The term “Poser Pop” shows up sometimes in the words Austin’s future-leaning Your Plastic Toys have written about themselves. Check their online shit, and you’ll see those two words more than once, those two descriptors that aren’t really a genre as such, but more a stance by Your Plastic Toys on their own place in music. In our estimation, the idea is that Your Plastic Tree poses at pop, refusing to make the standard plays while still fully playing a pop game. They are as art-aware as they are pop-aware as they are experimentally on point, and their music is at once a serious approach to pop music making and a bit of a mockery of the pop that’s already out there (in the fine tradition of acts like Talking Heads, The Fugs, or the very contemporary PC Music label out of the UK). A band that views the pop rulebook through half-broke virtual reality goggles.

In that same vein, you’ll also see a lot of abstractions and hyper-modern shit on Your Plastic Toys’ various web profiles, like glitchy saturated pixel-heavy images created by the band itself, short thoughts and quotes decoupled from their source and presented as something to be considered on their own, and not a single clear photo of the band to be found. This digital obfuscation of the band, its image, its motives, its views, evokes a highly modern feeling of existing in a never ending swirl of bit-noise and net fuzz, and it’s exactly what Your Plastic Toys’ sound is like.

On the just-released album OOO, shoegaze-gone-modern swells and currents of sound layer over tight digital beats and the vocals are threaded in and out heavily tweaked and disaffected, sometimes even disdainfully so (to great effect, it must be made clear). Your Plastic Toys comes through like a band seen and heard through a diabolical storm of TV snow on a channel that’s shakily fading in and out of a 1990s tube TV in a busted up apartment with a courtyard pool in the summer. It’s music that rides on that bright burning edge of culture just curling out from the future and into the present, and that throws back a tech-addled vision of what it sees to those still lingering in the cultural past. Take a listen to one of Austin's most forward-thinking bands below, and inject their entire new album here.

The fourth annual Treefort Music Festival is proving to be the biggest one yet. Not only is it their first year as a licensed LLC, but this year’s lineup is larger than any previous year with over 400 musical acts, not to mention whole mini-festivals dedicated to comedy, performance art, technology, yoga, skateboarding, beer, and then some.

With massive national musical acts headlining the festival like TV On The Radio, Built To Spill, Foxygen, Yacht, Viet Cong, Of Montreal and !!!, just to name a few, the $139 price of a full-weekend pass is pretty much already god damned steal, and that’s barely 1.5% of the full 2015 lineup. Adding to the glory of this year’s festival, the vast array of amazing Portland bands making the trip to Boise makes Portland one of the most represented cities of the festival. Think of it as a huge rager with all your favorite Portland bands and friends, just in a new, way more fun location.

To help you sort through all of the madness, here is a quick list of some of the Deli Portland’s favorite Portland bands who will be performing at this year’s Treefort Music Festival. Find out exactly where and when they will be playing during Treefort, here. 

Yet another poll hath gone, and the people have spoken: Wildfires is your Austin Deli Artist of the Month, coming in hard with a big push in the last few days that rocketed them straight into first. We've got a pretty good idea where Wildfires' roaring race to the win got its fuel, as this dreamy and deceptively-named indie outfit had a recent EP release at Cheer Up Charlies on March 11. Wildfires has transitioned over the years from a more acoustic-heavy American roots sound to poppy indie with a hazey shoegaze bent, which is what you'll get from single "Sad Wolverine" off the new EP and found below. The digital release of the album is said to be available soon, and we think it's a pretty cool coincidence that the band was able to time its release to match so perfectly with the weather, as this airy indiepop entry goes quite lovely with the light spring weather we've got in Austin right now. We suggest making Wildfires your spring soundtrack for all the hours of driving about looking for parking you're about to do this fest, so get listenin' and happy goddamn SX, y'all.

There’s something oddly comforting about dirty guitars, fast drums and shouting, which probably points to some hidden emotional issues on my part, but whatever--that’s why punk music was invented. Chips in the Moonlight, the newest release from Nice Guys, has everything you could want in lo-fi punk recordings--distorted, almost tortured guitars and vocals that sound like they’re being pushed through a PA on the brink of explosion.
 

If you dig these tunes as much as I do, go see Nice Guys release this EP at Club Bohemia (Cantab Lounge, downstairs) in Central Sq., Cambridge, MA tomorrow night. $8, 21+, doors at 8PM, presented by Illegally Blind. More details about the show can be found here.

-Dan McMahon (@dmcmhn)

ROM has released a new video for "Micro," a track off their crooning, sizzling post-punk beauty soda christ. "Micro" is a fuzz-fueled simmer reminicent of The Jesus and Mary Chain with a little romantic twee a la The Pastels. The video shows the band in B+W trying to look serious in a picturesque graveyard, but they're such happy handsome fellows that they can't help but smile, and decide instead to go bowling, and play with puppies, before ending their day at the local pub, sharing drinks with other great local musicians, including members of Black Checker and BRNDA. I <3 DC. 

You can catch ROM tomorrow night at Comet Ping Pong, where they will be part of the lineup for the Get Lucid! show to raise funds for Say No To Food Waste. Bleached Bones and Galvanize fill the bill at Comet Ping Pong, tomorrow, Friday, January 30th, at 10pm. $12. All Ages. --Natan Press