Who: Aussie new-rave trio Midnight Juggernauts, who just wrapped up their first U.S. tour supporting Summer '07 "It" band Justice. After tours of Europe and China, the group — guitarist-singer Andy Streetcrimes, singer-keyboardist Vin Vendetta and drummer Daniel Stricker — started accruing some major word of mouth thanks to MySpace. The dance-rockers ultimately scored their Justice gig the old-fashioned way: by cooking the French duo dinner.

Sounds Like: David Bowie if his Berlin Trilogy was a collaboration with Kraftwerk and Faust. Their debut album Dystopia takes uplifting Numan synths, Daft Punk beats and Pink Floyd's affinity for all things astronomical and Orwellian, then melts them all together with the help of some good psychedelics.

Three Things You Should Know:

1. The band played fake Michael Jackson benefit shows to lure in unsuspecting fans. "He was having some some legal troubles and the idea was to give money to the show to fund legal expenses," says Vincent. "It was just a joke, but I think some papers caught up on it and did some stories. They even got some child-abuse spokesperson to comment on it." Some attending the event didn't find the joke funny, as they complained when no actual Jacko covers were played.

2. The group's rejected monikers include Dragon Lord and Warlords. "We had revolving names in the beginning and then there were other bands on the other side of the world who contacted us saying 'We already had the title. We'll sue you if you continue with that,' " Vincent explains. "So we just tried to come up with the most ridiculous thing. I guess Midnight Juggernauts is just literally an unstoppable force in the middle of the night, so we thought that may suit our music."

3. The trio's influences are wide-ranging — from Bowie and Floyd to Pixies and Slayer to old-school melancholy surf music — and their overall goal is lofty. "It's not all about beats or dance floor moods and styles. It's about taking the person to another place," says Vincent. "It's fun creating these different soundscapes where it's just another kind of universe."

Get It: Dystopia hit Australia in August, and its North American release date is still TBD (though music is always available on iTunes or their MySpace). Check out the video for "Into the Galaxy" and some footage of the Juggernauts navigating New York's Lower East Side above.

>> Watch every episode of our weekly New Breaking Artist video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click "Launch application"). Every Wednesday, an exclusive video profile of an emerging artist will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don't have iTunes, download it here.]

French DJ duo Justice blew through New York City last week, but before they could jet off again the Breaking Blog got them to sit down to confirm and/or deny a few stereotypes about the French (They're mean! They smell!) and give us the dirt on hot new French bands. Click above to watch the interview, and click here to check out the pair explaining their wacky Jimmy Kimmel performance, which featured some familiar faces from the Eighties.

Who: Staten Island, New York singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson got her big break when "Keep Breathing" was discovered on MySpace and used during a pivotal moment of the Grey's Anatomy season finale. The twenty-seven-year-old also scored an Old Navy commercial with "The Way I Am," helping to rocket her second LP Girls and Boys to the top of both Billboard's Heatseekers and Alternative New Artist charts -- despite the fact that she has never signed to a label.

Sounds Like: Feist with a bit of Regina Spektor's quirk. On Girls and Boys, Michaelson tap-dances between piano-based ballads with pristine vocals and a few attitude-heavy guitar-centric tracks that show off her more rockin' side.

Three Things You Should Know:

1. After Old Navy ran with "The Way I Am," Michaelson started a forum on her MySpace to open discussion on selling out vs. succeeding. She says it's difficult for developing artists to turn down big breaks but, "If a big bad corporation comes up to me and wants me to be their mascot hopefully I'll be able to do my research and do what I know in my heart to be the right thing."
2. Girls and Boys is about (surprise) relationships. "I sing about those kinds of issues but in very boiled down simple terms," she says. "I listen to every kind of music and I have no idea what some people are talking about, but I still enjoy it. I want to say a lot with as few words as possible."
3. After being raised on pop-free diet of folk, classical music and the Beatles, Michaelson took to show tunes as a kid. "My parents put me in theater when I was nine. I did Guys and Dolls, a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan, Into the Woods," she says, adding that she studied musical theater in college but is actively trying to move away from such theatrics in her newer songs.

Get It: Girls and Boys was re-released in September and is in stores and available on iTunes. Check out a special acoustic performance of "The Way I Am" shot right here at the Rolling Stone offices by clicking the video above.

›› Watch every episode of our weekly New Breaking Artist video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click "Launch application"). Every Wednesday, an exclusive video profile of an emerging artist will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don't have iTunes, download it here.]

