Who: Indie rock vets Love as Laughter, who are finally ready to quit their day jobs with their first proper studio album Holy.

Sounds Like: The rougher side of the Seattle music scene with elements of Pavement and Neil Young thrown in the mix. After 14 years, more than 20 band members and five DIY albums under his belt, LAL frontman Sam Jayne entered the studio with the Clash producer Joe Blaney to create an album full of songs Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock calls "amazing," with tracks like the Talking Heads-ish "All Parts of Me" and the romantic rocker "Konny and Jim."

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Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from some buzzworthy acts on the Hype Machine.

The Band: The War on Drugs
The Buzz: Trio from Philly do a cockeyed take on FM country-rock.
Listen If: You find yourself spending a lot of time defending Neil Young's Trans.
Key Track: "Arms Like Boulders," where Adam Grandciel's Petty-esque moan yawns across fields of gleaming guitars.

The Band: Abe Vigoda
The Buzz: L.A. experimentalists center instrumental free-falls with sturdy, earnest melodies.
Listen If: The thing that bugs you about free jazz is the tunelessness.
Key Track: "Bear Face," where a barrage of 16th notes suddenly kick out into a motorik jam that would do Neu! proud.

The Band: Nomo
The Buzz: Michigan collective do computerized take on Afrobeat.
Listen If: You ever tried to replicate Fela Kuti cuts with your Commodore 64.
Key Track: "Brainwave," where a single electronic squelch kicks and pitches over rolling percussion.

[Photo: Courtesy Secretly Canadian]

Who: Classically trained singer/songwriter Shara Worden, who mixed her love of strings with her downtown New York aesthetic for her second album A Thousand Shark's Teeth.

Sounds Like: Bjork gone minimalist, with a bit of American chamber pop sheen thrown in for good measure. "I listen to probably 98% pop music," explains Worden. "I think that whatever you put in your body is probably what’s going to come out more. So for me, my songs are just tunes. The way I see them relating to classical music is that I wanted songs that were drawing more from Debussy and Ravel, songs where there’s something that’s very impressionistic and about mood and color rather than 'Here comes the chorus!'"

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Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from some buzzworthy acts on the Hype Machine.

The Band: Vivian Girls
The Buzz: New York Trio flashes back to 1986, throwing girl group harmonies over roaring guitars.
Listen If: You often find yourself wishing the Ronnettes had bigger amps — or if you know "C86" isn't a sci-fi movie.
Key Track: "Wild Eyes," which speeds by in a blur of stuttering snare, growling guitars and ethereal vocals.

The Band: Kudu
The Buzz: Brooklyn group builds bleak electropop, haunting and sublime.
Listen If: You think life is better with the lights out.
Key Track: "Neon Graveyard (Drop the Lime Remix)," where the band's usually dour demeanor gets shaken up by clattering drums.

The Band: Blu & Exile
The Buzz: Nimble LA rapper turns out songs full of smarts and soul.
Listen If: You're starting to get tired of all this Lil Wayne hubbub, too.
Key Track: "Blu Collar Worker," where Blu gets blue over what it takes to pay the bills while chipmunk soul chatters in the background.

Who: Minnesota folk king Mason Jennings, who gets spiritual and explores where babies come from on his new album In the Ever.

Sounds Like: Having just signed to Brushfire Records, the easy comparison is Jennings' good friend, current tour mate and Brushfire owner Jack Johnson. But Jennings also draws from the Minnesota rock scene, Comes a Time-era Neil Young and his favorite band, Led Zeppelin — all channeled through acoustic guitars. "Whenever I have electric guitars going, my voice just disappears. I'm too mellow," Jennings says of his aspirations to be Robert Plant.

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Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from some buzzworthy acts on the Hype Machine.

The Band: Wale
The Buzz: DC rapper with nimble flow nips funk and go-go, proving brainy and fun aren't mutually exclusive.
Listen If: You used to go straight from debate meets to nightclub teen nights.
Key Track: "D.C. Gorillaz," with it's wise-ass chorus, "You ain't got a chance, if you ain't got a dance." Wale's Seinfeld-sampling Mixtape About Nothing is available for free at elitaste.com.

The Band: A-Trak
The Buzz: Kanye's touring DJ nets a Nike mixtape and a tiny sliver of the spotlight.
Listen If: You fully believe in the ability of synthesizers to be funky.
Key Track: "Say Whoa," which is that "Oh Yeah" song from Ferris Bueller updated for the 21st Century.

The Band: Seun Kuti
The Buzz: Son of Afrobeat great carries on father's legacy, band, sound.
Listen If: Two drums are two too few, and you often fantasize about creating a James Brown marching band.
Key Track: "Mosquito Song," where scurrying percussion and hazy brass wrestle for supremacy against a busy, bobbing bassline.

Who: Sydney, Australia dance-punk duo the Presets, whose second album Apocalypso has proven to have more staying power on the Aussie charts than Madonna and Mariah.

Sounds Like: The Rapture with an army of '80s synths. On Apocalyspo, the Presets revel in the darker, more cosmic realm of dance music while still having fun and involuntarily getting people in the mood to move. There's also punk and new wave elements, but just don't call them "Indietronica." "I kind of hate that term," says drummer Kim Moyes.

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Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. This week: a few choice picks from some buzzworthy acts on the Hype Machine.

The Band: J*Davey
The Buzz: LA electro/soul combo smoke up a sequencer and sigh over the resulting beats.
Listen If: You wish the new Erykah Badu record was longer, or you miss old, weird Prince.
Key Track: "Turn the Lights Out," which delivers big streaks of synth and pulsing rhythms.

The Band: Dead Heart Bloom
The Buzz: Brainchild of singer/songwriter Boris Skalsky, DHB deliver giant-sized guitar noise topped with gianter-size religious cynicism.
Listen If: You think the National and American Music Club are upbeat.
Key Track: "Come Back," a sublime combination of dour, druggy vocals and corkscrewing guitars. It couldn't be easier to hear, either: the band is giving away their entire EP for free.

The Band: Chris Letcher
The Buzz: South African Singer/Songwriter crafts songs that sound like dawn: low and creaky, slowly building to a big burst of light.
Listen If: You're a sucker for tricky orchestration, pleading vocals and big theatrical flourishes. Or you kinda like Arcade Fire.
Key Track: "Deep Frieze," which opens with a twinkle and crescendos with a great boom.

Who: Indie-pop chanteuse Lykke Li, a worldly Swede whose infectious debut Youth Novels was buzzing long before its Stateside release in May.

Sounds Like: Dance music with a devilish wink. With production by Bjorn Yttling, Youth Novels’ sugary pop, biting lyrics and breathy vocals make heartbreak sound sweet. “I just do music, I don’t know where it comes from or what it is,” says Li, whose influences include Madonna, Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan and hip-hop, of her spontaneous blend. “It just is.”

Vital Stats:

• The daughter of "free-minded old hippies," as she calls her parents, Li, 22, grew up between Stockholm, Sweden, and a mountaintop home in the South of Portugal where “You can grow weed in the backyard,” she recalls of her unconventional upbringing. “Maybe you’re not allowed to say that?”

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Alejandro Escovedo's latest album Real Animal earned three and a half stars in our latest issue (out tomorrow!), and critic Will Hermes writes, "as a solo artist, [Escovedo]'s transcended labels, and his latest is a chrome-bright autobiographical song cycle with flashbacks that roar into the present." Sample the goodness for yourself: here's "Real as an Animal - Live From Sirius Satellite Radio":