact, fans of the Dischord act might act in revulsion at the mere comparison of the two, but hear us out here. Q And Not U is danceable rock, perfect for happy days and sunny road trips. Sure, Q’s lyrics are decidedly more political and rough around the edges than Foster’s, and while Q’s good looking, the band’s not jean-model handsome like those Foster dudes. That being said, Q And Not U is a good next step for Foster fans into the band’s driving rhythms and angular take on indie rock. Start with “Soft Pyramids” and delve deeper from there.

Real Estate
While the laid-back, hazy guitar pop on Real Estate’s debut album, Reality, is more lo-fi than anything Foster The People have ever produced, the two groups have, on paper at least, a few things in common. FTP is much more danceable and beat-driven, but it occasionally slips in moments of slacker-worship (the lazy verses on its breakout hit, “Pumped Up Kicks”), a prominent feature amongst Real Estate and its peers from the Brooklyn area. Plus, the word “beach” gets thrown around a lot by critics and fans when talking about both bands, but in different contexts: Foster The People’s party-starting jams are best suited for a sandy midday kegger in Panama City, while Real Estate’s blissed out surfer pop is more likely to be overheard spinning on wobbly record player after everyone comes inside from a late-night bonfire.

Fun.
Fun. is something of an indie rock supergroup, formed by members of The Format, Steel Train, and Anathallo. While the band is less likely to get psychedelic than Foster, it is a pop band clearly ready to break the mold. Its debut album, Aim And Ignite, featured cabaret-inspired pop tunes, not unlike a certain band fronted by a man named Mercury. Fun. is definitely a band to get into before it becomes as ubiquitous as Foster The People is now.

Yeasayer
It should be noted that Brooklyn’s Yeasayer is probably the weirdest band that will appear on this list. In fact, it’s incredibly hard to pigeonhole the band to one genre. Its most recent album, Odd Blood, is like what would come out nine months after a night of coked-up love-making between TV On The Radio and Brian Wilson—a hodgepodge of funky, psychedelic pop music. It’s unlikely that a Foster fan would be into a band as strange as Yeasayer, but in the words of the great philosopher Wooderson: “It’d be a lot cooler if you [were].”

Passion Pit
Much like ’80s new-wavers a-Ha, Massachusetts indie rockers Passion Pit have become instantly recognizable for their heavy employment of catchy synth riffs and soaring falsetto vocals. It pays off, too. Several of their songs have charted, and their catchy electro-pop sound has been heard in numerous Apple commercials. However, Passion Pit isn’t just some Pitchfork-approved flavor of the week; its appeal has reached as far as professional sports, as Los Angeles Angels pitcher Dan Haren uses “Little Secrets” as his run-out jam.

Phoenix
The Parisian pop act may have won a Grammy in 2009 for Best Alternative Music Album for the excellent Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and got airplay on every TV show ever, but the group still operates a little under the radar. However, Thomas Mars and company have been making new wave-informed rock since 1999, and have even contributed to film scores (Mrs. Mars is director Sofia Coppola). The band’s synthesized sound is fairly similar to Foster’s, and wouldn’t be a stretch for fans to love.