One thousand or so bands (give or take a few shaggy haircuts) hit New York City every fall for the CMJ Music Marathon, a five-day band-a-palooza where new acts get noticed (see Arcade Fire) and scores more get drunk at open-bar showcases. For the next few days, Rock Daily will be bringing you reports on the bands we consider most worthy of your time after CMJ has packed up and moved on: Hip-hop is already pretty scarce at the indie-rock focused CMJ, so it didn't help matters that the fest's two best rap lineups were scheduled for the exact same time on Saturday night in different parts of town. At the Lower East Side's 205 Chrystie, hot underground Pittsburgh MC Wiz Khalifa (a former RS Breaking artist) was holding it down with mixtape-circuit star DJ Green Lantern. But further uptown, at the Highline Ballroom, an indie-rap all-star team proved to be the stronger draw. Sweet-voiced female MC Psalm One from Chicago kicked it off, followed by a solo set from Dilated Peoples' Evidence.

But the place didn't really erupt until albino legally-blind Muslim rapper (yeah, take a minute with that) Brother Ali brought his fiery rhymes to the stage. With a preacher's cadence and poetic couplets on everything from his failed first marriage to civil liberties (he calls himself "Howard Stern meets Howard Zinn"), the MC, who recently released The Undisputed Truth on Rhymesayers Entertainment, had the crowd screaming "A-li! A-li! A-li!" "Imagine a chubby albino kid from Minneapolis," he said from the stage, cutting off the chant. "KRS-One is more of a father to you than your own dad. Melle Mel is your uncle in you mind, and you memorize every word Rakim ever rapped. You start making rap records without any record contract and you finally make it to New York, where all of your heroes come from and the crowd is chanting your name." Louder: "A-LI! A-LI! A-LI!"

Headliners Little Brother came up next and described the night's show up to that point the best they'd ever played. MCs Big Pooh and Phonte lacked Ali's vocal clarity, but it didn't matter, since most of the fan-packed house knew every word -- even to songs on their new album Get Back, which doesn't come out until Tuesday (Phonte acknowledged that he himself leaked the record -- which wasn't much of a surprise since the "genre" category on leaked tracks comes up "Don't Ever Say Phonte Never Did Nothin For Y'all Niggas ... lol Enjoy!"). Phonte mixed up the set with his trademark comedic interludes on everything from T.I.'s recent arrest ("Dude should have said he was stocking up to fight Osama") to their departure from Atlantic Records ("Kunte Kinte got his papers!"). It was certainly the hip-hop highlight of the fest (sorry Tip), but of course, it didn't have much competition.

One thousand or so bands (give or take a few shaggy haircuts) hit New York City every fall for the CMJ Music Marathon, a five-day band-a-palooza where new acts get noticed (see Arcade Fire) and scores more get drunk at open-bar showcases. For the next few days, Rock Daily will be bringing you reports on the bands we consider most worthy of your time after CMJ has packed up and moved on:

The copious bitching and moaning that precedes CMJ -- the exhaustive hype, the hordes of bodies, the wristband drama -- all but vaporizes once you're actually at a show, anticipating the goods. And if there's one up-and-coming band whose songs can send whiners packing, it's MGMT. They might not be an outright psychedelic band, but there's no way around the colorful escapism provided on their mercurial electro-pop debut Oracular Spectacular. Friday night's audience of evenly divided male and female, washed and unwashed attendees was a little worn out by the time the band hit the stage a bit before 1 AM, but bobbed in place to their Flaming Lips-like fantasy jams. MGMT themselves were more timid than expected, and didn't totally harness their music's potential to beam listeners out of a dank basement club and into the clouds -- but there'll be plenty of time for that in the coming months. MGMT seem poised to ride excellent track "Time to Pretend" into a realm where they won't have to visualize success. Prior to entering the land of pretty swirly-pop make-believe, gravity was firmly enforced during Foreign Islands' furious set. The Brooklyn-based band unloaded post-punk dance tunes that could've put a fissure in the earth's crust -- kind of like what Franz Ferdinand would sound like if they were fed nothing but steak and eggs for twelve months straight. The band's high-energy frontman Mark Ryan kept the audience scared, excited or both.

