Jessica Hopper is editor-in-chief of Hit It Or Quit It, a publicist, and a freelance writer. Totes visit her blog here.

Catfish Haven- Too Hungover to Headbang

Catfish Haven are local to Chicago and quietly blowing it off the framework. They are hirsute and at least one of them is at the local Kinkos pert near every time I roll up. They just signed to Fat Possum, and recorded a new EP. I like them because you can hear the Kentucky Trailer Park in George’s voice, and in person it’s more like a cross between the live version of The Band’s “the Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ with this black ash touch of In Utero era Cobain howl—a ravaged weariness that a lot people pimp, but for everyone else it’s affect—with this band it’s a by-product of a Hoosier holler.

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Brother Reade- Friday

Brother Reade are a hip-hop duo from North Carolina that half live in LA and are on my friends seven inch label. I like them because they sound like they are from nowhere. I like that they actually rhyme and I like the production. Indie hip hop usually sounds like ass when turned up loud—my theory is it all mixed for headphones and computer speakers, cos no one bumps the shit in their car. (OK, I know one person that bumps the shit in their car) but BR sound rich and enchanting up loud, and it sounds like summer.

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Vitapup- Dragonfly

Vitapup, poor Vitapup. They put out one record (though I have about 6 awzum singles) on some itty bitty queer label outta upstate NY that otherwise only put out mainstream queer folk LIVE tapes. The band stuttered into the dust some time mid-late nineties and while Melissa York, the drummer, is in the Butchies, I looked and looked and could not find anything really, at all, about them. Maybe I should have been googling “ex-vitapup.” Anyhow, I saw them live once in about 1995, in a mirrorballed LA bar I had snuck into with a crappy fake ID that said I was 26 and fat, and since then, “Dragonfly” is one of my top fave songs of all time.