The Indie Rock Year End Poll Results are finally in!

Overall Poll Winner (Combined Juror + Reader Poll Votes): Big Thief

This indie rock quartet graced the cover of our winter 2017 issue of The Deli, and offers catchy and melancholic indie rock that sticks to the soul. They hone a fuzzy, distorted rock sound with folky overtones and production that cleans it up enough to be endlessly listenable. 

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Overall Poll 2nd Place: Cut Worms

Cut Worms offers 60s pop revival reminiscent of anything from The Beach Boys to Gerry and the Pacemakers. With catchy, simple, and relatable tunes that satisfyingly dabble in the retro, Cut Worms knows how to catch an ear. 

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Reader Poll Second Place: Baby Acid 

Baby Acid is self-described as "grunge-gaze" and it's easy to understand why on a first listen. They blend the fuzzier, harder, heavier elements of grunge with the the reverb-soaked, sound walls and atmospheres of shoegaze to create an entire sonic space. 

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Here's the list of all the finalists with their Readers' Poll scores. As always, we'd like to thank all of our artists, jurors, and readers for participating in this year's polls.  Stay tuned and vote for all of our remaining genre polls! 

	Active Bird Community		1%	14 votes
	ArthurMoon		1%	21 votes
	Baby Acid		46%	637 votes
	Big Thief		1%	16 votes
	Citris		0%	5 votes
	Cloud Becomes Your Head		0%	6 votes
	Cut Worms		0%	1 vote
	Deal Casino		0%	1 vote
	Haybaby		0%	11 votes
	New Tarot		0%	3 votes
	Not Blood Paint		0%	5 votes
	Paris Monster		6%	87 votes
	Patio		1%	19 votes
	Prima		2%	31 votes
	Public Access TV		0%	6 votes
	Rachel Angel		35%	481 votes
	Wall		0%	3 votes
	Zula		0%	13 votes

Our friends at OhMyRockness know a thing or two about what band plays where in NYC, and every year in December they publish the list of the local artists that played the most shows in the past 12 month: it's the 'NYC's Hardest Working Bands of 2016' list. It must be noted that, since OMR's deals with "Indie Rock" live listings, you won't find any songwriters or DJs or funk bands in this list. It seems like all bands are guitar based too for some reason. Since we were in the mood, we created a Soundcloud playlist of these ten artists, check it out below!

The sound of NYC's outfit Wall (featuring members already active in like-minded local groups Finally Punk, Keepsies, and Fergus&Geronimo) recaptures the early days of post punk, the first rock'n'roll movement openly promoting DIY as a creative choice - and a superior one for that matter. Those were the years when The Velvet Underground's droney, bony records with Reed's maudit lyrics were rediscovered, and many young artists radicalized that sound by stripping it of any melodic aspirations. This is pretty much what Wall does in their self titled debut EP, with their semi-atonal defying vocals, bare bone instrumentation, and DIY sounding recordings. Of the three songs currently available, our favorite is "Milk" (streaming below), which reminds us of the best early Sonic Youth tracks, slowly building through a combination of Vanessa Gomez's evocative tense vocals, the subtly evolving guitar chords and the varying speeds of the rhythm section. Check out also their most popular, more aggressively punk single "Fit the Part." The band will be celebrating the EP's release at Union Pool on January 15, you can preorder it here.

We added this song to The Deli's playlist of Best punk/garage/DIY songs by emerging NYC artists - check it out!