[Photo: Sam Horine]

One thousand or so bands (give or take a few shaggy haircuts) hit New York City every fall for the CMJ Music Marathon, a five-day band-a-palooza where new acts get noticed (see Arcade Fire) and scores more get drunk at open-bar showcases. For the next few days, Rock Daily will be bringing you reports on the bands we consider most worthy of your time after CMJ has packed up and moved on:

One night after Dan Deacon metaphorically brought the house down, the Bowery Ballroom played host to another anticipated CMJ showcase. First up on the bill were the Tiny Masters of Today, featuring two siblings, thirteen-year-old guitarist-vocalist Ivan and eleven-year-old bassist-vocalist Ada, and a father-figure-like man on drums (yes, folks, we know it's onetime Jon Spencer Blues Explosion kitman Russell Simins). The wear-and-tear of CMJ showcases seemed to drain the youngsters, as the duo seemed lethargic throughout their performance, like they've been staying up way past their bedtimes. When they were on, they sounded like pre-teen Ramones playing Paddy Cake, especially on songs like "Hey Mr. DJ" and the Ada-sung anti-George W. rocker "Bushy." The band closed out their set with a Kidz Bop-esque version of House of Pain's "Jump Around." Yeah, they were cute, but hopefully this band's sound continues to mature or they might grow up and no one will like them anymore, like Frankie Munoz.

Next up was the decade that spawned the Tiny Masters, the 1990s. While their name conjures up images of grunge and Bill Clinton, the Glasgow trio is more indebted to the late Seventies/early Eighties, especially given the Buzzcockish riffs and Elvis Costello bounce of their songs. Singer-guitarist Jackie McKeown, who was once in a band called the Yummy Fur with Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos, delighted the steadily-increasing Bowery crowd with songs from debut album Cookies. U.K. single "You're Supposed To Be My Friend" and "Enjoying Myself" (with a Modern Lovers' "Road Runner" tease) even had the cross-armed in the crowd swaying before closing out their fast eight-song set with "See You at the Lights."

After a spirited set by Pela, British Sea Power took the stage at half-past midnight to introduce American audiences to songs off their upcoming album Do You Like Rock Music? If your answer to that question was "Yes," then BSP's set didn't disappoint. While the band seemed more restrained during this visit than at their Bowery visit in 2005, the band still had the full attention of the crowd, especially a contingent of die-hards in the front. Some fans were singing along with new songs like "No Lucifer" and "Lights Out For Darker Skies," even though those songs won't be released until January (can someone say "album leak?") Guitarist Noble was especially on point, eviscerating his guitar strings on new tracks like "Atom" and "The Pelican." While the older material lacked the urgency it used to pack on previous tours, the band and the crowd surged to the next decibel level on the set-ending performances of "Carrion" and frequent stage-demolishing closer "Rock In A." While British Sea Power didn't bring the Bowery down like Deacon, they still did their fair share of damage.

You know Chicago's hip-hop scene is on the rise when a) Kanye West cameos on hometown rapper Kid Sister's "Pro Nails," and b) big, beer-chugging guys wave their cuticles in the air to its girlie chorus: "Got her toes done up with her fingernails match." Last night at Hiro Ballroom, the pint-sized diva, backed by West's DJ A-Track and sporting a platinum-blonde bob, got the crowd bouncing to kiss-off anthems like "Telephone" (chorus: "Nigga, quit callin' me!"), the Tangerine Dream-remixing "Let Me Bang" and the old-school banger "Control." But "Pro Nails" topped the show. "You ladies remember when you went to prom just because you wanted to dress up like a bride and get your nails did?" she asked, by way of introducing the track, and at least one quarterback-shaped dude hollered back in response.

Earlier that night, Cool Kids echoed the same Eighties-style vibe as Kid Sister, adhering to the golden rule of old-school hip-hop: As one journalist in the crowd put it, "When in doubt, rap faster." While a video screen mashed up Muppet Babies footage with clips from Michael Jordan-era Bulls games, the Chicago duo kicked things off by asking everyone to shake their key rings to their version of LL Cool J's "Jingling Baby," moved on to the M/A/R/R/S-sampling "Pump Up the Volume," and even played a track called "88," where they bragged about taking things back to the days of acid-washed jeans. At nineteen years old, the group's MCs, Chuck and Mikey, are probably too young to root their nostalgia in that part of the past. But their fresh, stripped-down sound definitely feels like it has a future.

[Photo: Dziekan/Retna]

One thousand or so bands (give or take a few shaggy haircuts) hit New York City every fall for the CMJ Music Marathon, a five-day band-a-palooza where new acts get noticed (see Arcade Fire) and scores more get drunk at open-bar showcases. For the next few days, Rock Daily will be bringing you reports on the bands we consider most worthy of your time after CMJ has packed up and moved on:

"Fuck, yeah!" shouted Randy Randall of the guitar-and-drums avant-rock duo No Age at the beginning of the pair's set at Bowery Ballroom. It was a neat summation of last night's lineup: No Age, Dan Deacon and Deerhunter all revel in the art of glorious, sloppy, demented noise.

