Something of the musical imagineer, Stivers has taken a leaf from the big book of Brian Wilson production, surreptitiously layering his music with rich harmonies and indefinable sound structures that is both admirable in context and ethereal in content. For what appears to be simple pop foolery by numbers is in fact more far-reaching and complex in volume and confidence.

With two full length albums under his belt (‘The Great Satisfactory’ and ‘Cheer Up - It’s Raining’), Pet Ghost Project’s glitch infested pop-rock is not too distant from an amalgamation of Neutral Milk Hotel, The Pixies and The Animal Collective, but with its own bedroom closet charm of clashing sound collages, changing moods and dynamism. - Thomas Ward

Luckily for them, their music is good enough for the blurb not to matter. It’s pitched somewhere between Gwen Stefani, and the Blow. If that sounds like it shouldn’t work, then  a quick listen to the tracks on the band’s myspace page will prove you wrong.

‘Cable TV’ is a track which doesn’t seem to want be pigeonholed by trying to define its genre. It’s got the swagger of an R’n’B track with the cheeky electro sprinkles and even a bit of sitar thrown in for good measure. It’s the type of ‘modern pop’ that Hot Chip would be proud to put their name to.

‘No Wedding Cake’ is reminiscent of of Montreal at their sunniest but with added electro impetus.

‘Believers’  is a dark track with sinister brass and a throbbing beat which again is quite hard to pin down. 

With several performances scheduled at this year’s South By Southwest festival, Fol Chen are a name sure to be bandied about when the indie in-crowd are discussing the ones to watch for 2009. - Will Holloway

Angular, noisy and in at number eight in our competition, Bugs In The Dark are a ferocious sounding trio, with riot-grrrl leanings and a lot to shout about. Their submission, ‘Gasoline’ is an icky, dirty sounding punk rock anthem with an air of delirium akin to being feverishly sick in a room with no windows, with only the virus addled corners of your mind for company. Singer, Karen Rockower has a voice as soul-shaking and guttural in depth as Rid Of Me era P J Harvey, and as sexy and haughty as Karen O in a bad mood, yet, just lurking beneath the fiery surface is a of fragility that gives the music a real urgency and depth that takes BITD beyond the realms of being another bunch of fashionable, fuzzy-eyed, pedal-hopping New York stoners into being a band showing real promise for greater things.

Their MySpace page offers six tracks worth of BITD’s horror tinged rock opuses including the so compelling, it’s almost oppressive, ‘Paranoia’, the savage and electric ‘I Change’ ‘New Words’ where Zach Glass takes over lead vocal duties. His gravel and cigarettes vocal style juxtaposes against Karen’s sweet background croons with echoes of the Pixies where the lunatic Frank Black yelped whilst the ever cool Kim Deal dealt the lines with deadpan calm. 

Bugs In The Dark are the first tremors of the 90s alt-rock revival in the 21st century; an amalgamation of all things Sonic Youth, Pixies, Sleater-Kinney and Pavement, with enough imagination to make the music their own. We think they’re great! That’s why we voted for them. - Steve Gislam

As the name might suggest, Bad for Lazarus create music that sounds like a night out flitting between filthy bar brawls and a drug addled, nightmarish circus. Just listening to the scuzzy power chords and racing drums, you can practically smell the spilt beer on leather jackets and see eyes rolling into the backs of heads. It’s quite exciting.

'Kempton Animals', previously of guitarist Rich Fown’s old band 80s Matchbox B-line Disaster, sounds like a skinny punk grabbing an aging biker in a headlock and rolling around in the vomit on the floor. The organ screams just like the howling vocals and the stomping guitar riff pummels the listener into submission to create a filthy piece of garage pop.

'Fix my Fidget', meanwhile, is the sound of five overly excitable rockers bashing their instruments half to death as if their lives depend on it. Bouncing from uplifting, screaming pop music to slower waves of doom laden, wailing guitars, Bad for Lazarus are hardly short in ideas either.

Be warned, listening to this band will make you think you’re some sort of Josh Homme-esque bad man. Which you’re probably not. Be careful the lazy swagger this band gives you doesn’t get you into trouble when walking into a bar...  - Gavin Williams

So good they named themselves twice, with increasing exclamation.

Reluctantly describing themselves as “rock-folk-punk-pschadelic-electronic-dance-music” this Philadelphian trio are keen to resist classification, preferring instead to infuse their work and their ‘persona’ with muscular hard-sell attitude.

