Brooklyn noise devotees Hunters have been pulling out the big guns as of late. The duo is slated to release a debut LP via Mom + Pop this summer and will be touring with Bleached and Jeff the Brotherhood in the meantime. Guitarist/vocalist Derek Watson and cotton candy pink-coiffed vocalist Izzy Almeida feed off each other, growing intensity with fierce, instinctive on-stage rapport. And they go all out – there’s uncensored drama in every wave of distortion and punchy yowl. This hasn’t gone unnoticed; these press sweethearts recently graced the cover of the Village Voice and have been featured in Spin and The New York Times. You could say The Deli was an early convert; we awarded Hunters’ debut EP (mixed by mixed by Yeah Yeah Yeah's guitarist Nick Zinner) album of the month in February 2012. - Check out a live video of "Deadbeat" below, and read a Deli interview with the band from early 2012 here. - Corinne Bagish

A not to be missed Valentine’s Day show is slated to go down at Webster Hall’s Studio in Manhattan on 2/14. Presented by Kristina Tequila, the star studded night will be headlined by scene veterans Total Slacker (pictured and streaming below). Their classic track “Crystal Necklace” set a standard for that low down, creep-along groove with appropriately reverberated boy-girl tandem vocals. Expect more of that and surely some bowl-cut fueled guitar jam-outs too. Hunters have been making waves all over the place this year, and one would expect their performance on this night to be just as punk-rock manic as recent shows of theirs have demonstrated. XRay Eyeballs spent a good portion of last year touring all through Europe. That kind of road-honed experience will surely be on display as they continue to showcase songs from their latest album “Splendor Squalor.” Opening the night will be none other than the tireless Cassie Ramone, who appears to be effortlessly juggling gigs between her bands The Babies, Vivian Girls and now these solo acoustic shows. -Dave Cromwell

This year 28 NYC "scene experts" helped us with our Best of NYC Poll 2012 for Emerging Artists by choosing their 3 favorite up and coming NYC acts. These jurors are comprised of local venue agents and other industry people who work with many local bands throughout the year (full list coming soon). Their votes this year produced a list of 68 artists, which means that - as always - most jurors voted for different bands. But some bands appeared more thans once in the "ballots": below we compiled a list of the artists who accumulated more points through the jurors vote only. Kudos to Foxygen (already on the cover of our 2012 CMJ issue) for getting the top spot.

The Best of NYC 2012 Readers and Fans' Poll - including all the nominees - will start in a few days - stay tuned (since we have one of these polls happening in each scene we cover, we need to schedule them carefully to avoid to overload our server - thanks for your patience!).

ARTIST     1 Foxygen   2 Spirit Family Reunion   3 DIIV   4 Ambassadors   4 Ghost Beach   4 MS MR   7 Hunters

We are big fans of Hunters (their latest EP was our Record of the month in February 2012) and it's great to see them on the cover of The Village Voice - big, big thumbs up to the free NYC weekly for picking one of the best (and still very underrated) emerging local bands. The duo plays what could be described as "primal noise rock that makes sense" - i.e. noisy songs rather than just a random accumulation of noise and out of tune vocals. Hunters recently shared stages with Montreal's buzz band Metz and will be playing live in NYC on December 11 at Death By Audio - do not miss!

P.S. We wonder if Hunters will post the news about this cover on their Facebook profile or website (not for now). Sometimes these indie bands are a little self conscious or I-don't-know-what - modest? pretend they don't care?. When they do it to us (it happened recently with Foxygen - YOU BRILLIANT BASTARDS!!!) it always hurts like hell. But we are a baby publication with immature staff and constant need for promotion, The Village Voice probably won't care about that stuff. Or will it? Anyway, one day we'll have to write an article about bands too cool to promote themselves... funny thing is, that's how many of us were too when we played in bands!

We already praised Brooklyn Hunters' super-tense approach to noise-rock in more than one occasion (they were our NYC record of the month in February). Well it looks like NYC reigning noise champions A Place to Bury Strangers also have taken notice of this sonically uncompromising duo. The band (whose debut EP was partly mixed by YYY's guitarist Nick Zinner) just released the new single "Street Trash" (streaming below) and announced a July East Coast tour with A Place to Bury Strangers. It's going to be like a series sonic blasts across the coast, indeed!

Hunters is our favorite NYC emerging noise rock band, and they are playing The Mercury Lounge on Thursday March 22. If you like your indie rock tense and noisy like we do, you don't want to miss this one.