Jonezetta

So you say you’ve been holding your breath in the hopes that some young band would put out a record that sounds even more like the great lost Duran Duran album than The Killers’ Hot Fuss? Well, in that case, you should breathe and check out Popularity, Jonezetta’s hook-filled Tooth & Nail debut. More neo-New Wave than Franz Ferdinand — but scruffier and less inclined to wear a suit — Jonezetta couldn’t sound less like it came from Mississippi if the members sang in Cockney accents and played sitar. But apparently you could buy Seven and the Ragged Tiger in your better Mississippi record stores when these guys were learning to crawl. While most tracks rock the slick funk swagger of the early MTV years like the ’80s never ended, a handful of cuts bring an anthemic sense of U2-loving pomp-rock grandeur to the mix, like Coldplay playing to the back rows of a soccer stadium. And there’s no reason to believe Jonezetta won’t be graduating to that level on their own someday. They certainly sound like they want to be stadium rockers. All they need now are the hits.