Their songs have a frayed charm to them, which betrays their slightly skanky self-image. These are sensitive boys really, and despite the rough edges, it’s obvious they really care about what they’re doing. All the punk attitude in the world can't cover up the perfectionist timing and multiple layers at work here.

Track highlights to be checked out include ‘Bad Lieutenant’ and ‘Music’. Both sound like a new band ought to sound – sort of out of control. Untempered, determined to be famous. Determined to tell everyone that they are determined to keep being determined to be famous rock stars. But again with an unnerving sense of control to it all, one that they seem not to even notice. Best song is 'Highways'. Slight Joy Division throwbackness, but on the whole it’s an accomplished fuzzed-out dance-floor contender already.

Cortez! Cortez!!, judging by the quality of their production on-line make an interesting prospect as a live act. Currently doing the rounds in Austin Texas throughout March before more dates in April, it’s pleasing to see they’re pretty active, making lots of noise all over the place.

In summary, for consideration as SS’s new lovely band of the year (check name) they are contenders because they are possibly about to do something brilliant. They make you keep looking at them to see what it will be.

Good luck you three angry (lovely) boys! - Benjamin Pester

Apricot are a four-piece band from Tokyo comprising of singer Majima, guitarist Sekino, bassist Nike and drummer Mori. They categorise themselves as ‘pop’ and you’d be hard pressed to find a better definition, this is pop in the most traditional, sugary sense of the word. It’s the sound of an anarchic holiday camp or a Coke-fuelled kid’s birthday party and, as such, is as musically Marmite as they come.

An album, Japanese Pop Children, was released last year on UFO Banana Records and one-minute samples of five manic, hook-laden tracks are up on their MySpace now. Fans on The Go! Team will be instantly familiar with a song like 'Parasol on the Future' and 'Hippie Hoppy' sounds like a rejected Mario theme. 'Cosmic Night Parade' is a summery, garage-rock shuffle whilst 'Balloon Girl (Dance Remix)' is like that one Eurovision song that you secretly think is quite good actually.

A varied collection of friends make up their top 35 (Ride, Alton Ellis and Misfits?) and adds to the, er, ‘unique’ tone of their MySpace page. Initially, too, the music sounds quite bizarre and those without a taste for, or unfamiliar with J-pop, might be put off altogether and although broad mainstream appeal is unlikely you suspect at least one crossover hit isn’t too far away. - Joe Hooper

When Edison premiered the phonograph – the first machine to record sound – in 1877, he could have little handle over its revolutionising effect. Some 150 years later Edison’s precious invention has been prostituted just about every way possible – from the distorted squall of noise-guitars to the fluorescent, saccharine bleep of 2-bit electronica. Everyone’s had a go. But few bands out there seem to have much of a grasp on how take the chewed up results of fifty years of phonographic experimentation and create something genuinely cohesive.

This is where 1877 steps in. Pulsing with pneumatics and the ghost of Ian Curtis in 'Narcolepsy', or schizophrenically melodic in 'Conversations In A Cheap Room', 1877 is sonically shot with a thousand bites of musical nostalgia that coalesce in dark corners, in pools of thick aural gloom.

There’s enough of everything here – slices of synth and strange robotic whizzing alongside the fuzz of filthy distortion and clean, reverberating riffs – to remind us that we’ve been spat out the other side of the history of the phonograph, that what remains is to put the shards of what we’ve learned into place to reflect the post-phonographic whole, and deflect the comedown of a million sonic misadventures. Not many bands have the genuine vision for such a task. 1877 is one of the few that do. - Hazel Sheffield

Ghost Bees consists of Sari Lightman, who is apparently ‘too crooked and sorry to move’ (how sad for one so young!), Romy Lightman, who was born ‘five minutes prior’ and ‘the mice in the pantry’.

Twins then; and obviously over-run with musical rodents in hometown Halifax, Canada, as far as SUPERSWEET can be sure. Kind of like the Ning Nang Nong where the cows go ‘bong’ then, only it’s Canada and it’s mice.

They’re  twenty four years of age and met "in a single unit womb" as the MySpace puts it. Influenced by "Isis", "amethysts" and "crystal balls", they describe themselves (pretty accurately) as sounding like "slicing a grapefruit’ and ‘really long hair that sways from side to side".