No Age rocked the stage as if they had written the greatest guitar riff since AC/DC's "Back In Black," even though their songs are supremely messy two-minute bursts of chaos. Plus, they had a great spirit: Randall took turns playing from the top of the P.A. speakers or banging his head into his amp while drummer Dean Spunt at times slapped hands with the kids in the front row. When Randall claimed "We're really excited to see you guys," to the audience, you believed him.

A performance artist from Baltimore, Dan Deacon performed at his table of mixers, samplers, ring modulators and pitch shifters on the floor of the venue. Since he was in the middle of the action, the crowd crammed dangerously around him, jumping up and down like tweaked-out aerobics instructors to synth-rock bangers like "The Crystal Cat." For Deacon, it was too much and near the end of his set he shouted, "This level of shoving is just ridiculous." So he asked the crowd to push back and create passageways so a few fans could run in circles around the balcony of the ballroom and back down to the floor.

Things calmed down considerably for Deerhunter, the shoegazy four-piece from Atlanta. Their set was the perfect way to wind down from Deacon's maniacal exercise-rock, especially when they kicked into the kraut-rocking groove of "Cryptograms." It's too early to say for sure, but this felt like one of the best showcases of the festival yet.

[Photo: Ryan Muir]

One thousand or so bands (give or take a few shaggy haircuts) hit New York City every fall for the CMJ Music Marathon, a five-day band-a-palooza where new acts get noticed (see Arcade Fire) and scores more get drunk at open-bar showcases. For the next few days, Rock Daily will be bringing you reports on the bands we consider most worthy of your time after CMJ has packed up and moved on:

Given the success of Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene, it's no wonder that there would be groups like the Most Serene Republic cashing in on the whole "collective" thing at this year's CMJ. But this Canadian septet came off more like an indie-rock version of High School Musical at their Bowery Ballroom gig last night. The band turned in a forty-minute set of too-over-the-top anthems, which showed off their jazz-and-classical-influenced chops (that's good) and Broadway-ready vocals (in this case, bad). Their second record, Population, is much, much better: a thirteen-track headphones-appropriate disc that takes its time unfurling some pretty orchestra-heavy tunes. Frontman Adrian Jewett seemed to pick up on the disappointed audience. Toward the end of the group's set, he said, "You're all critiquing us. You all probably have a blog or a Web site and you're going to write [bad things] about us." That neatly summed up the vibe of CMJ: many bands like Most Serene Republic get hyped, then disappear. But thankfully, twenty minutes after they exited the stage, Dean and Britta -- tireless professionals who used to front the excellent dream-pop band Luna for over a decade -- came out to show the new kids how it's done.

[Photograph by Ryan Muir]

Who: Eighteen-year-old Chris Dooley from Shreveport, Louisiana, who has been rapping for the better part of his eighteen years. After scoring a local hit with "Yep" (which he penned at fourteen), Dooley partnered with hometown DJ Hollyhood Bay Bay, who inspired Dooley's breakthrough hit, club jam "A Bay Bay."

Sounds Like: Danceable megahooky singles coupled with tongue-twisting, hard-talking bangers that are founded in Shreveport's version of crunk -- a combination of buzzing synths, minimalist drums and chanted hooks.

Three Things You Should Know:

1. The "Hurricane" in Chris' name comes from the show-stopping rap battles he's triumphated at, like the talent show where he beat out high school kids (he was just eight). "After that, I started writing every day and entering rap competitions," Dooley says. "I was competing at the Air Force base, schools -- anywhere."
2. Dooley's debut, 51/50 Ratchet, is inspired by ratchet, the Shreveport brand of crunk which also describes Dooley's laidback lifestyle. He explains it as "do what you feel -- I might be in the club's VIP section with my shoes off," Dooley says. "It's about being comfortable and having fun."
3. After "A Bay Bay" progressed from local hit to national sensation, J Records head honcho Clive Davis asked for a personal performance from Dooley. "He stood up and shook my hand," Dooley recalls. "Told me I was a star." Dooley signed with J to release 51/50.

Get It: 51/50 Ratchet hits stores next Tuesday, October 23rd, but you can sample tracks from the record -- including "A Bay Bay" -- on Hurricane Chris' MySpace. Also, click above to watch the video for second single "The Hand Clap."

›› Watch every episode of our weekly New Breaking Artist video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click "Launch application"). Every Wednesday, an exclusive video profile of an emerging artist will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don't have iTunes, download it here.]