Emi, Yoko, Mariko, and The Gooch are four Japanese girls who laugh and yell at each other all the time. About two years ago they harmonized their varied subconscious musical hauntings to form Hard Nips. The riff-heavy, post-punk anthems of Hard Nips coalesce from jabbing, overdriven guitar and bass lines, big straight beats, and Yoko's prepubescent strainings. The band released their first record last year and have drawn increasing attention via their colorful and kinetic live performances.

Mustafina emerged in 2012 from the neoazeri-freudian-bumblefoot underground psychedelic punk scene in the fertile but militarily contested Gowanus Valley of Brooklyn, NY. Mercury, lead, PCBs and coal tar from the canal created an impenetrable miasma providing sufficient cover to allow insurgent elements from the historically entrenched Alice Donut sect to ally with a local warlord from Heldin and a breakaway Berserker unit. The unification of the insurgent movement is threatened by the designation of familial lands as a Superfund site and by the inexplicable misuse of facial hair by local artisans. The resultant cultural instability is reflected in the music of Mustafina.