Sleigh Bells' live show is a ferocious display of energy and aggression. Photo by Will Deitz.

Sleigh Bells is a boy/girl dance rock duo based in Brooklyn, NY. And despite their name, their music is anything but placid or wintry.

Like some of the other more notable new bands this year (Surfer Blood being a big one), Sleigh Bells broke out during the 2009 CMJ Music Marathon. Their music is angsty and very, very loud. The kind of loud achieved only by bands like Fuck Buttons, Mogwai, Dinosaur Jr. and My Blooody Valentine. Not bad for a band that doesn’t even have a full-length record on the market yet.

Their songs are built around a pretty simple premise: Singer Alexis Krauss plays the part of hipster diva and shit talks all over the top of guitarist Derek Miller’s (who used to be a member of the hardcore band Poison the Well) hypercompressed beats and squealing guitar lines. This combinations makes for music that sounds like a synthesis between Yeah Yeah Yeahs and M.I.A., with a bit of Justice and My Bloody Valentine thrown in for good measure.

Volume is a big deal for Sleigh Bells. Right now their only releases are extremely hard to find self-produced EPs where every single song constantly sounds on the verge of clipping. When most bands push their recording levels into the red, it’s a sign of amateurishness, but with Sleigh Bells decibel-overloading is a legitimate trait of their singular sound. It keeps their poppiest songs from being too bubblegum and cliche, and the low-end rumble present throughout their “2HELLWU” EP nauseates in the most delightful way — just like heaving, booming bass lines help to define bands like Sunn O))) and the aforementioned Fuck Buttons.

Their delirious fuzzed-out sound is most fully realized on “Crown On The Ground,” the debut “single” that propelled them into the spotlight after CMJ. It’s a grainy, earsplitting bludgeon of a pop song with a melody that could be laid atop a radio-ready hit were it not so goddamn noisy that you can’t actually tell what Krauss is saying. In this way, Sleigh Bells’ music is subversive; at the root of it, they’re a band that caters to those with an ear for pop music, but their sounds also demand that the listener have a taste for tons of distortion. Krauss’ hooks shift on “Crown” between infectious twee pop and spit-in-the-face, street-smart hip-hop rhyming. And when the anthemic chorus kicks in, it’s hard not to want to throw your hands in the air and sing along: “Set set that crown on the ground and uh,” over and over and over again.

Sleigh Bells is a group that has totally tapped in to the current consciousness of the independent music scene. Their muscular instrumentals appeal to noise lovers and indie experimentalists, but their melodic sensibilities also open up their music to a world of listeners who approach music from a more pleasure-oriented perspective. And just like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, their no-holds-barred sound shakes buildings both because it’s relentlessly loud and because it encourages people to get up and dance.

Miller alleges there’s a full-length Sleigh Bells record in the works, and I can only hope that when it does see the light of day outside Brooklyn, it’ll be just as noisy and jarring and catchy as their EP. This is the kind of band for whom quality production would be a travesty. Lo-fi graininess is an integral part of Sleigh Bells’ style; it keeps their music interesting and challenging without detracting from their songwriting in any way.

Crown on the Ground

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