Illinois

I am not sure where they come from, but when they arrived, they hit hard. I drove down to Brooklyn to catch The Kooks a couple of Saturdays ago, and instead of forgoing the opening band for idle chatter or beer on the bleachers at North Six, I decided to check out Illinois. All I knew about the band was that they were from PA, and what I witnessed was intense -- it was a band that took pieces of folk and indie and combined them with an experimenter's mind. It was an "everything goes" approach that was punctuated by their lead singer's "hip hip hooray!" chants. Last week at CMJ, they became the band to watch with everyone and anyone I talked to being excited about them. Sometimes the best bands come out of nowhere, and for now, Illinois is our little secret, but that's not going to last for long.

MySpace: Illinois
Audio: "One On One"