Friends

Showing up on the BBC's Sound of 2012 poll, and with their terrific mix of punk-funk rhythms and melancholic bliss-pop pumping out of our more adventurous and tuned-in radio stations, it's small wonder Brooklyn quintet Friends keep selling out all their London shows. While suggesting themselves as the new Warpaint, they nonetheless cast their own shadow – a pounding, tribally groovacious yet alluringly bittersweet one.