The Spinto Band

There's nothing especially new about douchebag rock. The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, and countless others have shoehorned the subgenre into the larger pop canon. But in the present decade, plenty of indie boys have gotten in touch with their inner assholes: The Walkmen, Say Anything, The Strokes, and, most notably, OK Go spring immediately to mind. Hailing from Wilmington, Delaware — a locale that's never received much music-industry ink — the Spinto Band aims to make utter and total dickishness fun, frisky, and frantic. While 2005's Nice and Nicely Done got the ball rolling in fine style, its new album, Moonwink, ups the ante by packing even more structural twists, keyboard bubblegum, and on-a-dime chord changes into the band's peppy pop sneers. It helps the group's cause that Nick Krill is the rare frontman who really, really seems to enjoy what he does. He treats each lyric sheet as an Olympic event, sliding from chatty, buzzed excitement to slurred, scatty issuance to soothing over-pronunciation as the band tap-dances through infectious numbers that would set comfortably in a musical. You'd want him on hand at the bar as your wingman, if not as your best friend forever.