Their songs are both hauntingly beautiful and simultaneously the most unsettling things we’ve heard in a long, long while. Drawing their water from a similar pool as the likes of the fable-telling Decemberists, Ghost Bees are destined for cult status.

In 2008, they released their debut album, Tasseomancy, which (again, in their own words), "begins in the kitchen of The Grandmother in 1904, along with a collection of tales of past empires and great, great ancestry, fabled figures and sorrowful lament, with vocals appendaged together like a two-headed balladeer".

Tasseomancy is available online through Youth Club Records and ITunes. - Isaac Howlett

Wow, you don't get much vaguer than this. Apparently from Bedlam in the UK, you can tell from the get-go this isn't straightforward. Seemingly a duo, Poppy Hayashi contributes the haunting vocals whilst David Paterson is resplendent on the…er…"not vocals". With influences such as snake charmers, disco cathedrals and poverty, the 'About You' section of MySpace unsurprisingly starts with "It's not my cup of tea…". Search google for Rhodesia and, well, you won't even get close.

To top it all off there are only two songs online, and both are demos! Nevertheless, the haunting ethereal beauty of both tracks was more than enough to propel Rhodesia up this list faster than you can say "I hear your footsteps dragging in my mind". It is an art indeed to make something bleak and threatening the most beautiful sound around. No doubt they could soundtrack many a sex and suicide flick, mixing a sense of fear and mental torture with an electronic backdrop and steady beat.

Currently unsigned, it shouldn't be too long before someone with balls drags these two, and all their ghosts, into the light. With seemingly no tour or plan for release we can but hope this happens sooner rather than later. Clearly talented, scarily haunting, and intriguingly compelling, but how far can they go? - Matt Coxon

With a name inspired by jazz-rock legend Steely Dan, Gold Teeth have already have got the music world trying to pigeonhole their resonating beats. So while the press may muse that they are the next “British Vampire Weekend”, if anything they chase down the roots of pop with limitless energy, churning out song after song, from afro-beats to electronic juts by tapping into their musical differences. Finally releasing their first EP, ‘Everybody’ in February, the south London band have escalated into the realms of XFM and Radio One, even NME has given them a gold star; but importantly, as SUPERSWEET’s winner maybe it’s time you had a listen!

Unmistakably uniting their fluctuating sound is lead vocalist Joe DaCosta booming his distinct “sarf” London inflections to evolve into a reverberating echo amongst their self-confessed “electric twang”.  As eclectically loyal to his clothing, lead guitarist Nick Rowson manipulates traditional riffs into distinctly his own, not afraid to dominate in solo stint in catchy ‘Everybody’. Not forgetting recently joined bassist, the towering George Longworth rumbles vibrating bass and literally puts the afro into the beat. But with tracks like the melancholic ‘Confused Blue’ and reflective ‘This Cartoon’ you can’t escape the roles of cheeky Johnny Tams with ”bleeps & construction” from his trusty xylosynth, to drummer Will Ritson and his unexpected flourishing percussion.

Playing to sold out venues, fans singing along to their lyrics, and now supporting Esser on tour in April, the attention arrives unbelievably early in their career, simply highlighting their untapped potential. With success arriving fast for this unsigned band, they are boldly talking hold and ready to go for the hearty ride. - Gemma Dempster

Milke: Glorious art pop with the kind of synths and beats James Murphy would be proud of.

Another Day on Earth: Citing influences from Father Time to Mother Nature, Another Day on Earth’s Lawrence Bonk, makes dreamily delightful lo-fi folk songs; and he makes a LOT of them: one for every single day of the year!

We Fell to Earth: Making textured musical landscapes appears to be the forte of We Fell to Earth and they do a rather good job creating a whole new dramatic surrounding for the listener.

Susie Asado: Berlin based Asado’s stripped down and sparse music harks back to a time of showgirls and Speakeasies – think Bugsy Malone – and what could be better than that?

Silverghost: Lo-fi fuzz pop with an uber-sweet back bone; half of which is courtesy of Marcie Bolen, an ex Von Bondie.

And you can check out the rest of the rest right here too!

Words: Gemma Dempster, Matthew Coxon, Isaac Howlett, Hazel Sheffield, Joe Hooper, Benjamin Pester, Gavin Williams, Steve Gislam, Will Holloway, Thomas Ward, Chris Ebbs, Greg Sullivan, Alexander Graham Moss